What a fun post!  I’m joining in the {Not} Back-to-School Blog Hop at iHomeschool Network.  When home schooling, we get to have “Not” Back-to-school celebrations to start a new year; I really like this concept and appreciate someone else’s pointing it out.  I honestly can’t say how I found this blog.  I found it this morning in the midst of my “normal” routine of checking emails.  I’ve not heard of it before though, so I don’t know, and I can not remember for the life of me.

I have been reading up on all the Back-to-School ideas and organization goings on – I have to admit, it makes my fingers & brain itchy with the want to get going.  However, we are going to wait until Sept 4th to even consider starting {especially since I haven’t actually planned out the year yet}.  For our local school district, school starts on Thursday (as in day after tomorrow, the 16th).  We are waiting until AFTER the campaign is over {as of this writing: 13days 20hrs 45min 30sec’s until the polls close on August 28th, thank-you-very-much-for-asking}; then my son will go moose hunting; then we’ll start school.  Good thing too,  I have a few things to figure out first, though…such as, how I’m going to rearrange the living room to accommodate growing bodies, changing desires, and comforts?  So they don’t have to look at each other. feel each other. smell each other. hear each other breathe. Ack!

So, while my brain & fingers itch to get started, there are a few logistics that have to happen first, at least to some degree.  Maybe not totally finished, but at least an idea.  Please?!  These days are going way too quickly and are just too full to tear into my house and not be able to move around.  I have piles and piles and piles of paper stuff all around me — all of it is vertically filed on horizontal surfaces {yes, that is plural – my desk, the console table to the left of my desk, the top of the back of the couch on the right of my desk, and the floor behind the couch, under the console table & directly behind me}!  As long as no one touches anything {the concern here is my mother & 2.5 yr old niece! :-D}, I can pretty much put my hands on what I’m looking for nearly instantaneously….

Just. don’t. mess. with. my. system – ‘cuz then it might be an hour or more!

So, what are we planning for our school room?  We do school in the living room.  In this living room we do homeschool, it is my office for working, and we eat in here {more on this later}.  So – we do a lot of living in our 15’x15′ living room.

So far for the upcoming year, I have my Well-Planned Day purchased {not figured out or filled in yet, but I’m good, I still have 3 wks…..}; I need to figure out where Vince & Christine will be doing school & keep stuff put away in a manor we all enjoy looking at and is easily accessible – all day, every day, in the living room.  I know neither will be using the same set up as last year.  The chair Vince sat in last year won’t work, he had the nerve to grow too tall to use it.  {now, where is it going to go?  It’s too cute [shh-don’t tell him] to get rid of}.  Christine never actually sat at the roll-top desk I made room for in my living room…little things like that :-D.  Christine has a new, cute chair towards this solution – do you see the pretty blue & green flowers?  It is a chair she can fold up and it can slide behind our bedroom door, or she can sit in the bedroom & use it if she needs a change of scenery {which she needs frequently}.  See that bookshelf with.all.the.stuff.on top?!…there are two end-to-end under the window & they are full of books.  Those aren’t even the “school” books, just the reference & reader type of books.  Our school stuff is in the closet in the bedroom.

Disclaimer:  Yes, I’m using an old photo from an old post…while it is still kind of like this, right now I can’t walk to the end of this closet – there is no way I’m taking a current picture! 😀 {just keeping it honest}….

Up until just a couple days ago, I was gearing up to move everything out of the closet because Christine is really wanting her own room.  Honestly, I was dreading the idea-she would have had no space even though I was going to build her something, but it wouldn’t have been more than a bench – she was thrilled with the idea.  The next night, after a particularly crushing evening, she decided maybe she was fine with sharing a room with me after all.  She was concerned she wouldn’t like sleeping in her own room.  I love my girl.  So glad that was her decision, but I still would like to figure out a way for her to have more of her own space. {sigh}

In spite of all my sarcastic remarks, I want to state something very clearly – I am so very blessed.  I just can’t say it enough.  I’m so thankful to have a roof over our heads, warmth for the upcoming winter, and the “issues” I’ve listed are so petty in the grand scheme of life.  I have two children who want to homeschool (in 7th & 9th grades) and who want to spend time with me, and who I want to spend time with.  Can it get any better than that?

Thanks for reading – go check out the “Not” Back-to-School Blog Hop at iHomeschool Network.  I know this is a site I’ll be checking in again.