It is finished...

My very last day of daycare was yesterday and I still can't believe it's happening.  No more baby gear around the house, no more diapers, wet wipes and toys I'd rather throw away.  And no more figuring out what to buy for all those snacks during the week, lunches and never ending dishes that go with it. :)

I really thought I'd be more sad when the day came and I was a bit sad to say good bye to Carson who I probably won't see again but mostly, I felt a relief.  This year has gone so slow, especially the summer with all the kids here so the excitement of being done was way bigger than the sadness I felt.  And a lot of it has to do with the fact that out of all the kids I watched I'm the closest to my 2 nieces and since they are basically our neighbors we will see them any time we want.  And I am very glad for that because our kids love playing with Emily and Aveah, especially Anika misses Emily after just not seeing her for a day.

So today I woke up and went straight to Anika's room where most of the play time occurs and organized all the toys and everything.  I got 2 garbage bags full of toys to throw away because I don't think anyone would want them even if I gave them away for free.  Then there are some nice wooden toys/puzzles that our kids have outgrown and I stored those.  Now I feel like I can breath in that room even though it was always picked up.  I went through some of the stuff in the boys room too but there is still a lot to store away so I'll have to get to that soon.  We also cleaned up the basement better and slowly we're getting our house back to just our family and not like we have 10 children living here. :)

School is about to start and I'm really looking forward to having more structure to our days again.  I pray that Kason and Anika don't cry the first few days but we'll see.  I know Kason will have a hard time being in school every day until 3pm, it gets to be a very long day for a 5 year old.  But I'm excited I'll be able to drive the kids to school so they don't have to get up so early to catch the bus and most days I'll pick them up too which will give us more time at home before bed time.  I'm hoping to volunteer in Ani's and Kason's classrooms too so I can see how their day goes and see how it's done before I have to sub.  With that, most of the time you have no idea you have to work until about 7:30 in the morning when the phone rings and they tell me I have to go to this school and sub for this teacher.  So it will be interesting and I just hope most of the time the teachers will leave good instructions for me.  I'm getting very nervous about it, especially going to High School where the kids seem so huge. :) I know I have to put a game face on and pretend I know the stuff they're doing but kind of hoping they'll give me a password to get online so I can google what I don't know. :)

So, it has been really great 4 and a half years or so that I did daycare.  Our kids loved having little buddies and they never complained about sharing their toys and things with them.  There were some hard times too, like when I had to take care of 2 babies while having 1 toddler and 3 preschoolers and those months were just a haze to me but I really can't complain.  I am thankful for the families I had because they were all very nice and their kids were great to take care of.  So, it's time to move on and I'm so excited to see what God has in store for me personally, finding out what I should focus my time and energy on and almost rediscover myself again.

Some of my favorite recent and old pictures:

last day of daycare treat