summer vacation starts today...

in approximately 5 hours and 40 minutes.

i have a huge to-do list and can you believe blogging is NOT on it, yet here i am.

i'm so good at procrastinating. hopefully i don't teach the kids that particular skill when we homeschool next year!

speaking of homeschooling, i stayed up til 1:30 this morning playing around with all the kids' books. i must be a bit of a nerd, i want to go through and start filling in the blanks. there's just something about a blank page waiting to be filled out that i just itch to get a pencil and sit down for hours.

however, last night i restrained myself and just organized instead. i also set up a rough calendar for our school, which has yet to earn a name. (yes, we get to NAME our homeschool, isn't that awesome??? one of our friend's school is called 'flying aces academy'.)

we'll be starting early in august, so we can finish in early may (ideally aiming for mid april but i'm trying to be realistic about this first year). that includes a month long trip to iowa through september/october (bringing school with us), a 2 week vacation at christmas, a 4 day break for my birthday in february (maybe we'll head somewhere warm in the middle of the week?), and none of this spring break crap. spring break at this age seems like such a waste of time, parents are ready to power through and just finish the school year which is dragging on and on and on at this point. if we finish soon enough in april, then we'll be able to enjoy the best of virginia's weather in the spring before it gets too hot.

chances are we'll be moving next may anyway, so not worrying about school during that time would be helpful. still no idea where to, rob is thinking either north of seattle, washington or back to southern georgia. i vote for georgia but i know how much rob hates the weather and how much he misses his home state of washington. the real fluke would be if we moved back to connecticut. there's one sub out of groton, CT that will need a skipper when rob finishes training, and rob would love to command a fast attack submarine instead of the 2-crew boomer subs (which would be the WA or GA ports). having 2 crews on a submarine does allow for more family time, however, and i did enjoy our year down in florida when we were there in 2007-2008. all the communities have POOLS! how can you not LOVE that?!?

anyway, back to the list. i only have 5 hours, 20 minutes til summer vacation starts! panic!!