I really should plan ahead more for the first day of school, but I let it get to the weekend before school starts before I’m willing to get myself in gear.  Every year!  Never fails!  So, on Friday, I finally decided that we needed to put a plan in action!

Every year, I feel the need to get life as much in order before school starts as possible!  Now, I’ve never actually achieved the feeling of complete order, but I try.  When Caleb started Kindergarten, the twins were 6 months old.  So that year, my standards were very low!  He had clothes, a lunch, a few pictures were taken, and he was on time which equaled a success for me!  But every year, I up my game plan of getting this place in order!

Here’s what we accomplished this weekend:

1. On Friday night, the kids cleaned their rooms.  Already, I felt better!  We were getting somewhere!
2. Also on Friday night, I did a ton of laundry.  The pile of clothes that seems to constantly live on my bedroom floor was gone, clothes were all put up and I was pretty proud of myself!
3. At some point on Friday, I started reading my book club book that had to be finished for my book club meeting on Monday night.  And let me tell you!  Book club is some serious business!  We are hardcore!  We expect each other to finish the book in time for the meeting, and if you don’t you will be given a hard time!  But then also given grace and peace! 🙂  But still, you finish the book!!  So, I read a whole book in 2 days – Friday and Saturday!  BOOM!  Take that, book!
4. On Saturday afternoon, I took Caleb school shopping.  Yet another thing I should think about and do weeks ahead of time and never do!  But we had a successful trip, and he has clothes to wear for yet another year!  And he was a happy shopping buddy!
5. Today we spent a TON of time organizing Caleb’s room.  His room had gotten completely out of hand and was needing quite a bit of special quality time to get it all back to where we could at least see the floor!  It was horrible!!!  So, Chris worked with him for a while on it while I did more laundry.  Then later, I joined in on the fun.  It’s in decent shape now.  We just have bags of clothes that we need to throw up in the attic.
6. And as mentioned in #5, I did more laundry today.  Not just some…a bunch!  Where does this stuff come from?!! 🙂
7. I decided this afternoon that Sadie and Luke needed a few clothes items, so I headed out to get some stuff at Carters.  I love Carters!  But I’m sad that my kids are finally to the point where they are aging out of the sizes of clothes there.  I’m going to have to find a new favorite place to get stuff for them.  I feel like I got them pretty settled on a few outfits for school, etc., and then I headed to…
8. Wash the van!  I’m pretty sure we hadn’t cleaned out the van all summer.  It was nasty!  Trash and dirt everywhere!  This week is my turn for carpool, and I was not going to let someone else’s kid in my car in the condition it was in!  Talk about embarrassing!  I take it to a place where you go through the car wash, and then you have to (get to?) vacuum your car out yourself.  I seem to always park my van full of trash next to a fancy car where the guy is lovingly wiping, cleaning and oiling every inch of the car!  I think to myself, really?!  You have time for that?!!  I’m doing good to get the dirt and Cheerios out of the seats as quick as I can when I go.
9. Chris said he wanted to go to the grocery store, and I remembered that I had a link of cool lunch stuff that I wanted to talk to Caleb about to see if he would go for changing up lunches this year to include different stuff and more healthy options.  So, I sat the boy down to have the lunch talk.  One look at the website, and he was like, NOPE!  He just wants Lunchables and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again this year.  I asked if we could at least throw some grapes in there, and was told no again.  The kid just wants junk.  What am I going to do with him?!
10. And last on the list for tonight was to eat leftovers!  Time to clean out the frig!  Caleb pulled out leftover pizza, the twins wanted soup, I was about to pull out food for me when my mom called asking if Chris and I wanted to go on a date.  So I quickly put my food back in the frig!

Of course, there were things on my list that didn’t get done.  I tend to make unreasonable to-do lists.  But I feel better about the start of this school year than I have any others so far, and that’s a pretty good feeling.

The two bonus items of the night were going on a quick impromptu dinner date (thanks mom and dad!) and praying with the kids before bed.  I’ll be honest, I don’t do this enough!  When it’s the kids’ bed time, I’m normally ready to do whatever it takes to get them in bed and settled as quick as possible!  But it’s the beginning of the school year!  Time to start and renew things around here.  To get a little more organized and have a little more routine and structure up in here!  Time to dream about what lies ahead for the Carroll family over the next year!

And I’m excited!

What all did your family do to get ready for school?