First Day of the New School Year

High school soccer began yesterday and Andy is having two-a-day practices for the next 2 weeks. He is completely exhausted at the end of the day from both the work and the heat. I am proud of him for doing this as Josh went this morning with him (just to get some conditioning in) and is sound asleep right now while Andy is back at practice for the second part of his day. Andy's spirits seem to be lifted now that his days are filled with soccer and school (even though it has only been a couple of days). It makes me really happy to see him doing better. (***I began this post yesterday, and boy did things change by the time I picked Andy up last night. He was beat...and falling apart both physically and emotionally. The heat, the hard work, the not knowing anyone, the tiredness all seemed to cave in on him and he had a partial melt down. The coach ended up asking him where "Little Ohio" was (that is what Josh is called by the team/coaches) - Andy is 'Ohio' to them - and the invitation to practice with the high school team beyond just the morning conditioning session was opened up to Josh. So, this morning Josh began his first two-a-days after having only attended the morning conditioning session yesterday. I think that this is helpful to Andy and his spirits seemed a bit better again after this morning's practice. The boys have been getting up at 6 am to get to practice and are then again practicing at 6 pm in the evening until 8:00+. The heat is hard to navigate through as we are dealing with high 90's/low 100's for temps. Andy has been cramping up big time, and we have found some remedies today that seem to help with that. 5 days a week from now until the end of July he will be at it - although after next week it will just be once a day. Andy though - and now Josh - is a trooper and will make through these tough days and grow and learn about himself and his ability to make it through hard times. As his mother, I just want to coddle him and make life easier for him. I hate to see him in any kind of pain, BUT this is exactly why Andy is the wonderful person he is. Adversity has made him into the exceptional young man he is. Growing pains are good. They are good for us all. It is no fun watching him (and now Josh) struggle through hardship, but I cannot be there forever for him. He has to learn to make it through the tough stuff that life will throw at him on his own. At the end of these two-a-days he will be so proud of himself. I cannot wait till end, so I can celebrate with him.

I bought the kids shaving cream to have a shaving cream fight with the night before school started. The kids had a blast as you can see.

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Bob getting in on the fun.

School started Monday for us and went off without a hitch. It is taking a lot of hours out of my day to get through everything with everyone, but I have been combating that by getting up before everyone to prep for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. This has saved me a lot of time during my day and has allowed me to feel that I am maximizing my time.

Josh is hating the fact that I am starting right now, but as Andy says, "We aren't doing anything this summer anyway, so we might as well do school work.". Smart kid. I think Josh will like it much better once he sees that 3 weeks on and 1 week off all year long are a much better gig than a whole summer off and then week after week of schoolwork. Maybe not though...

What our school rooms looks like:

Science experiment kits!

Just some of our school books for this year.

Sarah made me a bouquet of flowers for the school room.

Flowers for my kitchen table.

Window decorating...

I thought it would help Sarah to learn her spelling if she could do hands on projects. I bought a set of alphabet cookie cutters and several HUGE containers of play dough with which she can cut out the shapes of her spelling words. This is on of many hands on activities I am incorporating this year for her.