Countdown

Although the local schools are, horrific as it seems to me, starting today, we have the good sense not to have our first official day of school during the summer. Scripture may be silent on the subject, but you can't convince me that there isn't something sinful---if not downright criminal---about making children go back to school before Labor Day.

Even September 7 seems early to me, but that's our target date.

Last week, we had the cousins visiting, and we enjoyed beach and martial arts adventures with them, along with just hanging out and playing. This week is a quasi-vacation. My husband and I had all sorts of wonderful plans of 20th Anniversary getaways...but said schemes will have to wait for later anniversaries. It seems that one of the downfalls of having more than the socially acceptable number of children is that relatives aren't exactly beating a path to our door in order to have the glorious privilege of running our household for a few days while we go off and frolic. Even though the older kids are perfectly capable of doing most of the work, the task of watching SO MANY CHILDREN is enough to make normally brave relatives tremble and make comments about how they would feel as if they were in a prison. Or was it an insane asylum?

Perhaps it's because our relatives fear, not so much the children, but that our home and property has become a scene out of that famous Hitchcock horror film, "The Birds".

Somehow the cousins and their mother managed to brave an entire week with us, and with the birds, and seem to have survived with most of their health and sanity intact.

In the meantime, we're going to hang around close to home, watch the kids and birds ourselves, and reflect that since we've never really had an anniversary sans kids (our oldest was born 8 days before our first anniversary) why should we start now?

Next Monday, I'll begin the daunting task of exerting all sorts of self-discipline and---gasp!---sticking to a dreaded SCHEDULE! I've worked out said schedule with much thought, reflection, self-study, and gritted teeth. So, a week from now I'll give it a practice run. The theory behind that is that, when September 7 rolls around, the schedule/routine will be old hat...one week old, to be exact. Of course, in the dry run week, I won't actually be doing school, I'll just be using that time for school prep and various household projects. We'll see how it goes.