Ok... updating from my last post on what I had left to do before school started (today...):

• Finish putting away folded laundry and get the dirty laundry caught up. (yeah, but is that EVER really done?? No...)
• Designate a notebook for school records such as school-days and books used.  (kind of... I have a master binder as of right now that I think I am using for records and such.)
• buy (another) new computer mouse
• buy new printer ink
• make up chore charts for the kiddos
• make myself a daily schedule limiting my computer time  (limiting computer time as best as I can... but I took a home job entering stuff for a sporting good website about 3 hours a day.)
• sort through 10" tall pile of old mail and get rid of stuff we don't need!
• make meal menus and master grocery lists- 2 weeks worth to rotate through the year.  (yeah... like I thought THAT would get done. I have tried two new recipes on my kids that were well received. We wont talk about how many were ill received.)
• purchase some sort of timeline and characters (trying to find used Konos set)  (I am thinking I will just create them as we go until I can afford the one Konos has. Not having any luck with a used wall chart!)

Paul and I had a few VERY long talks about houses and such and we have decided that we will buy a MUCH less expensive house so that we can REALLY cut our costs (thanks very much Dave Ramsey... grr. LOL) and be debt free in less than a year (hopefully including our cars!!) and just have our mortgage to pay and regular living expenses! That would be such a huge gigantic relief for us, I think it is really do-able for us to find a nice small cheap house that we can live comfortably in for a few years with that goal in mind.

Our first day of school! Well, we are slowly easing back into school. We did math - - learning the RightStart math method and it seems to be slowly clicking! My kids LOVED the card game (matching - make 10's) and I think if we can end each day's lesson with a game, life will be much easier math-wise!! We also had a VERY long talk about salvation today. 3 of my 4 kids prayed to accept Christ in the past few years, but I have had doubts about my oldest if he really understands what that meant. He is 11 now and keeps saying he wants to get baptized, but can't explain what it means. So we had a GREAT conversation this morning about salvation, the end times, substitutionary sacrifice, and sin. I think it was a good start to the school year. We talked a lot about our expectations for this year and our attitudes towards learning. I think "talking" is a good description of what we did most today!!

Here's to day TWO!