Well the most wonderful time of the year is nearly over. Epiphany is this Sunday and the boys will receive the last of their presents. Christmas boxes will be pulled up from the basement so they can be refilled with all the beautiful decorations adorning our home and stored away for the next 11 months. Diets will get back to normal and so will sleeping times. I will go to bed that night a bit sad, yet ready to get back to regular, ordinary, everyday life. Which is a good thing when you consider the fact that when the boys and I wake up Monday morning we'll be facing a full day of home school!
Oh, the moans and groans of the boys. The dragging the feet down the stairs to the breakfast table where they will sit and eat their bowl of cereal as if it is their last meal. "Couldn't you have at least made us some bacon before sending us to our doom?!" is what Michael will ask. They will gloomily put their bowls and spoons in the sink and march upstairs again to get ready for the day. "Brush your teeth, wash your face, make up your beds!" I will command. They will obey and then the "dead men walking" will head back downstairs to the school room to await their fate, which will be carefully written out and planned by me this weekend.
The first few weeks will actually go by fairly smoothly, then February will hit. The days will still be short, the weather will still be cold, and there will be almost 2 looooooong months to go before the Holy Week break. School will not even be the least bit fun, and after a miserable day of school we'll get to go freeze our tushies off at baseball practice. Day after day we'll just trudge along going through the motions, and before we know know it a serious case of burn out has set in!
Now to be completely honest, over the past 7 years I have hit varying degrees of burn out, the first half of this year being the absolute worst, and I am actually for once, truly looking forward to this next half of the year. I've done a lot of reflecting, a TON of praying and have really started to make some subtle but positive changes that will really benefit our family and our homeschooling. Finding out I'm pregnant has given me extra motivation. The boys are even fully willing to work through the summer knowing I am due at the end of August and will need to take a break once the baby comes. But for most of us who do home school this truly is the time of year when burn out does set it in, so I wanted to share a series of posts that Elizabeth Foss did last year addressing this very subject. I hope you enjoy them and they will be of some use to you.
As for the boys, don't worry about them, they will actually be fine come Monday morning, where they will be greeted by a big plate of bacon to accompany whatever else they might choose for breakfast that morning. If I'm still feeling as good as I do now, they might get to choose pancakes!
You are such a good mommy to have bacon ready! I bet my week would have gone better if I'd served my oldest bacon before I made her get back to school work! LOL! ;)
Posted by: Kelly | January 03, 2008 at 09:57 PM