Getting the School Swing of Things

It's not just kids that have to get used to the summer break being over but parents too. I'm already stressed out about everything that is going on and starting into our 3rd week of school I still haven't gotten the homework thing figured out.
I've kept my youngest daughter in the After School program because I'm not sure what my work schedule will be like through the year and though I've been getting home in time to catch the bus I can't promise that I can keep that up depending on what lands on my desk at work. Having Katherine in After School also means that when I get home I can start picking up the house and have some time to help Brielle with her homework when she gets home because she has the harder homework but last night was a key example that I'm not in the school swing.
I've been trusting Katherine pretty much about her homework but when she told me for the second day in the row she already had her homework done I decided to ask to see it I wanted to see what they were doing. Well come to find out she didn't quite have half of it done, many things were wrong and she has a spelling test and vocabulary test this Friday and I can already tell she wasn't sure on some of the meanings of the word. What does this mean? That we need to get back into our nightly habit of going over every word and doing pre-tests at home... I guess my evenings of being able to rest after making dinner are gone for awhile.
What also amazes me is they are already pushing to have us sell stuff and truth be told I'm already sick of it. It's a bunch of junk that none of us really want but we buy one or two things just to keep our kids happy but if you buy from one of your kids then you have to buy from the other. It's all a horrible mess that puts more strain on the parents.
So it's time to rework my time schedules and try and get my ducks in a row. Thankfully I've started to use Cozi.com more often so I'm not killing so many trees with my sticky notes and calendars.
I've worked out the menu for the rest of this month but although my groceries have been under budget this month my eating out budget has exploded with various different things. I'm really hoping that next month will be better in control. The sad thing is, is a lot of it I didn't have control over or Peter was suppose to be paid back for but I'm never sure if he is or not so it throws everything out of whack. I'm going to try and make a month's menu for September because I highly doubt to see any big sales that are going to change my mind on the menu.
*crosses fingers* Let's see how this goes because I keep trying to make cut backs in our lives and it seems that something is working against me. The kids have started eating Breakfast at home most days so in truth while it does put more of a strain on my grocery budget it, it is over all cheaper on me. Lunch is still cheaper through the school though because my kids would like more than a peanut butter sandwich every day I'm sure.