first day of school

Yesterday all my babies went off to school.

Like, for reals, they started school. 

Yes, the on the seventh of August.

I’m still trying to figure out how August doesn’t equal summer anymore.(That “1” is for first grade BTW.)

The prep:

So the night before, we decided to do something about this mop of orange hair:(Max and his friends decided “Sun-In” was a great thing to try this summer…)

Nothing a little box of hair dye couldn’t fix:

The clothes were set out and we filled up the backpacks with all the school supplies we could round up (I never buy supplies before the first day of school because the lists the teachers request are always different from the generic ones they list online, but this year my little girls were dismayed they didn’t have backpacks full of stuff like all their friends did so we improvised a little…).

In the morning, per Lucy’s ongoing request, we repeated our last day of school breakfast that she was so fascinated with.

She had her sock monkey Rainbow Dash (who’s story is back here) join us for the rainbow pancakes.

Shift #1:

The high school-ers.

They got a ride from Jake, the best guy around :)

I have a picture of these two together on the first day every single year since kindergarten except for last.  (Dang it!)

Shift #2:

Our new Junior High girl:

…with one of her best friends Chloe…trying to act like Jr. High girls:

And finally on to

Shift #3:

…my only two elementary school girls left:

I swear all four of my girls were just barely in elementary school together (6th, 3rd, Kindergarten and preschool).

Now we’re just down to the two lone survivors:

…who have a long time to wait til school starts after those big kids leave which happily leaves their mother more time to take pictures.

Let’s go ahead and zoom in on that toothless smile for a sec:There we go.

These girls rode their bikes:

And these ones let their moms take them like good girls should :)

Traditional “After-School-Cookie-Chat”:

I have learned over the years that kids will sit and tell their mother all kinds of stuff if there are some fresh-baked cookies in front of them.

That’s one of my fav. memories over the years.

Tonight at dinner we went around the table and each person told two things about their day.  One had to be true, and one had to be fake.  Kind of fun to hear what they came up with.  No one believed that an alien came to our new house while I was working on some stuff over there though…

And tonight it was off to Target to fill up on supplies:

…and set those backpacks out for another day.

Oh boy.

The day before yesterday I was ready for the first time ever for school to start.

I had picked up my hundred-and-tenth wet towel scrunched into a ball on the floor from the pool and wiped up my three-hundred-and-forty-second puddle of lemonade slushy creations dripped all over the kitchen and picked up after forty-five neighbor kids and I was just ready for all the hoopla to begin.

But then yesterday when it really happened I wasn’t so sure.

…until I got through a million odds and ends that needed to be done two weeks ago on the new house and they were suddenly already home so I didn’t have to miss them too much.

It’s going to be a good year.

Labels: kids, school