Back to School

Yesterday was the last day of our fifteen week summer vacation. Our last hurrah was spending about 48 hours in Maryland. The kids and I drove down on Friday. Traffic was worse than usual, but we had a safe trip. We got there a little before 5pm, and Drayton and his kids arrived a little before 9pm. Maurice moved to Philadelphia on Saturday morning so I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning helping him pack and carrying boxes and such out to the U-Haul. He and his friends left before lunch on Saturday. As of yesterday my brother now lives in the same state as I do. He is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania (usually just referred to as Penn). He expects to probably be there for at least five years. He's not actually much closer to us in Philadelphia than he is when he is here in Maryland, but Philadelphia is a LOT closer than Brazil or Texas - where he spent a total of five years between the two places. My kids were thrilled to inherit many of his stuffed animals. I took some pictures of all fifteen cousins together. In two of them they are spelling out the message "We love Uncle Maurice" and in the other they are holding pages that indicate their ages (ranging from Wesley who will turn 2 next month to Jenna who will turn 16 in November). There are three sets of kids who are the same age (two 8-year-olds, two 5-year-olds, and two 11-year-olds).

We drove home on Sunday evening because I needed to be on campus today for two meetings. Tomorrow my classes will begin. I am teaching two sections of a math methods course from 8:00-10:45 and an assessment class from 3:30-4:45. I am hoping to do many of my student teacher visits from 10:45-3:30. I accepted five more student teachers on Friday to help my department chair out because she had one day to find supervisors for twenty student teachers. Hopefully I didn't make the wrong decision. My ten student teachers are in ten different buildings in a total of three school districts. Normally I hope to homeschool my kids on M/W/F, and Paul will teach them on T/Th. I had meetings on campus this morning so I was gone from 8:00-12:45pm. Paul left for work after I got home. He went in yesterday while we were in Maryland in the hopes that then he wouldn't need to go in today, but he accidently forgot his work keys so the two hour drive was in vain yesterday. He got home from work at 7:45pm today. Homeschooling today took longer than usual. We usually finished by 11 or 12 last year. I had a feeling it would take a bit longer this year (as they get older it takes longer), and that was even more the case since it was Paul's first time. When I got home at 12:45 they hadn't done science, social studies, or Bible yet (plus Oliver hadn't written in his journal and the boys both needed to draw their self-portrait which is something I always have them do on the first day of school each year). I worked with them from 12:45-2:15. Then I got some schoolwork done, cooked dinner, cleaned the guinea pig cage, and went to the grocery store. I'm exhausted. I didn't sleep well at all in Maryland so that coupled with the 8 hours of driving means I'm wiped out. Nadia and I both have sore throats. I hope we're not coming down with anything.

 I will admit that it was hard for me to leave for work this morning. I had to fight back the tears as I'd rather be at home teaching my own children like I did from 2012-2017. It is special that they get this time with Daddy. Oliver objected to me leaving, and he kept telling me this evening that he wanted Daddy to go to work tomorrow and me to stay home. Sorry, buddy but that won't happen until Wednesday. Nadia didn't want to go over the mistakes she made in math today with Paul so I did that with her after putting Oliver to bed. My department chair asked me today if I would teach an online class during the winter session (a short session in between the fall and spring semesters). YES! I would much rather teach online because I can do that from home. I hope and pray that we all have a great school year this year! I'll post the pictures of what they said they wanted to be later this week, but I will tell you that Nadia and Ian both said missionary (which upset Nadia as she wanted Ian to say something different than she did). The previous three years Ian said work at the Lego company (K,1st) and inventor (2nd). Oliver said he wanted to be a soldier in the army. Is that why he cut his hair so short? Ha ha! Ian was actually very specific and said he wanted to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea. Time will tell what each of them end up doing when they grow up. Whatever they end up doing, I hope they are in a growing relationship with the Lord. Speaking of which, Oliver accepted Christ as his personal Savior today which was a wonderful answer to prayer! Next August he'll have two birthdays in the same month.