>guest post by Bradly Watkins
Do not get me wrong, I love winter break. Because of the fact that my husband and I both work at the school, this means that we all get a good vacation. However, I do not like those first days after it is all over with. These can be some of the hardest days for our family. We always dread it terribly. The first day is always chaos. No one can find anything. No one knows where their backpacks are. I have a hard time just forcing myself out of the bed so that I can get everyone else going. Furthermore, our dog throws an absolute fit because he knows that we will be gone all day again.
This year I thought that I had everything ready and was prepared for the back to school day. I had all of everything that we needed found the night before, my alarm was set, and I even arranged for the dog to go to a sitter. That Monday morning everything went off without a hitch. Everyone got ready, I set the home security alarm system (click), and we were off. About halfway to the pet sitters house I realized that someone was missing. It was Spot. We had left him behind. We had to take a 45 minute detour to retrieve our dog from the front porch where we had left him. Oh well, maybe next time I will get it right.