Back to Seminary

I am not a morning person.  Many of you are cracking up right now because that is such a huge understatement.  Homeschool works well for me because no one has to be dressed and fed and anywhere at 8:00.  Well, except for Kris sometimes, however he is pretty self-sufficient.  But a few years ago something new crept into our homeschool...early morning seminary.  So, from now on, until Fionnula graduates (which is 13 more years if you are curious, plus the 5 we already put in), someone will always have to be somewhere, mostly dressed, but not necessarily fed, at 6:15 am.  Seriously.

So, try to picture a typical school day morning at my house;

First, we can't leave out the detail that anywhere between about 1:30 and 4:30 Fionnula has more than likely crawled  into my bed and burrowed her wicked cold fingers and toes into my body.  Despite the total shock to my system I go back to sleep.  I am resilient.

At 5:45 the first alarm goes off.  That's right the first alarm.  This is the alarm that tells me if my boys aren't up yet they better be soon.  So I stumble, half blind and mostly incoherent (because neither my feet, nor my eyes, nor my brain function at 5:45) down to their room to ensure they are awake.  Usually at least one of them is, but sometimes I begin to hear their alarm as soon as I round the top of the first flight of stairs and arrive in a pitch dark basement to find 3 soundly sleeping boys.  Hence the need for MY alarm to go off at this ridiculous hour.

Then I go back to bed, grab my cell phone on the way and turn on its already pre-set alarm for 6:45, crawl under the covers and go back to sleep.  I am vaguely conscious when the boys each kiss me goodbye a few minutes later.  You see, this year, we are part of a blessed 3 family carpool, which means that every third month, I don't drive AT ALL.  Which is beyond awesome.  But this month, I am driving the pick up after route.  Which means I can go back to sleep for another hour.

At 6:45 my cell phone alarm goes off.  I have my routine perfectly timed, it takes me 5 minutes to be out the door, it takes me 5 minutes to drive to the church, but...  it takes the bus at least 10 minutes to warm up enough that humans can safely ride in it on a January morning.  So, the 6:45 alarm is the start the bus alarm.  I can do this remotely from my bedroom window.  But sadly not from my bed.  Then I......you guessed it.....go back to bed.  Really.  I sleep for another 5 minutes.  THEN I get up, get dressed (and I use the term loosely folks, sweats, jammies, almost anything will work...a swimming suit.  Ok not really.), brush my teeth and am out the door.

Essentially, within five minutes of arriving at full consciousness, I am driving an 8,000 pound vehicle around the neighborhood.  More than likely on ice.  Be scared, be very, very scared.