Typical

The past two weeks of Winter Break have reminded me once again of how very grateful I am for a public school system.

Seriously. While I genuinely admire and applaud those women who choose to home school, I feel that I am a better mother because of the breaks that public school affords me from my children--and them from me (and each other).

While this last week was a delight of pajama days, movie watching, and general gluttony and laziness, I'm grateful to be starting a schedule again, as keeping up with four busy kids is kind of exhausting!

For example: Last Thursday morning, I decided to undo the massive damage done to our bedroom by the Christmas hustle and bustle.  I spent the majority of the morning picking up bits of wrapping paper, excess Christmas goodies that had been hidden from the children in our room, excess toys and candy wrappers brought in by the kids and abandoned with reckless carelessness on our floor, and blankets brought in by nightmare-suffering kiddos who wanted to sleep on the floor in our room.

I then vacuumed thoroughly, going over our floor at least four different times until the vacuum was no longer picking up obscene amounts of dog hair and dust.

I was pretty proud of the way my room turned out (ignore the again-wrinkled-but-still-technically-made bed, which had been thoroughly bounced on by the three eldest children):

And then walked out to be greeted by this:

You can't see it well, but the kids found the scissors, and the entire kitchen floor was littered with tiny bits of paper.  Luckily they only used the scissors on the paper.

I may or may not have thrown a little bit of a tantrum, which lead to a tantrum from Jack, who felt that it was patently unfair for me to expect them to actually clean up their own messes.

During VACATION.

I am such a mean mom.

So, yes, I am grateful that school is once again starting.  I'll take the busy schedule over the necessity to constantly clean up after/follow through with/entertain my kids.