Well, most of the snow had melted and we managed to get back into our daily school routine.  After 5 weeks, three and one half days off from school, they are finally back.  It took a few days to get the morning routine down which almost seemed like a mourning routine, as they were mourning the end of their track out and no longer able to sleep in.

We are in year round school which, I reckon (and you can only reckon in the south), is a pretty foreign concept for most.  We go to school 9 weeks and then have 3 weeks off.  However, at the Christmas break, we have 5 weeks and 6 weekends off with an added 1.5 snow days tacked on this year.  It’s our first go round on this track (there are 4 different year round tracks).  We were warned that this break was the hard one because it is so long and it is so cold.  It’s like Summer break in the Winter, when it’s cold and you can’t go outside all day to play for fear of frost bite.

Everyone has the same two week break for the holidays but we have an extra 3 weeks after that before we head back to school.  Interestingly, we were outside in shorts and t-shirts on Christmas day this year.  (Sorry kids, no white Christmas.)  After Christmas we loaded in the car and took a long family trip to the mountains, then Florida.  I thought I was doing a great job occupying our time and not letting the kids sit around and watch TV all day.  We returned home, after an exhausting, long car ride, and I realized we still had 3 weeks left on this track out.  THREE WEEKS!

Three weeks may not sound like a lot but when it’s either really cold outside or raining most of those three weeks, they drag on like a bad community production of Les Mis.  I mean bad like 90% of all singing was off key and out of time.  (A shout out to my niece for sitting through the whole play with me.)  Anyway, those three weeks seemed to last forever.  Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my kids and do enjoy having them home.  I was just having a lot of Mom guilt from running out of things for them to do.  They started watching more TV and having lots more iPad screen time.

The house looked like a whirling dervish came through and I’m pretty sure I heard the dog fur piling up on the kitchen floor bark or at least whimper once or twice.  The wheels in my head started turning and I thought, cleaning!  What a wonderful idea!  I can ask them to (read: make them) help me clean.  We started with the stairs and the kitchen floor, the two biggest collectors of fur .  My son took care of the stairs while my daughter “de-furred” the kitchen floor.  Next we moved onto their rooms.  I hadn’t cleaned out their drawers since last winter so they went through each of their drawers and took out all the clothes that were too small for them.  It was working!  Less screen time, more productive kids.  Unfortunately, the cleaning only occupied about 3 hours of the 504 hours (3 weeks) we had remaining.  We managed to fill those hours with a few meet ups with friends, a visit to my Mom’s house, a few days of snow…and a lot more screen time.  Ugh!

Last week the kids finally went back to school and we started the school morning routine.  The first day wasn’t so bad because they were on a 3 hour delay.  We didn’t have to be at the bus stop until 11:30am.  Granted a normal day we don’t have to be at the bus stop until 8:30am but trying to get them out of bed on school mornings is like trying to wake a hibernating bear.  My kiddos can sleep in like champs.  My daughter has a special way of getting so wrapped up in her blankets that I can’t even find her head in the mornings.

Finally, this week began the first full week of school in 6 weeks!  It was a long haul but they are finally back in the morning routine (sort of).  Now we’ve gotta get back in the afternoon routine…a lot less TV in the afternoon…oh and homework…did I mention homework?