Thanks, ric and femme! I miss you all here very much but this year has been just ugh, I mean, it's great, I'm great, everything is great. The kids are back in school now and although this was a moment for which I fantasized for many long months, I find it more than a little unnerving that the house has gone overnight from a state of chaos to quiet as the grave.
The distance learning our schools had set up in the Spring just didn't work here for a variety of reasons (screens banned for tomfoolery being one) and after a few days of pulling at my hair, I gave up and we opened a pretend magical boarding school called the School of Hart Knox for Wizards and Other Mystical Creatures and styled our days after creative Harry Potter-type activities. I've been reading the series aloud since the start of the year and we're now in the last 35 pages of the final book, The Deathly Hallows. But we did lots of silly magical-style things and had as much fun with it as we could, heavy on the arts and crafts although I did try to sneak in some actual learning when they weren't looking.
I'm not sure what the boys learned in recent months other than that I taught them a whole slew of new curse words, many stemming from the day I had to mop the living room ceiling because of a slime incident. (Think stalactites: I left the room to do my own work for a few minutes and returned to find slime stalactites.) Although, in my own defence, I did not fly off the (mop) handle until someone dumped the pail of dirty mop water into the toaster instead of the sink. I was already as irritated as a wet hen because I had only a floppy yacht mop with which to mop overhead and, consequently, it rained dirty mop water down on me as I looked up and cleaned. (My kingdom for a sponge mop.) I had given them the mop job first but, being boys, they were enjoying the ceiling dirty-mop-bucket rain a little too much.
Also, I'm pretty sure all of our neighbours hate us by now because we spent most of every day we could outside in the backyard and thank heavens we have a backyard because I'd probably have run away from home if we didn't.
