We’ve bought the new backpacks, but we’re still working on getting new shoes. We’ve got pencils, pens, notebooks, erasers, hand sanitizer, crayons, markers, highlighters, and pencil cases. Reams of paper are packed and ready along with boxes of tissues. In short, the school year is about to begin!

This year, we have three of the Hectic Clan headed off to college, one back to Maine and two here in Kansas. School starts for the Kansas students on the 17th and 20th while our Mainer doesn’t start until the 1st of September. Closer to home, we have a newly minted middle schooler (7th grade) as well as a Junior in high school. Everybody seems excited, although they each express it in a different way.

Sports start today, so we’ll have one stressing through the tryouts for middle school volleyball, while Hectic 16 had his first official cross country practice of the new year already. He had to be up and ready for practice at 7:30…which was a major shock to his system. Despite my begging everybody to try and get on school time over the past week, my pleas were ignored. He was terribly groggy as he drove to practice. Tomorrow will be even worse, as Hectic 12 has to arise three hours earlier than her summer norm for school. Then Wednesday Hectic 16 will be getting up at the crack of dawn to attend his Zero Hour class that begins at 6:50am. I’m not looking forward to the morning battles again this year, so I’ve made it clear that each of the homebound Hectic kiddos will get one warning shot about waking up. If they oversleep they’ll have to deal with the consequences.

I am looking forward to a bit more of a normalized schedule for Hectic Grandson and myself. With just two schoolers at home, and both of them involved in sports, we will have from 7:30am until the evening with just the two of us. That will allow me to get him back on some semblance of a schedule…something that has been sorely lacking this summer. We are also planning some learning activities that I’m really looking forward to. While his vocabulary has grown a bit over the past few months, he’s right at the cusp of significant verbal development. This is one of the stages that I truly love!

Hectic 20 has also taken a significant step, moving out of his dorm room and into an apartment. Due to changes at Pittsburg State University, he will no longer be able to purchase the unlimited meal plan. This will be a huge blow, as he didn’t have to be concerned about how much he ate, how often he ate, or when he ate. The dawn of this school year means that he’ll have to do his own cooking. To that end, I’ve created a new College Student Cookbook section for the soon-to-be-release Hectic-Kitchen version 2.0. We’re working on content for this section that should help somebody who’s cooking for the very first time get up to speed without throwing all the food against the wall. At least that’s the plan!

Hectic 19 will begin her first year at the University of Kansas. She’s been ready to leave since two months before graduation, so to say that’s she’s anxious to get started is such an understatement. She’ll be studying elementary education and business while living in the Honor’s dormitory. It’s going to be a bit strange for us to have kids so relatively close to home. She and Hectic 20 are within 4 hours of home, although in skewed directions. While we don’t expect to see either one very much during the school year, it won’t be quite the monumental traveling ordeal that we’ve had with the prior three college-bound Hectic Clan members.

At the other end of the spectrum, from a travel perspective, is Hectic 21 who starts her final year at Maine Maritime Academy. It’s about as far away towards the northeast part of the country that you can go from Hectic Manor here in central Kansas. She and Hectic 19 made the drive in just three days, which was truly a miracle. The drive went smoothly from their telling, so I’m thankful for that. She will be completing her last year studying Marine Biology, so if anybody is hiring Marine Biologists, we’re all ears!

In short, we’re all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to start a shiny brand new school year. Our hope is to make it through this year with the same level of enthusiasm at the culmination as we have here at the outset. We all know that the likelihood of that is somewhat slim, but we’re starting out on this year’s journey with the hopes and dreams that any new adventure holds.