The Countdown to School: The Body Clock

Most of you know that Jeff and I are night owls.  Both of us have always been night owls.  We have been aware since early in our marriage that our schedule did not fit the norms of our society and have often joked that if we could find jobs where we work from 12 noon - 8 pm we would do better in the world.  So when we got a dog, we thought he would help us start getting up in the morning.  But Obie has always been content to wait until after 9 am for his first outing.  When we had Casey we thought he would help us - don't all babies wake up by some internal alarm at 5:30 am?  Apparently not.  We were advised by a late working pal that we could in fact train our kids to be night owls like us.  So we did.  Sam came along and we got him int he routine too.  With Jeff's somewhat flexible mornings and me not going anywhere in the mornings this has served us quite well for the last 5 years.  We have been able to keep our kids up to see Jeff after evening meetings, take them to ball games or evening programs with no worries of throwing off bed time.  We have had phases of having to get up earlier than we liked but adjusted and then went back to our more natural routine afterward.
So, here comes kindergarten... and it just doesn't care about our routine.  "We can't get up in the morning" doesn't seem like the best reason to home-school although we briefly considered it.  So we are in the midst of a (long time coming) body clock adjustment.  Family camp was a jump start since we get up earlier there for camp breakfast.  So since we have been home for camp we have maintained the earlier wake up.  It's painful.  Especially this week because we don't have to be anywhere.  "We are practicing for kindergarten" I tell Casey each morning as he groans and rolls over. 
We have also bumped bedtime by about 90 minutes.  Living on the western edge of the eastern time zone means its light out until about 10 pm in June and July so its hard to think about bed time before that.   For the first few nights, Casey complained of not being tired and kept finding reasons to wander out of his room.  We knew it would catch up eventually, and I think it was Tuesday afternoon that he told me he had to go to the bathroom and get something out of his room.  Sam and I were reading books when I realized I had not seen him come back out yet.  I went in to his room and there he was, zonked out on his bed.  I let him sleep about 20 minutes.  The last couple nights it has been a much easier sell.
The biggest challenge is getting Jeff and I to go to bed.  People say "oh you will love having your evenings back".  The reality is we have always had our evenings, they just went from 10 pm - 1 am.  And quite frankly we liked having the actual evening with our boys and the later evening with our piles of stuff to do and each other.  But that isn't going to work anymore.  We have done pretty well this week at being in bed before midnight.  It's hard for us though!!  We are working to undo years of conditioning here!  And when you factor in me trying to run before the boys are up, the time I am setting the alarm for is more like my bed time of days gone by :)
As we look to the fall routine, there will be challenges; we cannot host things at the house that will interfere with the boys getting to bed, we cannot commit to things that keep us both out past bedtime (that we would normally just bring them with one of us) without budgeting for a sitter, and we will both have nights where we get home and the kids are already asleep.
Your prayers are welcome.  It feels like we are pushing a boulder up a hill, and we know if we let it slide, its just going to run us over.  Hopefully soon we will feel like we made it to the top of the hill or a plateau of some kind... because right now its just exhausting... but its still the right thing to do... we hope.