Slowly we are coming to terms with this

That we have to start school soon.  Math has been going on for a while so that doesn't really count, one subject, we can be done in less than an hour and get on with our day. 

This morning Spark and I were up early and went for a walk in an attempt to start getting our morning off to an earlier start.  Nothing too radical, 7:45.  This year, it seems, we have a few things that are going to be in the morning making us need to adjust our internal clocks a little bit.  We have to work to get somewhere by 10:00 a.m. so this change is necessary of us to fit into the schedule that most Americans keep.

Next step closer to reality was cleaning out and organizing the homeschool cabinet.  The cabinet sits in our dining room and we use it to stuff things in to get them off the table when company is coming.  We pulled out all the books we aren't going to be using this year and brought them downstairs to the bookshelves, found some to bring to bring to the food shelf (a lot of the other families that help also homeschool), and threw a couple of bags of old papers and books away.  Then all the new books got lined up neatly, we will see how long that lasts, for the new year. 

We also found 26 partially used notebooks.  Dancer now has no fear that she is going to run out of paper to figure out her math problems on.  She tries to do four and five step problems in her head which is impossible to keep track of and still get the right answer.   I remember in math class the teacher saying "show your work," which they wanted down the littlest detail.  Now I know why, as I hear myself saying over and over, "show your work."  I always assure her that if we run out of the paper for that purpose that I will happily buy more.  It will be one of those things Dancer will grow up and say "My mom always said... and it drove me nuts!"

Another find was a ruler, a simple 12 inch ruler.  I don't know where they go, but somewhere in our house there has to be a huge pile of rulers.   Maybe they are with the flashlights we can never find when the lights go out.

The announcement for the YMCA gym class came through today which completes all the extra activities we will be doing for this fall.  Both of the kids will be in Awana, there is a church by us that goes up to 9th grade, gym classes at the YMCA, and 4-H.  Dancer will also be in a tap dance class and her book club.  Spark is going to be involved in another gym class, this is one of those morning ones, and flag football.

Will we be able to make a true start next Tuesday?  I don't know, we will see how the weather is.  If it is nice out maybe we will just do math and go for a bike ride!