What in the World is Going on Here?

In this season of resurrection, I thought this might be the perfect time to resurrect this blog.  Besides, I MIGHT need a little bit of an outlet...for some reason.  What a weird time we are in!

When this school year started last August, I STRUGGLED.  My sweet little EllaForever went off to Kindergarten and suddenly I was alone for the majority of the day.  What was I supposed to do?  Who was I, actually?  What now?  Thankfully, over the summer I had picked up a part-time gig as a substitute school bus driver, so this provided a little bit of an outlet and interaction with real people day to day.  At the same time, J started working 4 ten hour days a week, which gave him a weekday off every week and we relished in that alone time together which, for the last 12 1/2 years has been so hard to come by.  Suddenly we had a solid 8 hours of "us" time every week and this whole sending all of the kids off to school every day wasn't so bad.

Fast forward to Spring Break...BOOM!  Our school year (and every other aspect of "normal" life) was turned on its head.  All of my kids plus my lovely husband have now been under this roof for 3 solid weeks now.  If it wasn't apparent before, it certainly is now...when this is all over, OUR TEACHERS DESERVE A RAISE!!!!!  I am on the backside of week one guiding all 5 of my kids through their schoolwork (their teachers have done the REAL work, I'm just supervising) and I am beat.  Not only do we sorely miss our teachers and regular routines, but man, are we disappointed with everything we will miss.  Which brings me to the real point for this post...this past Friday was supposed to be the Daddy/Daughter dance at the elementary school.  This is an event that J and Jillibean love every year and this would have been EllaForever's first dance.  To say they were bummed is an understatement.  Leave it up to J, though...he decided we should do our own homeschool version of the event to make up for it and create some memories in the midst of this strangeness.

In the past, he has always taken Jilliann out for dinner before the dance and that wasn't an option this year, so he hired Lolo to be the server at our very own Kneuper Acres Fine Dining.  J bought flowers, we implemented candlelight and classical music, there was wine for him and sparkling juice for the girls (in fancy glasses, no less).  They all dressed up and the boys and I "made" dinner (read: picked up the pizza from Casey's and served it).

Cheers!

His Italian is amazing!

The cheapskate stiffed us on the bulk of the bill, but 

he's cute, so...

After dinner Squeaky D announced their arrival to our basement dance floor and they all got their groove on.  We had a blast!  Except for X-man...he's way too cool for these kinds of shenanigans these days.  All in all, I think we succeeded in turning a big, fat bummer into a pretty big deal and both girls say they want to do the dance this way every year.  Memories made!