Casey can’t miss the bus. If he misses the bus, he misses school. It’s too engrained in his routine, that ONE misstep effs up the rest of the day.

I can’t wake up in the morning. I can’t. Let’s pretend it’s Abby’s sleep issues (of which causes me almost zero lack of sleep, but we’re pretending, no?), or that Casey has been getting up at night again despite the super human grade sleeping pills he’s on (I took a half of one once, and slept for a week. Or a day, but lets go with a week because it sounds serious). But by 7 in the morning, it’s the only time I feel truly dead. And I need that.

Anyways, the combination of these two could make for one poorly-home-schooled son. But I have FINALLY figured out a few ways to get him and his brothers out the door in no time at all. I’m serious. The other day, it took me ten minutes total.

The kids get their own breakfast. I make sure there is stuff they can easily make themselves. My kids are partial to oatmeal, so I buy the pre-measured packets, or make them myself (ahahhaaa, did you believe that? Total lie. At $1 a box, I’m cool with not making them). Then they (in theory) go here:

They usually have clothes in them, but it’s laundry day today (who are you kidding, Lexi? It’s always laundry day).  Due to some very lucky scores at our local Goodwill, I have enough clothes for my boys for each to have a week’s worth. Scrawled on the sides of the drawers is the day the boys have PE, so I don’t put them in their cute little skinny jeans those days.  The Saturday drawer is now used for socks and underwear as we don’t do jack crap on Saturdays.

It’s super nice. I don’t have to hunt down clothes, and I also don’t have to worry about what my kids* (read *husband) is going to pick out. They go to school looking a little less white trash than we really are.

Next. Lunches. Now that lunches at school aren’t the grossest thing in the world, I’m totally cool with letting my boys have lunch if they want it. (For a while last year, Carter’s account kept draining faster than we thought it should, turned out, he was buying TWO lunches everyday. Growing boys are fun)  It’s gotten Peyton to branch out, and really, it’s two less lunches that I have to make. I. hate. making. lunches. Making sandwiches is my least favorite thing. Like, in the world.  I don’t know why. It takes like fourteen seconds and isn’t hard. I hate it. Casey ONLY eats sandwiches for lunch. So I buy three or four loaves of bread at once, make up the sandwiches and freeze them.

Making up a ton of sandwiches at once is an easy process and limits my hatefulness to about an hour. If you put a thin layer of peanut butter on each slice of bread and then put the jam in the middle of the sandwich, it won’t get soggy or gross. I know, because I’ve eaten them. They’re great. If we have appointments, I’ll throw a couple in my bag for Abby to have.

Before the kids rush off to the bus, they have to brush their teeth. This usually meant fistfights over the toothpaste and a gigantic mess. That was an EASY fix. I bought them their own toothpastes. I wrote their names on them, even. And now that they know that I know that I can find who spewed toothpaste all over, they live in fear. Fear is awesome.

Silly, simple things that mean I can sleep in an extra fifteen minutes. When the girl lets me.

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