I am so not on the ball these days. As much as I would love to be able to put a blog post up as soon as things happen around here, there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do! Yesterday was the momentous first day of school and I really wanted to blog about it because overall it was a success! Today? Not so much. If I would have posted last night, here is what I would have said:
The first day has come and gone and overall it was a success! The kids were a combination of excited and nervous for their big day, although I think it was mostly the excitement that was winning out. We all woke up SUPER early -- it was still dark outside, as the kids kept mentioning -- and were outside and waiting for the bus a good 20 minutes before we needed to be. Hahahaha. This left us with plenty of time to take pictures, although -- as always -- there's hardly a good group shot in the bunch.
"Bright and Vibrant" girl, front and center.
Sophie and Grace -- Too cool for school.
{Grace wanted a shot of her giving Alex a goodbye hug.}
Ethan -- 5th Grade
Grace -- 3rd Grade
Sophie -- 1st Grade
Jane -- Preschool {although it doesn't start for another couple of weeks.}
Just chillin' on the corner. As we were walking to the bus stop, Grace informed me that she was "Bright and Vibrant" girl with her outfit. She followed that comment right up with "what does vibrant mean?" Hahaha. When I asked her where she heard it, she said it was from a Tide commercial.
I love that I caught a shot of all three squished on the same seat as the bus was driving away. Hahahaha.
The night before the big day, we decided to have a celebratory Back To School Feast and the kids have decided we should make it a tradition. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, {homemade ketchup}, watermelon, corn and chips. For next year's celebration we all agreed we should add lemonade to the mix. After putting Alex and Jane to bed, we had a little family meeting with the older kids to talk about the new school year and help dispel any worries or fears. We went through some best-case and worst-case-scenarios of the day for each kid and I think it helped certain first born children to stop worrying about what might go wrong. At the end of the meeting Scott gave each of the kids a father's blessing and then they all went scurrying off to bed as if it were Christmas Eve.
Look at that bottle of ketchup! Everyone agreed it tasted even more delicious than the store-bought. And it was SUPER easy to make. {Please note that I do not typically make our ketchup. In fact, this was the first time I've ever done it. But since you can't have hamburgers and hot dogs without it, and I totally forgot to add it to the list when Scott went to the store, I decided it was time to finally go ahead and try out that ketchup recipe that I had pinned months and months ago. Final verdict? A lot easier than you would think, and very, very tasty!}
And now we come to our first failing of the day. With the older kids at school all day, and the 2 little ones conked out for a nap all afternoon, I decided to go ahead and paint Grace's bedroom to surprise her when she came home from school. Well, the surprise was all on me because I ended up painting the ENTIRE bedroom before figuring out that the can of paint I was using was NOT the can for her room. Doh! Talk about an epic fail. Hahaha. Seriously, though, I couldn't have been more clueless. Especially since the entire time I was painting I kept think that it looked a whole lot darker than the sample patches on the wall. The funny thing was that the wet paint looked pretty close to the sample, but once it started to dry, the colored deepened and started to glow and took on a life of its own. By the time I was finished it was electric! Hahaha. It was literally casting a blue-ish glare out into the hallway and along the wall. It's actually not a terrible color in and of itself, but something about the way the light hits this room made it just a little too bright. And it wasn't the color Grace picked out.
Color -- "Rossland" from ACE Hardware paint brand.
Failing number 2 came at bedtime when Grace refused to move her mattress back in the room to sleep because the paint was "too bright" and was "hurting her eyes." The end result was that she slept in the hallway where it took her a lot longer to fall asleep and the result of THAT hit us full force in the morning.
Her bedtime perch.
So that was Day 1. Not too shabby -- a few misses, but mostly hits as the kids really did seem to enjoy school. Day 2 was a slightly different story. I let everyone sleep in an extra half hour this morning, seeing as to how we didn't need to be up and at 'em quite so early, and Ethan and Sophie managed to pull things together just fine. Grace on the other hand had a hard time waking up and then started complaining about feeling sick, which escalated to her saying she felt like she was going to throw up, and ended with her laying on the couch under a blanket and refusing to go to school and claiming that she hates it. All after eating two bowls of oatmeal for breakfast. Sigh. Poor Grace. And poor me. In the end, Ethan and Sophie caught the bus and I managed to FINALLY convince Grace to go to school about an hour and a half later. And by convince I mean threaten to ground her from electronics for the rest of the week and give her an earlier bedtime as well.
Once I dropped her off, I did my grocery shopping for the week and got home just in time to feed the little ones lunch and put Alex down for his nap. Once I accomplished that I tackled Grace's room once more. There was no way I was going to deal with Grace sleeping in the hallway for another night! Hahaha. Since all the prep work was already done, it was pretty quick going for the painting, and I have to say that I should probably revise my previous review of Sherwin Williams "Emerald" line of paint. Perhaps the gallons I used for Sophie and Jane's room were an anomaly, because both times I painted Grace's room, the paint covered with just one coat and was relatively easy to work with. The smell wasn't as bad as it was with the pink room and I didn't have any issues with the cutting in or rolling. In fact, the only negatives I can give for this particular paint now is that it's pretty expensive if you don't buy it on sale and it's REALLY hard to wash off if you happen to get it on your skin.
Grace's Room Take 2 -- Benjamin Moore color "Bird's Egg" mixed up in Sherwin Williams "Emerald" line of paint in a Matte sheen.
Terrible lighting, but her bed is finally put together and in place and everything is slowly coming together!
Alternate view of her room. I have to say that I kind of love her 15 dollar headboard/footboard that I found at a St. Vincent de Paul's Thrift Store. It's totally vintage. The company is Hard Rock Maple something or other and is probably from the 50's or 60's. I googled it. You know, in case I ever want to go on Antiques Roadshow. Hahaha.
Grace was so excited to see her room the proper color when she came home from school today that she kept oohing and aaaahing all over the place and then, as she was lounging on her bed at bedtime tonight, I heard her say something along the lines of "I'm falling in love with this color!" In between those moments of sweetness, however, was one swift trip to crazy town that culminated with her calling 911 because I was "being so mean to her." Because telling her she was grounded from electronics and had early bedtime for the fit she was throwing over wanting to watch TV was SOOOOOO mean. Well, as those of you may know, whenever 911 is called, a cop car is dispatched right away even if you try to assure them that the call was a false alarm. So that was fun. Scott was with Ethan at soccer practice when all of this mayhem was happening, so lucky me got to field questions from a police officer while trying to get Sophie to keep an eye on Alex and Jane in the bathroom {where I had just started to bathe them so they would be ready for bed} and make Grace come downstairs and face the music. Grace refused to budge from the cardboard box she was sitting in upstairs and the police officer left after I assured him we would handle her on our own. Epic, epic fail.
I think Grace was a little more freaked out than she was letting on, but still. We need to keep a child psychologist on retainer these days. I am definitely feeling like we need some outside help in teaching our kids some acceptable coping strategies for anger, stress, and frustration. I guess I'll just add that to my list of things I need to get on top of. Hahaha. Haha. Ha?
Thankfully, once the evening died down, all of the kids went to bed without too much trouble and fell asleep almost right away. I'm hoping that a good night's sleep will help tomorrow go a little more smoothly than today did. After all, it's Jane's birthday and we want to be able to celebrate her day!
