Letting Things Go

It has been a long week around here. 

This parched area of the world finally got some rain last Sunday night. The rain helped us realize that one of our window wells filled up with water and that water emptied into our basement. That wasn't terrible - my daughter was downstairs, and consequently, we caught it pretty quickly. 

Two nights later, I had made a trip to the Big City, and it poured at home. We weren't as fortunate. My husband bailed water out of the window well for almost an hour, while my daughter tried to contain the flood in the basement. But we still had a good 2 inches of standing water under the window.

Last night, same thing - but on a smaller scale. {Yeah, I know - 3 nights with rain is just plain unheard of here!}

This has meant a basement that I can hardly walk through because furniture has been scooted here and there. And there are two industrial strength fans running and a humidifier. It is very noisy down here, which gives me a little headache. And all these machines running make it pretty warm in our normally cool basement. And this is where I do all my work for school when I'm at home.

I realized this morning, I have one week left until we start 3 days of in-services and 2 work days. If you saw a post I wrote earlier this summer, I like to have everything ready until at least Labor Day.  This year, I was hoping to go another week because we will be gone two of those weekends. Well, I have gotten 2 weeks of lesson plans done, instead of the 3 I wanted. I have very few of my materials ready. I haven't gone up to work on my room {good news, the janitors didn't move any of the big furniture :)} I'm afraid there might have been leaks at school, and I so don't want to deal with that. I wanted to take some pictures of insects {I'm doing a unit on that to start the school year}, and add some inspirational words to them, but it just isn't happening.  And I really, really, really, want to have a mom/daughter day with my girl before I start back and she heads off to college {two weeks later}. 

All of that has made me realize I need to let go of some things. I need to be happy with the 2 weeks of plans I do have done. I need to concentrate on what I need for that first week of school. I need to have things done in my room that will make me comfortable with starting the year. And I need to have that mom/daughter day! 

So what have I done that puts a smile on my face? Well, I DID get those 2 weeks of plans done. And they are very specific because I want to work hard at really teaching procedures this year. I've noted where I want to make anchor charts and how I want to teach a procedure and how I want to model things. Yeah, me! I did die-cut candles - the kids will decorate one and we'll put them up to show when birthdays are.

{sorta like this, but they are white so the kids can decorate them.} My sister has a Silhouette machine, and she cut out the letters to make a Welcome sign for me - and they look so nice! I bought some things to put in birthday bags - thank you, Target dollar section - stickers and these absolutely crazy erasers that I'm pretty sure they will all love. {still want to pick up some pads of paper and little bitty notebooks}

I was even thinking - and this is just really crazy talk here - I don't have to have everything perfect for that first day! What??? Gasp!!! I just want it to be nice - for our Open House and for that first day. I want it to be a room that children want to come into, and guess what? I think part of that will be the smiling face on this teacher, who is as excited to meet her new students, as they are to meet her! 

What about you? How are your Back To School plans coming? The way you want? Or have you hit some bumps in the road?