I’m pretty sure I am not the only mom on the planet that has a calendar secretly stored somewhere that has a cute little countdown of when school starts.  I can remember the many times my mom told me they wished we had year-round school.  Now, as a parent, I’m silently begging teachers to work 365/24/7.  Maybe I’ll give you off the weekends.  Or, maybe we can just agree on Sundays off?

We’ve actually had a pretty decent summer with the kids.  We didn’t do anything vacation-wise this year.  For some reason, that all escaped us as all we did was work.  The kids did do a lot (thank you for Jesus lovin’ adults!) of VBS.  I like VBS because it exposes our kids to lots of other kids they may only get to know for a week and forces them to think on their own two feet about meeting people and different adults and how to interpret those situations.  I also like VBS because our kids get a healthy dose of fun Spirit-filled activities.

They did have a lot of fun over the summer.  I think they particularly loved coming to my work the most.  We don’t get to do this often because I am in an open environment and kids with that much energy in an open environment = chaos.  Little E starts Pre-K this year and SJ starts 2nd grade.  I can’t believe how fast it’s moving!

She’s turned into like a mini-human overnight.  Talking, walking, eating, and sassin’.  Y’all, she’s sassy.  She’s my child, I know.  But incase there was ever any doubt, she can open her mouth and her mama falls out.

One of my other favorite things is this jacket.  One of our dear teachers, Mrs. Jensen does beautiful embroidery work on our jackets. Because everyone’s jacket looks the same, one of the things we do is embroider the kids names on their jackets.  In an effort to help promote this service for her, I asked her to do one of my jackets with my name.  I absolutely L-O-V-E this!  Mrs. Urban.  I mean, seriously.  Do you have any idea how much I love this name?  My husband is the greatest, too.  For so long, I wanted to keep my maiden name or hyphenate, but I am pretty doggone happy that I am known as Mrs. Urban.  And my heart soars when I hear it used!

I’ve been looking at getting some different lunch box options for the kids this year, too.  Mostly for little E because she’s an uber picky eater.  I figure if I can make it fun – and have fun shapes, she may eat it, right?  I looked at this bento box option.  Seriously, both of these have great prices, too.

Then, I looked at these little food cutter options.  I think I could easily get her to eat little meat and cheese shapes if they were fun!  And that’s a pretty good investment, too.  Have any of you had any experience with these?

I mean, I would eat food if it came in cute shapes!  The one thing I could not get over was the ‘waste’ of the food.  Once you make all those stars and hearts and flowers from a square, what do you do with the rest.  Then, I realized, I could have it for my food.  I mean, I like flowers, but I could eat ‘food remains’ of a shape.  It’s all still edible, right?

School shopping is pretty much done, too.  I’ve got to return a few things tomorrow and get hair cut, but otherwise, we’re good to go!  This weekend, we will spend getting ready for school and getting things organized.  I want to focus on the kids having a fun place to do homework this year (especially as little SJ gets ready for more homework this year).

On a more serious note, we will be starting SJ without any meds this year.  ADHD is tough business and I know he can struggle with reading without meds, but I think he’s matured quite a bit over the summer and is ready to try this on his own. I know he’s super eager for math, but reading will be a challenge for him.  My goal this year is to get him to love books!  Question is, how?  I’ve thought about something like this incentive chart.  Silas seems to be very short focused, so I’ve also thought about having him pick something he really wants and doing some of those electronic banks.  I’ve seen an app or something where they can have a picture of something they want and if they do chores or whatever, parents can deposit money into a bank account and they get a visual indicator of how close they are to getting that reward.  BUT, I can’t find that ANYWHERE!  Do any of you know what this is called?

Anyway, back to reality for me.  Drop me a line and let me know how you are doing this summer and what you’re  getting ready to do before school starts for your little!