School started this past Monday. I've been wanting to put up this blog about it before now, but I'm still adjusting to this new schedule myself. I spent the first night up late filling out a stack of forms in triplicate and then last night trying to get a head start on lunches, etc. Whew! I think it's going to take a little while for all of us to get into the routine of things.
Back to the first day - the kids were so excited. Hannah told me the night before that she was going to have "visions of math problems" dancing in her head. We drove them to school the first morning (because McKay had all his supplies and we hadn't heard yet on the bus situation). Even Dad came along, so it was a family affair.
When we first went outside to take pictures before leaving, there wasn't quite enough light yet so I had to use the flash. The flash makes it seem like it was really dark outside, but it wasn't. But these are the only ones I ended up with showing the "full outfit" look (which is very important on the first day, you know).
Then we took a few more just before we left when there was just enough light for no flash.
We dropped Courtney off in Kindergarten first. Here she is with her teacher during "Meet and Greet" a few days earlier.
Then we took the older kids over to the pep rally they had on the middle school field (the middle school is right next door to the elementary). Hannah kept asking what a "pepper rally" was and why did we have to go and couldn't we just go right to the room? She went up to the front of the rope and ended up being completely enthralled with the short pep rally (featuring a mascot and everything!).
The elementary and middle school have the same mascot (these are the middle school cheerleaders).
When it was over, she came back to find us just beaming about how incredibly cool that pep rally was. Maybe she's destined to be a cheerleader herself someday...
We dropped McKay off in his 4th grade classroom. He has a friend from church in his class, so he was glad about that. His class didn't have a "meet and greet" before school started, so I'll still have to get a picture of him with his teacher. But here he is at the pep rally:
Then we took Hannah to 2nd grade. I imagine she had 20 new friends by the end of the day. :-) Here she is with her teacher during "meet and greet":
Then there's the bus. We didn't know how close the bus would come to our house because the dirt road coming up here is not county maintained. The head of the bus barn finally drove out to our house over the weekend (in a van) to check it out. When I talked to him on Monday, he told me that even though the official policy is that buses only go on county-maintained roads, that the bus would come up to our house (and use the little side road by our shop to turn around). That means I don't have to drive the kids anywhere to meet the bus, which is nice. It was great to see the bus headed up the driveway that first afternoon!
The bus driver told me she should be by the next morning about 7:15am to pick them up. We were rushing around and at about 7:00 I told McKay to open up the front door so we could watch through the storm door. He did, just in time to see the bus headed back down the driveway (she said she had honked twice but we obviously didn't hear it, and even if we had we weren't ready). The kids were very upset they missed the bus, but I drove them to school a second day and they made it just fine. This morning (Day 3), we all got up even earlier and were waiting at the end of the driveway by 6:50am (the bus came at 6:55).
The biggest problem with the bus is that is a LONG ride, especially coming home. Our kids are almost the last ones off (the bus carries kids from the elementary, middle and high school). It has been almost 5:00pm when they get home (school gets out at 3:20pm). That makes for a really long day for these kiddos! We'll see how it all works out.
So far, they all seem to like this new school and their teachers. I think Courtney has complained the most (no big surprise there) -- about "rest time" being too boring and the playground being too small and the bus ride being too long. But I've also overheard her telling Hannah about the fun things she's done in her class (for some reason, all I get are the complaints!).
Hayley has done okay at home by herself -- we've done a couple little outings so far (Discovery Center and library), but she does ask several times during the day when the kids will be getting home.
Here's hoping we all have a great school year!
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