Our First Day Of School

i briefed the kids on sunday night that monday was going to be the first day of school and that we were going to be picking up a new good habit (don't you just love it when you can mandate something?). their new habit was going to be arriving for breakfast...on time...fully dressed and ready for the day. and i am pleased as punch to report that they received a three out of three score for that one. everybody showed up at the breakfast table in something that they could actually wear for the rest of the day. i on the other hand arrived in my pajama shorts because i forgot that i needed to wash my jeans before i could wear them. yep, just call me the rule breaker. then after breakfast my leading man left for a fascinating day of graphic designing and we began our lessons. this is where new good habit number two came into play for my oldest dear daughter who is eight. my son is of kindergarten age now so this is the first year that i am officially schooling two kids instead of one. therefore, she was given an assignment list and an explanation of each and sent off to do some work on her own while i worked with the little guy. you may be thinking, "so what, you asked an eight year old to do some school work independently, whoopity doo." you would have to know my "hasn't done anything completely by herself, asks about every little detail of every little thing since the day she was born daughter" to understand why this was such a nail biter. i want you all to know that she passed with flying colors. she sat quietly and finished all of her work. i made sure to tell her how proud i am of her. i really, really was. as i said, while she did this i began to work with my son for the first time. he devoured everything we did and everything that we talked about. he informed me after we were through that he didn't think we were actually done and that we should do each of the subjects again...just in case.

then i finished up lessons with my oldest, my little boy played and my youngest wreaked havoc.i guess that must be her little "tag" on the top there. hopefully i won't start seeing it spray painted on the wall. this is just phase one of the problems she caused yesterday. but we won't go into all of that...because i doubt that you have all day.

after that (on a tip from a good friend) we went to pick raspberries.

luckily, my littlest one slept soundly in the stroller for most of this but about half an hour before we left she woke up and picked some blackberries for me. i'm sorry to say that i didn't get a picture of her elbow deep in smashed blackberry juice. that was lovely to clean up...just lovely let me tell you. not to mention the blackberry that somehow found it's way into my sandal and met an untimely demise...which dyed my toes purple.

then, for dinner we had our annual back to school dinner, complete with the "back to school bird" (chicken), "abc's and cheese" (mac n' cheese w/ abc noodles) and a few other things. we also had cake to celebrate Our Lady's birthday. this was not any ordinary cake either. it was thundercake. no, it wasn't storming, but frankly, this is about the eightieth time we have checked out this book from the library and i thought it was high time we finally made the cake. let me also say that this is most definitely the most embarrassing cake i have ever made. i'm somewhat of a cake snob i guess as i usually spend hours, if not an entire day, on one cake. i grew up helping my mom decorate wedding cakes and such so i have had years to develop my overperfectionism. healthy? no. but true. so it's quite an uncomfortable thing for me to show you this...please don't scream and call betty crocker on me. you see, we had some late afternoon commitments yesterday which kept me from getting the chicken in the oven until 4:30 or 5:00 (not to mention the crazy bag of chicken parts still frozen in the middle of the chicken after a whole day a thawing...the story of my life). then, we were out of potatoes so those had to be purchase and more etc's than you can shake a stick at. so, i finished up the cake shortly before we ate dinner and popped it in the oven. the cake was still warm awhile after dinner and it was getting close to bedtime so i bit the bullet and frosted it warm. well yes, i know how stupid this is but when you promise a bunch of kids cake...you best deliver unless you want a full scale war raging. so, the large butcher knife in the middle was not because i was angry or was reenacting a scene from psycho. it was there to keep the top layer from sliding right off onto the floor. it didn't work very well by the way. so there you have our first day of school in a rather large nutshell. i'd say it's a filbert.