Back in the Swing

Got about 15 minutes to blog today.
I'm sitting here while Benjamin naps (hallelujah!!!), typing and trying to keep warm by having some green tea.  I get that it's healthy - however, it feels like I'm sipping leftover lawn clippings.

Morning have been difficult here for the past few days.
Evenings have been more difficult, though.
You see, no on wants to sleep - even though they are deathly tired.
Tired like they fall asleep in the car on the way home from school - but they get a second wind at six thirty or so and then it's ON like Donkey Kong.
Until 9:30.
Disliking games and anything that involves being un-horizontal after 9pm - this doesn't fly with the Mama.
So - it's an earlier bedtime tonight.
Like we have told the kids, if you can't be happy and do what you need to do in the morning - then it's clear to us that you need an earlier bedtime.
For half of the kids - that may be 6pm.
Oh - help us.

With the New Year, the 15 minutes of decluttering a day has also be re-instituted.
The problem being *when* to find those 15 minutes because if the kids are around, the things that I have decluttered find their way magically out of the trash.  Even if they are trash.
Like the bottlecaps a certain child collected from classmates last month.
Seriously.

I can't make this stuff up.

Today is crazy hat day at school.
Caroline is officially too cool for stuff like that now - though I did see her nab my panda socks for Silly Sock Day.
Nate is wearing a fedora with flowers all over it.
Sam took a selfie with his cousin's sailor's hat.

She passed on the hat, but wore a bandage on her wrist.
For the first time in 11 years (knock wood), we had to get x-rays.
Typical FOOSH injury.
Doing better now.

Off to declutter and finish a waist casing and a collar for a dress for Caroline for tomorrow.
It's Character Dress Up Day and she decided to be Katherine Tyler from "The Witch of Blackbird Pond".  A fantastic book, one of may favorites when I was her age, which is probably why I consented to the insanity of making a dress for her.