All I need now is some blue-gray hair to go with my wax earplugs

The bloggin's been sparse lately, huh? That's what starting a new school year and attempting to be more routine about our day will do for you, huh? I've been trying to muster up some effort in the late evenings to blog but instead a little someone has decided that her new bedtime is 10:00pm and I'm just wore slap out. And there's also another someone who I like to spend time with sans kids and so blogging goes to the wayside.

Right now, the older 3 are playing something Toy Story related in the living room, I have a frozen Stouffer's lasagna in the oven, Aaron is in a TV coma because of his new love, Diego and the two littlest girls are asleep. Scratch that, Olivia is now stirring.

Currently, I'm dealing with pool water in the ear that refuses to make an exit, despite my attempts with rubbing alcohol and mashing my ear to the hot concrete because of some advice someone gave me. Neither has worked for the goal that I set out for. Although I have succeeded in have the most sterile ear canal on the planet and I'm sure that I've caused everyone driving by my house to wonder about the mental stability of the lady who's outside laying down on her sidewalk, then raising her head, shaking it and repeating.

Glad I'm awesome.

Another friend suggested that maybe I shouldn't put my head underwater when we go to the pool. However, that would never work because then I'd no longer be a cool Mom who does flips and cartwheels and super impressive cannonballs off the diving board. I mean, obviously God gave me lots 'o junk in my trunk so that my offspring can adequately marvel at my ability to make a giant splash and "make the pool wavy." (It's a small pool. Really. Stop imagining an Olympic sized pool in your mind. I promise it's a small one. My trunk's not that full. Maybe.)

My need for those old lady wax earplugs when I swim won't take away from my cool factor. Will it?

Oh and if anyone has any reasonable ideas for how to excavate pool water from your inner ear, I'd be happy to entertain them. Obviously. I mean, I did press the side of my face to my sidewalk earlier, so maybe that whole reasonable thing is just a suggestion. Just like how Stouffer's suggests that I heat their lasagna before eating it. You know, whatever.

School is back even though it never really left

This week we kicked off our "new" school year. To be honest, we never really stopped having school this summer, albeit it was sporadic and much less structured than what I would like. My goal for Elizabeth's 1st grade year (holy smokes! FIRST grade?) was for it to be much more routine and have much more structure than last year.

Kindergarten didn't shape up the way I would have liked for it to. Instead, we took many breaks, weren't consistent in the least and I think that it set a negative tone for when we "did school." I'm trying to mentally cut myself some slack because last school year our family went through many changes...Mommy puking all the time...moving...new baby....

But the truth is, I didn't make school a priority and we all suffered because of it. After reading this post my BFF Amanda posted over on the homeschool blog we are (suppose) to co-author, I realized that starting our day off with consistency will in turn lead us to days and weeks and a whole year of consistency. Today is day three of our "Morning Meetings" and so far the kids and I love this time. And on both Monday and Tuesday of this week we accomplished everything that I had planned! Yay!

I'm beginning to remember why I have always loved being a teacher. And you know what? Having my own kids as students is just icing on the cake.