It's That Time of Year.... Give Me Strength!

Well, it's that glorious time of year again when parents prepare themselves for the wrath excitement of back to school. There are many preemptive steps that must be taken to prepare for such a glorious event.

The boys and I did the whole dreaded back to school clothes shopping thing a few weeks ago. I do believe God gave me boys because they hate shopping equally as much as I do. We spent a sum total of 2 hours out and about; 45 minutes of efficient, this shirt doesn't suck selection method, get in/get out shopping and an hour and 15 minutes eating lunch.

I decided to pick up school supplies on my own. I hit the Dollar Tree on my lunch hour one day and one would think I actually liked shopping as I believe I spent over $60. Yes, 60 one dollar items.... plus tax. The office in our house is now littered with notebooks of all sizes, college ruled and wide ruled paper, (because I can never remember which one they're supposed to have), blue pens, black pens, highlighters, erasers, mechanical pencils, glue sticks and a partridge in a pear tree. And they probably won't need most of it. But it was all a dollar! I'd be LOSING MONEY if I didn't buy out the school supply section.

Like an idiot, I found myself at Walmart one afternoon pondering lunch box choices for my new middle schooler. I assume Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is out because it's too "babyish"? Does it count as "middle-school-cool" if Megan Fox is in the movie? However, she wasn't on the actual lunch box, which knowing what I know about middle school boys, that's probably best. The decision was completely stressing me out, so I decided to play the safe card and go with a basic solid color.

Boring.

Just last night, I made the most popular annoucement that we (aka "they") will be resuming normal school bed time hours starting this week to prepare their bodies for the massive shock of seeing the world before 11am. The annoucement was followed by 5 enormous SIGHs that nearly blew me over from a standing position. I'm sure there was an eye roll in there too, but I was too busy celebrating internally how I'd finally get the TV at 9pm.

While it has been AWESOME not having to wake super grouchy kids in the morning and deal with the typical morning chaos, I will be glad when they are no longer tearing up the house and being sucked in by the Xbox cult back in a structured learning environment.

Last year I wrote this blog which was my "Back to School Letter" to my kids' teachers. I pondered writing one this year, but it really didn't vary much. Sadly. So I shall just simply send each teacher a Post It with "Sorry" on it. They can interpret it however they desire.

And lastly, my least favorite "let's get the show on the road" task is figuring out logistics of who needs to be where when... and how. It helps to have a driver now that can take everyone in the mornings. But the afternoons are a different story. I will, seriously, just need to take this daunting task a day at a time. And it's certain, at least once this year, one of them will accidentally get left at school or on a field somewhere. In a storm.

Overall, I think we are gearing up for what will be the biggest cluster *$&# best year ever!

T-minus one week until the fun begins! Happy Back to School, kids! Mama's hittin' the bar.