How I "RE-ENTER" AFTER NANTUCKET

Happy happy Tuesday, friends!

For today’s TRAVEL TUESDAY, we are going to travel from Nantucket to McKinney 🙂 .

I don’t know about you, but after being gone for some time, there are certain things I have to do upon re-entry.

I have a few extra photos on my phone from Nantucket, so I’m going to sprinkle those in as I share too.

Spoiler alert: a lot of what we do upon re-entry is complain about the weather…

In this post, I’m talking specifically about our re-entry from summer on Nantucket to McKinney, but if you’re curious about how we re-enter from a vacation, check out MY 9 KEYS FOR RETURNING FROM A TRIP.

Okay, should you be curious about the random things we did last week upon returning, here you go…

GO THROUGH THE MAIL

We have “handled the mail” several different ways over the last four summers on Nantucket, and this season, we held it.

I arrived home, recycled 96% of it and kept eight magazines.

HAIR, HAIR, HAIR

Priorities, people! I came home and made a beeline to my hair stylist. She added color to my hair when I popped down to Texas in late June, but goodness, it was time for a touchup!

Hair was clearly a priority last week because…

KID CUTS

…Ashby, Mades, and Smith all had hair appointments for “back to school” cuts too!

And re-entry also meant that…

DOGS GROOMED

…the dogs were groomed as well. Bahahahaha! See? A lot of hair cutting happened! Poppy and Yankee had been groomed in Missouri when they were with Andrew’s parents and Frenchie and Charlie had been groomed on Nantucket, but all four of them went to visit our beloved McKinney groomer for their “back to school” cuts too 😉 .

CLEAN OUT CLOSETS

I love to see cleaned out closets. I don’t care if it’s a linen closet, a pantry, or the primary…messy closets give me a weird anxiety. Because we ended our summer on Nantucket moving out of our house, we brought back a bit more than normal. All six Shulls spent a big part of the week cleaning out closets. I don’t want to go into this new school year adding more “stuff” to closets that are messy. We threw away trash (why do my kids have actual trash in their closets?!), passed down things to younger siblings, and…

DONATE, DONATE

…made one big run to a local donation drop off center this week of the items we gathered to donate.

Re-entry didn’t just involve cleaning out closets, I also had the kids…

TOSS OLD SCHOOL STUFF

…go through their backpacks from last year, keep what they could use again, and then throw out allllllllllllllllll of the trash accumulated in their backpacks and recyle old schoolwork they no longer need.

I LIGHT UP A NEW CANDLE

I’m not even joking when I tell you that when I arrived home on Monday morning, before I even took off my shoes and put down my tote, I turned on the Sonos system (French Cafe Radio!) and lit a new candle in the kitchen. I think better with both of these things. 😉

WASH SHEETS

I washed a lot of sheets last week. Fresh sheets are a must for a smooth re-entry.

MEAL PLAN

I was meal planning before my plane touched down at DFW. I am never more organized and excited to make a meal plan than these weeks leading up to the first day of school and/or that first month. I am a meal planning CHAMP this time of year.

SURVEY THE YARD

Andrew and I have been dealing with the yard upon return. My veggie garden needed a lot of pruning, my fern needed a bit of TLC, some of the annuals needed to be tossed, there were a few dry patches in the grass that needed extra attention…things like that.

I HEAD TO THE NAIL SALON

I’ve mentioned this before, but I love to get my nails “dipped” at the salon, and on Nantucket, they just don’t do it like they do it in Texas. I went in to get my nails dipped, and it made me oh so happy.

I UPDATE MY PLANNER

I love to use both the Cozi family planning app and a physical academic planner (because the beginning of the school year will always feel like the beginning of the year to me), so last week, I added all of the school calendar dates into both. I also added #allthefall things (practices, pep rallies, etc) into both as well.

CLEAN OUT FRIDGE

Sometimes I think I’m a fairly high functioning adult with her life together….and other times, I find a bottle of soy sauce in my fridge that expired in April 2024.

VISIT THE ORTHODONTIST

My biggest fear this summer wasn’t sharks in the ocean…it was Ashby Shull eating the wrong thing and breaking a bracket on her braces. Ha! Thank goodness, we made it the entire summer without any orthodontist issues. Whew! We went in last week for a regular checkup and all things looked good.

WALMART DELIVERY

If you’ve ever landed at DFW then you know that it takes longer to taxi to the gate there than most any other airport. When the plane wheels touch down, you still have another twenty minutes before you’re at the gate. All of that to say…between landing and the gate on Monday morning, I added all my favorite Walmart items to cart, checked out, and timed it so that my delivery showed up within an hour of us being home. Bam.

STOCK UP ON SCHOOL SUPPLIES

Re-entry at the end of summer means it’s time to stock up on school supplies! I bought all the composition notebooks, mechanical pencils, rulers, dividers, binders, map pencils, notebook paper and more.

REPLACE THE PURA

I just love my Puras. I have four here in McKinney and last week, I went around and inserted fresh vials into all of them.

OFFICE TIDY

I went through my office and cleaned, purged, tossed and refreshed for the fall.

CARPOOL LIFE

It takes a carpool village to get all of my kiddos where they need to be each day. I got it all lined up for a (hopefully!) smooth transition.

And those are some of the random things we did as we re-entered McKinney after our summer 🙂 .

If you’re away from home for any length of time, what are some of the random things you do to “get your life together” upon return? I would love to know!