Scrunchy Face

 

This isn't as scrunchy as it gets but it's all I could capture.  This face is Brie's way of engaging you in conversation and ensuring that you take her seriously.  It's big girl conversation baby-cause as much as she LOVES being our littlest, she needs to know she is one of the big girls too!

A Terrible, No-Good School Start

Monday-I was happy it was a holiday as we had gone to MBC from Friday night to Sunday.  It was a house cleaning, get ready for the school year day!

Tuesday-I started out very eager and armed with school schedules and meal plans. I ended up wondering (but knowing that God is able) how I could face the next day of school. It had been a terrible no good start to school. We ended up at Nana's who had a birthday present for Ksena and a listening ear for the home school Mama.

Wednesday-we skipped school! Seriously, the second day of school and we skipped! I hesitated doing this and wanted to stick to our schedule but had two good reasons to allow the day to slip and use it for what was necessary. It was Ksena's birthday and she thought that having a day off school would be fun and we had an appointment in London with a urologist at 11:15.   

An appointment time of 11:15 is smack dab in the middle of a day and really messes up routine. We also had a beautiful birthday dress to exchange while we were in London for a different size. So the day was spent dealing with a doctor appointment and then celebrating with a lunch at the mall for the birthday girl before finding the right size dress at The Bay.

I tried a couple of dresses on myself, for my sister Amy's upcoming wedding.  This made me once again realize the wisdom in not shopping with four little people in toe the change room. On our way home we kept the birthday treats coming at the Tim Horton's drive through. When we arrived home it was 2:00 and time to start prepping Ksena's birthday supper.

By the end of the day, I realized that our summer rhythm still needs to work it’s way out of our system and its ok to ease into the new school year. I had texted a friend from our gymnastics class to see how her school year was going and she said that they were taking it slow. It dawned on me that in my eagerness to have an organized year, I had dumped us right into hard work and regimented schedules. That is like dumping cold water on a sleeping person!

Thursday-the 'it's ok to ease into a new school year' voice started becoming clearer. The girls woke up and pulled books off the shelf without their mother insisting that we must follow the schedule and eat breakfast and do chores first. We finished up our core subjects in hopes of making it to Park Day (which is still part of the summer rhythm).

Dan had also asked me to bring some papers to the bank and I had some mail I had to send out, so I had put the mail, bank papers and cell phone on the mat by the front door.   I sent the kids to the van as I was putting on make-up to compensate for my bed head (which could not be fixed without a shower, blow dry and straightening) when Mia informed me that the dog had eaten through the envelope that had to go to the bank and I heard Esmé screaming because she fell out of the van trying to get in. We dealt with those disasters as well as situated the girls in the back seat of the van along with a desk I had bought from Wal-Mart the evening before with plans to return it.

We were on our way when Sen started shriek-crying  “WE, OWE OWE!!!” and the Mom responded with "USE words! I am driving and can't look at what is happening! etc etc"

The box with the desk in it had slid onto her leg-ouch. We arrived at Super Store, where we do our banking at PC Financial. I marched in with my band of children and promptly handed the papers to the bank man. He asked me what the phone number on our account is, at which point my blood pressure started to rise.  I asked the bank man if my bank card would suffice as I frantically texted Dan to ask him which number to give the bank man. You see we have moved and changed our home number twice and we each have cell numbers. How could I know which number we have listed on our account? It seems that whenever I have a simple errand to run for my husband, it gets complicated.  

My eyes darted around to ensure that all four children were by my side (which they weren't). I ordered the two littlest children back to my side The bank card worked and we continued on to Park Day-late as usual but happy to be there. I called Dan on the way to the park and told him that Ez had fallen out of the van, the dog had eaten through the bank envelope, the desk had fallen on Sen, and the bank needed a PHONE NUMBER!  The humor of it hit me, through the blinding stress of mundane frustrations, as I rattled off all the disasters to my Dan.

Friday-we are in one piece, the house is clean (Dan said it had a clean 'aura' last night. lol), the core subjects are finished and the weekend is ready to take over with Sunday school teaching beginning and birthday coffee to prep for.

I just took a deep breath of knowing that God loves us in all of these busy and sin filled days-He wipes us clean of the ugliness of shouting, fighting, being easily frustrated etc. His grace is our garment and with that I am armed- not for the school year but for each step of everyday.  The whole of the school year is still hard to see past and I will need His grace to help me remember to take one step at a time.

Thanks for reading through this school week! I've SO enjoyed all the back to school excitement on Facebook!