First Day of School

New school year.  New teachers.  New routines.

Does anyone else feel like the calendar really begins on the first day of school?

Hudson is in third grade and Evan is in 6th grade this year.

 My teacher week was insane.  It's too hard to even try to explain why.  I decorated my room at the very last minute.

 Some decorations are new.  Some are from last year.  No need to reinvent the wheel.

 I got my nails put back on.  I feel more put together when my nails are pretty.  I'm working hard this year to attain a "complete" professional appearance.  That includes nails!

 Nice and short.  Just the way I like them.  The nail technician seemed a little peeved that I had long claws glued on only to have her cut them super short.  She said, "Cutting them this short is a waste of my tips."  Um, no.  I am paying for those tips either way...and I like them SHORT!

Evan's supplies ready to go for Monday morning.

 Hudson's mountain of supplies.

 I spent time bagging up crackers, lunch meats, and fruit so we can grab and go in the morning.  #majortimesaver

 I'm such a good mom that I ply my kids with sugary donuts on the first day of school!

 I'm having to do double takes at how grown up they both look!

 Evan is in 6th grade, so he gets a choice in uniform.  He went with the white and khaki option for day one.

 They like each other.

 I have to get in on the first day photos also!

 I love my people.

 No one joined me in making a duck face.  #spoilsports

 Handsome man.

 Evan is almost as tall as me.  He is really excited about that, too!

We all had a great day.  I was running from beginning to end.  I planned to leave school at 4.  Yeah, that actually turned into leaving at 5.  Hudson, apparently, had a very busy day!  He fell asleep on the 12 minute ride home!

 It was so cute that I kept turning around to look at him.  #watchtheroad

Once I synced my Fitbit app, I saw that I walked over 13,000 steps and traveled over 6 miles today!  Granted, part of that was the 2 1/2 mile run that I started my day with, but still!

And because of those six miles, and a crazy busy first day, and answering emails, and getting ready for Back to School night tomorrow, and submitting payroll, and finding lost ordered items, and making dinner...I am about three minutes away from bed!

It was a good day!

Tuesday in Bullet Points

I stayed home yesterday.  Here is how the day went down:

*Eric and I went to the gym.

*I made great progress on cleaning and organizing more of the house.

*I put a pork roast in the crock pot with Dr. Pepper. (Turned out to be pretty tasty.)

*The air conditioner man came and fixed our AC.  Glory be!  I left the air at 76 all day!

*My boss and his son came over to pick up a dining room table and chairs.  The son and our nephew are going to be roommates at law school in San Diego.

*I cleaned some more.

*I packed up the Red, White, and Blue decorations and even put the box in the storage shed!

*I refrained from getting out the Fall decorations, even though I wanted to!  I did, however, display the few new Fall decorations that I bought this weekend.  I didn't want to leave the stuff in shopping bags on a counter, and I wasn't going to pack them up just to pull them out in a few weeks.  I am making myself wait until Sept. 1 before pulling out my Fall boxes.  I CAN'T wait!

*I solved a mini crisis regarding payroll.

*I took the kids to 2Extreme so they could jump and let off steam.

*Hudson banged his face and knee.  He recovered.

*I folded clothes.

*We ate dinner.

*I began watching The Good Wife streaming on Amazon Prime.  I like it.

*I took only one photo yesterday:

*I didn't eat much, so I enjoyed a salame and cheese stick snack before bed.

*We went to bed before 9 p.m.

Overall, it was a good day and I felt pretty productive.  I really appreciate days like that.

Just a Monday Recap

I am sort of in that fuzzy in between time of summer and work.  I'm not officially back to work, but I'm there getting my classroom set up and planning with my team.  I go in late and can leave early if I want to.

Although part of that sentence was a lie!  I have absolutely ZERO desire to decorate my classroom right now!  Yesterday, I camped out in my partner's room and didn't even open my classroom door!  I spent the day planning with her.  We made progress, but there is a lot more to do.

Where Amanda derives joy from hanging paper on the wall with decorations, I find it stressful and annoying.  I have, however, narrowed down my "theme" to purple.  I'm going to head to GW at some point to find any and all purple stuff.  Purple makes me happy.  I'm sure in a few days I'll be eager to make my room look pretty.  It's just at this very moment, I'm content to lesson plan and focus on the iPad program.

 We are still without air conditioning.  It should be fixed today.  After dinner, Eric took Evan to soccer practice, and Hudson and I hung out in the Retreat Room.  I surfed Pinterest for dinner ideas.  He did this.

He's looking a bit too comfortable for my liking on our new couch.  #wewearshortshorts

After I figured out dinners for the week, I shooed him out the door and we went grocery shopping.  He had to push the cart.  Luckily for me, all the people in my life prefer pushing the cart.  I hate pushing the cart.  I prefer to meander and have my hands free to touch all the things!  Plus, if I push the cart, my fitbit doesn't register my steps because my arm isn't swinging!

Grocery shopping done, a swing through McDonald's drive thru for a cone, put the groceries away and head to bed.  Glamorous stuff going on over in these parts!

The Weekend Where We Had No Air Conditioning

It has been an interesting weekend.  It was one without air conditioning, but it was also one in which we accomplished quite a bit of things around the house...mostly the massive sorting and storing of clothes.

 Since Eric cannot have pizza for a few more months, I took the boys to Me N Ed's for lunch one day last week.

 Our hygiene standards have plummeted this summer.  Bathing seems to be an optional activity for these two.  Sigh.

 Evan in his cool new Nike hat.  I keep asking him if he wants to fold the bill into a curve.  However, that is so not the style these days among the 11-year-old set!  #momhasnoclue   Evan has never been a hat wearing kind of kid, but he's had this hat on every time we leave the house.

 Oh delicious pizza.  Me N Ed's is still one of my favorite pizzas.  I think it's because it's the first real pizza parlor that came to Chowchilla.  The smell, taste, and texture all remind me of childhood!

We freaked out a little late Friday afternoon when we realized that the AC unit was not blowing cold air.  Eric called a place.  A potentially nasty situation actually turned into an impromptu date night.

The boys both had a soccer clinic to attend, but Eric couldn't take them out to the fields because we were waiting on the air conditioner guy to arrive.  I had zero desire to go to soccer.  We got the coach to come pick up the kids, the AC guy got there fast, fixed the problem for $59, and we were left to enjoy the evening!  I enjoyed some wine coolers, we got some BBQ, and we lounged in our retreat room with working air.  I love time alone with Eric!

 This thing needs to keep working for two more months!

 A random picture of Harry slinking under our bed.  He's been very naughty the past few days.  I took the three dogs to the groomer's on Thursday, and ever since then, Harry has been very "loving" towards Bandit.  He pretty much assaults him every chance he gets.  I guess Bandit smells really good after a bath and a haircut!

The problem is that Harry's advances are very much unwanted by Bandit.  The poor senior citizen dog has to run away from Harry constantly in order to avoid having his "parts" sniffed.  We were all screaming at Harry for the past few days to leave Bandit alone.  It doesn't even deter him.  Luckily, Harry has calmed down now that it's been four days past the groomer's visit.  Sheesh!

 I made myself a cup of coffee to go so I could drink it after weighing in at Weight Watchers.  Weight is up, but I expected that after ignoring my tracker for the past three weeks: soccer tournament, wedding, girl's weekend, summer in general.  I've been decent with my exercise, but horrible with my eating.  Really need to work on that.

 I love these Kind bars in the morning.

And then we realized on Saturday morning that the air conditioning was not working again!  Ugh!  What we thought was an easy and inexpensive fix turned into a large $800 fix that won't actually be fixed until Tuesday!  Yuck!

 Luckily, we have a whole house fan, so we can pull cool air into the house at night, but it still gets pretty warm during the day.  The boys have been camping in our room for two nights because it is the coolest place in the house with a small window cooler.  This all sucks, but I feel very blessed to know that through our hard work with following Dave Ramsey, we have the money to pay for a large bill such as this.

 Eric and I went shopping for some back to school clothes for me, and our last stop was to Michael's for a grown up coloring book.  However, once I walked in the store, I was giddy with excitement at seeing all the Fall decorations!  I squealed and ran around like a loon taking pictures of the orange!

Eric got just as excited as me!  #hecouldbarelycontainhisexcitment

 At first I grabbed that pumpkin, but swapped it out for a wire pumpkin.  I also bought glittery orange balls and glittery gold acorns.  I put them in a little cupcake display jar that I have on the tv.  I don't care that they are surrounded by red, white, and blue.  I want to start decorating for Fall right now!  But I'm going to hold off a few more weeks!

 Great look for him!

 I want it all!  Fall decorations make me so happy!  As much as I love Christmas, I think Fall decorations make me even happier.  It's the promise of cooler weather, pretty colors, and football.  Yes, I am romanticizing the season, because in reality, we are looking at short sleeves for the next two and a half months.  I need to live in a place with seasons!

 Want.  Neeeeeeed!

 This wire pumpkin is the one I bought instead of the oddly shaped one above.

Oh, and I did buy the coloring book!  Along with a few Fall delights!

Hopefully the AC will be fixed today or tomorrow.  Hopefully I won't die from heat.

Ramblings

After the great girls weekend that I enjoyed, the week was back to business as usual.  And not "summer" business of lazy sleeping in and no plans, but actual business of going to work, dealing with things that I have been ignoring, and soccer practice.  You know, real life stuff going on around here!

We had two days of registration at school, so I saw a lot of families and parents.  A very common question was, "How was your summer?"  And I never know how to answer that!  Because my answer is rather dreary, but I don't think people want to hear that.  It reminds me of the check out person at the grocery store.  Even if your purchases are nothing but cold medicine and chicken soup, they ask how your day is.  Sometimes I just want to point at the medicines rolling through their scanner and say, "How do you think it is?"  But I generally try to be pleasant and just say, "Fine."  I don't think anyone really wants to know HOW you are REALLY doing!

Back to my summer question.  I should just answer with 'fine' or 'great' and leave it at that.  But those are lies!  Lies!

Truth be told, I don't like summer.  Don't get me wrong...I enjoy days off and sleeping in, but as a rule, summer is just NOT my season.  I took a few days off after school ended, but I was also prepping for summer school.  I spent six weeks running a summer school program.  We went away for a weekend wedding only to get sick driving home.  I planned to take the next week off, which I did, but spent it sick.  I did have a fun girls' weekend.  And now I'm back in prep mode for school.  

How was summer?  Hot.  Busy.  Lack of routine which starts to wear on me.  

Sorry for being a downer today!

 This is how I felt on Tuesday night after getting home from two hours of soccer practice.  I sat in my retreat room with the fan on high and my blankie pulled up to my nose.  Earlier that day I helped with six hours of registration.  Wiped out!

 I watched Modern Family in the dark.

 I made sure my toes got fresh air.

 I felt like this!

 I did look chipper earlier that day.  Eric had a Council meeting at work, so I was at soccer practice by my lonesome.  At least Eddie kept me company and listened to my ramblings!

 Me on Wednesday morning at the gym looking fresh and ready to run.

 And the after photo looking a bit worn out!

I randomly bought this stuff for girls' weekend at Trader Joe's and ended up LOVING it.  I have since craved it with a passion.  Last night after working at registration for another five hours and dealing with a splitting headache, I drove myself over to Trader Joe's and got me some more of this delicious stuff.  I opened it in the car because I was so excited.

My eating yesterday was quite random.  I had Toaster Strudel for breakfast, I bought potato cheese soup for lunch, I had tortilla chips and salsa for a snack,and olive tepenade and chicken caesar salad for dinner.

My thoughts are all over the place in this post.  Please forgive the ramblings.  Here's to getting a few more projects done this weekend and going into the beginning of the year with a fresh perspective.