Goodbye sergeant major

One of the things that I absolutely loathed about school had absolutely nothing to do with school... it was "the (dreaded) mornings".  My boys usually wake about 7am and we had to be out of the house at 8am.   That gave us an hour to get dressed, eat breakfast, clean teeth, grab school bags, lunchbags, put shoes & coats on, do a wee before getting in the car etc.  It may not sound like much, but factor into that that my two youngest (and sometimes the eldest) had to be regularly reminded to get dressed otherwise they'd just drift about, happily distracted by toys etc; DS1 increasingly was needing to sleep in (and don't you just HATE having to wake a sweetly sleeping child?!); occasionally DS2 would have left over homework that he still hadn't finished by bedtime the night before, so we'd have to squeeze that in too; and not to mention that Mummy needed to grab a few seconds to hastily apply some make-up so I didn't scare my own class by looking utterly haggard at the start of the day.
All of which turned me into my much-detested & parental-guilt-inducing alter-ego: the sergeant major :(.  Mornings were about barking orders, chivvying, ticking off the list of stuff needing doing to be ready in time to leave, while desperately trying to cling onto patience and show them some love, in order to give them a good start to the day.
I can feel the stress levels dropping every time I realise we don't have to go through that again. I'm sure there will be day trips & visits out that we need to get up & out for, but not on a tortuous daily basis, and let's face it, day trips are good motivation to get up & dressed, aren't they?
It is almost two weeks since we finished school, and I can't tell you how much I am enjoying the thought that this 'holiday feeling' which I love, of getting up when we wake, getting breakfast at our own speed, hanging out in PJs until we want to get dressed (not for me - being in nightclothes during the day makes me feel as if I should be ill, but the boys love it!)... that feeling is here to stay!