I anticipated sleeping in this morning, so imagine my disappointment when I woke up at 5:15 ready to conquer my day. It wasn’t all bad, though. It gave me an early start to my day and we got everyone fed and into the classroom by 8am. I wanted to start some sort of schooling as early as possible. Nothing big, just a little work to keep their minds from losing everything they learned this past year. I printed out some worksheets that included some math activities, reading, coloring, and copy work. Since I’m not a teacher, and I’m not completely sure what is age appropriate at this point we worked on things as we could. If we got to a worksheet that was too hard we moved on.

We did school for about an hour and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. Baby E even had some preschool time of his own, which mostly consisted of coloring, putting together a puzzle, and working on his numbers.

By 9 am we were done. Then we packed up and headed to the shop for a few hours. Turns out I ended up needing to run an errand for them, so my mom, Baby E, and I hopped in the car and drove to an area less than a half an hour from my in-laws house. So much for not commuting, right?!? If it hadn’t been mid afternoon, we would have detoured to load up the van again, but as it was we were pressing near rush hour.

As we made dinner this evening the kids played in the sprinkler in the front yard. Kids from next door came over to play with them and I loved watching the kids make new friends. I am excited that we live in a neighborhood with some families with young kids.

I have to say, today went really well and I enjoyed getting all the extra time with the kids. 🙂

It’s Sunday night and if I’m honest, I have to say I feel like a fish out of water. There was no hurried drive back to my in-laws house. No rushing to get the kids to bed so I could squeeze in a little down time before going to bed myself. No flurry of laundry or the bustle of grocery shopping for the entire week. There’s no dread of a 5am alarm or calculating how much sleep I might get before it goes off.

As difficult as all those things were, my life feels uncomfortable without them. It feels foreign. I walked around our house today not knowing what to do with myself. I swung between sadness and excitement with every breath.

I know it will take a few weeks to settle into a new routine and start building our lives in a new town with new people.

We ate dinner on our front porch this evening. It’s my new favorite place, especially after the sun has set and a light breeze drifts across the yard. Our kids are so unbelievably happy to finally be here, for us all to be together, and so am I!!