Real Family: New School Year. Wait. What?! It's July!

I bet I did something this morning that probably none of my friends (local Holomua peeps aside) did. I sent two of my kiddos off for their first day of the 2011-12 school year! Yep, Toby and Brady have headed off to their first day of 1st grade and 5th grade respectively. And for those of you scratching your heads thinking "Didn't they just finish their school year later than everyone else just 2 weeks ago?"  you'd be correct. My boys' "summer break" was exactly 2 weeks long. Crazy, isn't it? We really do love year round school for the most part though. We get lots of three week breaks throughout the school year during off-season times so the crowds are minimal and the kids love having those chunks of time to break up the school year a bit. I love not feeling the pressure to sit on my kids all summer break long to maintain their skills and knowledge so they don't have to play a lot of catch up when a new school year starts. The education retention is awesome. The only kink in the awesomeness that is year-round school is that Ben doesn't go to a year-round school! So we have to try to juggle a traditional calendar with a year-round one which is, frankly, a joke. Sometimes it's more than my scatter-brain can handle. But for today we got it right. And I even remembered their signs!

PS - The Win, Lose or Blog competition begins today! I've posted up my first blog entry in the contest and I'd LOVE to have you cheer me on!  HERE is the link to my personal blog on the competition site.