First Week of School 2010-2011

Well, we started school this week! It was a warm-up week in it's fullest sense. We all got up at our routine time (the boys by 7:30, mom usually much earlier) and got back into our morning routine. They also did a few academics each day and just started to get their sea legs under them. This coming week, we're adding more in and everyone seems to be ready and as excited as any school child gets to be back in or at or doing school. Of course our week next week includes our annual homeschool group's "back to school" ice cream social, a party for our co-op and a class about bees at a local nature center. Rough. We've decided that we're going to celebrate everyone else going back to school by spending the day at the Science Museum on September 7th. We'll have the place to ourselves and we're very excited about it!

Also next week, G-man finishes his No Treats, No Screens challenge issued by his MMA instructor that he's been working on since June 1. Indeed, he has gone the entire summer without regular treats or screens. There were exceptions made along the way such as birthday parties and family movies but he definitely had many more days without than with. It's such an amazing accomplishment for a 9 yo. I heard him talking with his friend today who also did the challenge and they were reminiscing about how hard they thought it was going to be and how the first 2 weeks were the hardest but after that it was really not a big deal. Mom and dad have loved it too. We have removed from our household daily questions about treats, video games, shows, and computer time. We've enjoyed it so much that we talked with the boys about how we could keep some of these things in place in a reasonable way. The boys came up with a plan where they watch up to one show a day after their responsibilities are all done, video games only on the weekends, treats are reserved for sometimes on the weekends and on special occasions. Hopefully, that will help keep all of those distractions at bay. I was impressed at how they put together the plan and I hope it works out in practice as nicely as it looks on paper! Any way you cut it, though, we're so proud of our G-man. It's quite an accomplishment and we'll be watching with great pride when he gets his belt next week.