We arrived home at about 12:30 this morning. It was so nice to be able to walk into a clean house…though now that we’ve been living in it for approximately 14 hours, you couldn’t tell it was ever clean! We had a friend stay here while we were gone, and seriously, you can not even tell she lived here for a month. It looked exactly the same…plus it was dusted and vacuumed and just as clean as I left it. Nice. Thanks, LD.

Since waking up this morning at 7:30 (thanks to Karson wanting to play with every toy in our house) I have really appreciated being able to take my time in the shower, run as much water as I need to clean dishes without having to worry about my tanks filling up, using as much toilet paper as I wanted, my garbage disposal, and even my laundry room…where I can dump all my stuff and do it at my leisure. Though camping is fun, it is definitely an adjustment in lifestyle – and especially with 4 kids!

This summer (or the last four weeks, rather) has been really difficult for our whole family. We enjoyed our time on the road, but it just seemed harder this year. I think a lot of it had to do with Sam’s mom being sick and then dying. I don’t regret being gone or the time we spent at the fairs. Most of the time it was enjoyable…I was just ready to come home.

I start working this week. I don’t have to work tomorrow, but I am going in around 8 because I have so much to do in my classroom. I think Sherry, my sister in law might be able to come and help out too. I feel like I can use all the help I can get. I found out this weekend that I have 27 kids in my class. And though I am glad for the high numbers for our district…I am freakin out at having a class with that many kindergarteners, and I am secretly hoping maybe a few won’t show up. It’s also going to be really challenging, because the other kindergarten teacher who I was going to rely on a lot, is going to be gone for several weeks. She had major surgery (unexpected) and has to go through chemo. We are praying for her that her body can fully heal. Anyway, so they needed a sub, but I think that another teacher is actually going to sub for Randi so that we don’t have 2 teachers trying to figure everything out…and that they may hire a sub for her class. That will be fun, because me and the other teacher are pretty good friends and I think we will have fun working together on stuff.

We are still trying to figure out what to do about childcare for Jasmin and Karson this school year…but we have some possibilities. Jasmin, our nanny, has decided to move on…though she will be watching the kids for me this week while we get everything settled as I go back to work.