If you are a homeschooler reading other homeschool mom's blogs, you will likely read about the fantastic first days, with kids excited about school, new books to be read, new crayon boxes (who doesn't like a new box of crayons?).
You are not going to find that kind of post here!
Our first day started out horribly.
- I woke up at 1:40 am thinking it was time to get up. I laid there for an about 30 minutes worrying about our first day. I almost got up, but thankfully I just kept tossing and turning until I fell asleept.
-I didn't wake up at 6 am like I wanted; I will get up at 6 when Dave leaves to go running. I forgot he doesn't run on Mondays. Oops. I got up at 7:12 instead.
-The kids wouldn't wake up. I gathered up all my sweetness to wake them at 7:50, but it didn't happen. So much for starting school at 8:00 am!
-When they did open their eyes, their bodies got out of bed but only with the greatest of reluctance. Yes, school this year started with tears. Ben said school is too hard. Luke didn't want to do the school he's been excited about because Ben didn't want to do school. You know -- monkey see, monkey do syndrome.
-When school did finally start at no earlier than 9:00 am, there was more gnashing of teeth (read: tears).
-Finally, frustrated but amazingly patient (it was a God thing, and only attributable to Him. I'm glad I did set aside a few minutes to do a devotional before I tried to wake the boys), I got the boys into the school room, sitting in their desks and re-started school. I welcomed the boys to our school, showed Luke how to write his name on his math pages, did our calendar time..... These were all the things I wanted to do to start our day, but got side tracked by all the grumpiness. In the end, this snapped everyone out of their funk, and the rest of the day went well.