first day of school

The first day of school.  The boys were excited to go yesterday, and even knew what they wanted to wear and everything.  I'm pretty sure that's not such a big deal at our house as it would be at a house of girls (I know cause I grew up in one), but I was pretty excited that they had an opinion about it and actually wanted to look nice.

Here they are the morning of.  I mustered up the energy to go with them on their first day.  I was worried that I wouldn't be able to and miss all of that.  I made it and crashed when I got home.  Ethan didn't want us to walk in with him at all and didn't say two words to us once we got into his classroom.  Elliott made sure we were both coming and even gave us hugs before we left.

There was chatter in the van all the way home that afternoon about money systems, new friends, new experiences.

"did you know that there are two people who have to carry the lunch tub all the way down to lunch?"

"and we have jobs that we get money for!"

"we get money for being good."

"blue is like really special.  But green is good too.  I got green today."

"we have to use the bathrooms all the way down by the cafeteria or down by the 2nd and 3rd grade cause we can't use the kindergarten ones anymore."

"we don't have any homework until Tuesday, but you have homework Mom"

"there's a lot of work in 3rd grade"

 and my favorite...

"I had to miss all of my recess because we had to practice the dumb car rider line!  Why couldn't they just make the people who didn't do it last year do it?  It was stupid."  (he really doesn't like to miss recess)

I have to say that I love our school.  The teachers are great.  The staff is great.  And I've met really great parents through volunteering up there.  It's still small enough to me that it really seems like a community.  And the 3rd grade last year got the highest math scores on the MAP test in the whole county!

Sometimes I get itchy feet and want to move.  Either out somewhere with mature trees and some space between houses or to Florida where it's warm and sunny.  We don't because of the market right now, but even if the market was good I would really have to think twice about leaving this school district.   One of the main reasons we are where we are is because we wanted this school district.  And we sacrifice some things for it, but every time I walk into that school I'm reminded of how much it's worth it.  I love that their emphasis is "respect, responsibility & caring".   I think they've all done a really great job of making sure that is the climate at that school.   They've been so supportive and awesome while we've been navigating the cancer journey, and I just could not ask for a better experience for our family.  Go ROCK STARS!!