As of today all my school age children that I provide childcare for are in school. So begins the days of waiting for the bus, arranging drop-offs and pickups and homework. No homework yet but I know it's coming.

The silence here was almost deafening today. Well, I guess that's an exaggeration because there are still my own three even if no one else shows up but it was much quieter without a houseful of school age kids - mostly boys. Although, honestly, some of the girls are louder than the boys.

This happened to be one of those days when the preschoolers were either home with their parents, parents were working a late shift or, as in the case of one child, were coming late because of a doctors appointment. So we took advantage of the extra time this morning and did a lot of work upstairs. Amanda still has things to rearrange from her room change. Austin needed to just do some general cleaning in his room. And I had lots of clothes to sort through and put away and laundry to do. There were four big boxes of clothes that were given too us to pass on as needed, use for the kids or do whatever with. I knew a lot of them were Michael's size or the next size or two up and needed to be put in his closet. I'm so glad that's done now.

Michael took advantage of the fact that I was busy and decided to give himself a haircut with Doug's electric razor.

I had to laugh every time I looked at him until Doug finally gave him a haircut this evening. He had to cut it down really really short, but it looks better than this anyway.

The salon that was in business right behind us has moved to a new location. Today the salon owners were back to finish cleaning out and offered to let us have four bookcases, and a small table that they no longer had use for. I was more than happy to give them a new home and now I'm full of ideas of how I want to rearrange the playroom. But the actual rearranging may have to wait until next week when we're on vacation and I won't have so many little ones to work around.

I can feel myself getting excited about vacation and feeling less focused on the day to day work. I can hardly wait to sleep in, read, write, and work on some projects that I've been looking for a chance to tackle. We are also planning a couple day trips - to visit Doug's parents and to go to the zoo. We've never taken Michael to the zoo and I'm excited about seeing his reaction to the animals.

As I'm writing this Austin and Amanda are outside with a flashlight looking at all the spiders that have shown up to take advantage of all the bugs that fly around our porch light every night. Because it stays on all night due to parents in and out picking up and dropping off their children their is a steady supply of insects to fly  into the webs. Amanda said there are about 12 spiders out there right now. And now Austin just came running in to tell me he found "a humungous gathering of slugs" outside.  

And on that lovely note I will say goodnight. I wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring?