Another First Day of School

A kindergartner (gasp!) a fourth grader (gasp!) and a middle schooler (gasp, gasp!). Jackson's face tells his whole story...not excited to be going to school. Jordan looks pretty happy and actually did seem pretty excited about today. Jensen has kind of a pained expression on her face but in actuality she was very excited to be heading off to Shadow Forest. She has her fisher price camera in her hands and asked if she could take it to school today to take a few pictures. Of course!! Girl after my own heart. Here are a couple of her photos:



Here's Jackson with his new bike he just got yesterday:


A couple of classroom photos and Jensen's new teacher, Mrs. Clift:



This was the moment of the day that pained me the most. Dropping Jordan off at middle school. When I took Jackson and Jensen I got to walk them into the school, go into the classroom, meet their teachers, see the other kids in the class. With Jordan going to 6th grade you get none of that. You drive them up, drop them off, and say goodbye. I don't know all the kids in her classes anymore, I don't know her teachers. I don't love that, I have to say, but I have to come to grips with it.

At the end of the day, all the kids seemed to be okay. Jensen had a great day and really seemed to like being at Shadow Forest. She's already scheduled a play date for tomorrow!

Everything seemed to go well for Jordan too. She got to all her classes okay, sat with friends at lunch and made it through the crazy, free-for-all dismissal process that's so unlike the orderly, sane elementary school dismissal.

Jackson had his typical first day..."horrible" was his exact word when he got home today. But that's okay. I've come to realize that Jackson does not transition easily from summer to school. It's hard for him and takes a good couple of weeks to get in the groove. I feel comfortable, though, with his teacher and his class. I think he'll end up having a good year even though he completely disagrees right now!

A new use for SU paper

Last Thursday was registration day for Jordan at Riverwood Middle school along with about 300 other incoming 6th graders. We stood in various lines to get her schedule, put money in her lunch account, get her textbooks, purchase a planner and a t-shirt, and the most exciting thing of all...get her locker assignment.


With that many people there at once it was a little nutty but also exciting to see so many faces that we knew. We found Jordan's locker (an upper one which is a bonus) and practiced her combination. At RMS they sell "locker shelves" which are basically 6 pieces of raw wood cut to fit inside the locker to stack on top of each other to form two shelves. Our neighbor is an 8th grade teacher at RMS and had given Jordan a set of the shelves at the beginning of the summer. She informed us that most of the girls do something cute with the shelves--paint them, cover them in fabric, etc.--and most of the boys leave them plain. We were at a little bit of a loss as to what to do with Jordan's shelves over the summer so we did nothing.

That day at registration you should have seen the production of mom's strewn all over the hallway floors frantically trying to cutely cover their daughters' locker shelves. We saw everything from fabric to different colors of duct tape being wrapped around the shelves to scrapbook paper. BINGO! I have tons of scrapbook paper that doesn't get used for scrapbooking so that was the perfect solution for us.

I found out that all the frantic preparations weren't really necessary that day since the school would be open everyday until school started so we could go back anytime and organize her locker. That day we went home and picked out some paper from my stash that Jordan liked. I went and bought a roll of clear contact paper and then got busy. We got the shelves covered and the next day (after Jordan got her braces put on...that's another topic), when it was much calmer, went back to put the finishing touches on her locker and put her supplies in.





These pictures are likely to be the only ones you see of Jordan at school this year and she really didn't want me to take these but since there was not another soul around to see her mom being a geek I didn't leave her any choice.




Doesn't this place look huge??

The olympics are killing me

Seriously. I can't keep up this pace of staying up until midnight every night and getting up at 7:00 a.m. At my age. One or two nights a week, maybe. But every night? The swimming and the gymnastics have just been so awesome. I don't get tired of watching it. Jordan and I have been the diehards...every night. Jim goes to bed and there we are on the couch glued to the t.v. The difference is, she sleeps in until 10:00 the next morning. Luckily for me, I'm not quite so interested in track and field so next week I should be able to get caught up on my sleep.