September 1st, 2009

It feels like while I was taking a nap, summer up and left for the beach. It's cold, the leaves are turning, the school busses are waking sleeping homeschoolers, the teachers are picketing.

Autumn.

And I am ready for it. I love summer and the warm days and moving my home office out to the patio. I love the light lasting long into the evenings, and camping and having my kids around for more of every day.

But I am ready for some structure. This year our oldest will be at the community college for his senior year of high school, and his sophomore year of college. Our middle son will be at the local high school for his freshman year of high school; he's already spent a week on the Cross Country team. And our youngest will be the only child from our family at our little homeschool-school. For years our week was centered around our homeschool school, and now, while we'll all still spend time there, we're more away than we are there. It will be a really different experience.

So, now it's the start of the transitions. Summer to fall, highschool tomorrow, little school next week and the week after that; college. In that time frame we have Ingathering and water communion at church, and if our 30 kids on an August Sunday with a guest minister are any guide, we're going to be absolutely busting out of our classrooms. Not that we have any classrooms, but if we did, well then we would.

And I am ready. Let's have a day of the week for this and a day of the week for that. Let's have work hours that have a start and a stop and not an "every moment humanly possible" feel! Let's eat soup and stew and bake homemade bread. And let's grab all the things that have been waiting to be taken out of their wrapping paper. Let's move it all to the front and do the things we mean to do and be the people we mean to be.

It's almost time. Let's go.