The First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and it went pretty well!

We arrived bright and early. I had asked Max's teacher if we could come a little bit earlier to get him settled into his class before all the other kids came. Apparently, all the other parents had the same idea!

When we arrive, we're supposed to just get in the "car line" and drop the kids off, but nobody paid any attention to this rule. "First Day of school" I guess is the one and only day when we're allowed to bend the rules a bit.

His teacher is in the backround wearing the white shirt.

I was so worried about Max that I forgot to worry a little about the other kids. Lucy was fine, but Luke was very quiet. Very un-Lukelike. He was nervous too, and I noticed he was lagging behind, so I took his hand and then he smiled and relaxed a little. And amazingly, after school, I asked Luke how he liked it and he said, "I like it!" Again--very un-Luke-like! He didn't like school at all last year so I figured he wouldn't like it this year since it's so much longer. But he surprised me!

This is just a hint of Lucy's nervousness before school. She was the most excited to go of all three. She loved school too, but I figured that she would!

We didn't get to get a picture of Max, as the teacher had whisked him away inside right away, but Dennis surprised me. He sneeked in the room and took a quick picture. Now if I had done that, I never would've heard the end of it!



The day was spent very peacefully. I finally got a break away from the kids for the first time in 5 days. My morning was spent at the gym watching The Price is Right! and then going to Adoration, where I prayed a rosary for the kids.

I felt very peaceful all day. I thought I would have spent the day waiting anxiously for school to end so I could see if Max was okay. But I've been working hard on taking on the "spirit of trust" and as long as I do that, things seem to turn out just fine.

When we went to pick up the kids, this time the adults were made to do the "car line". It was a disaster, not at all smooth like the teachers had said it was. Ideally, you're supposed to just drive up to the school in a line with the sign of your last name on your car and your child is delivered to you like a value meal at McDonalds. But we waited in that line for 25 minutes, not moving. Henry did not like this one bit.

The infamous "car line".

Some of the parents who thought they would get away with retrieving their children by sneaking into the school (but got chased out) had parked their cars in the parking lot, which they were not supposed to do. This did not agree with the car line. It meant letting people in the line as people had to back in and out of their parking space and "butt" ahead of you, thus making the car line longer!

I asked Dennis, "Didn't they read the hand-out on the car line? Didn't they go to the meeting with the one thousand questions about the car line? Didn't they read the email that was sent out the night before about the car line???" Okay, so it irked me. But I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and me and Henry were hungry.

The other reason why it took so long was that one of the buses was missing a student. You can't see the buses in the picture, but they were at the head of the car line and if the buses don't move, then the car line doesn't move. We watched the teachers scurrying back and forth from the bus to the school, calling out to one another, checking their clip boards with student names on it, and practical Dennis observed, "They need walkie-talkies."

Finally, we were able to retrieve our children. They looked tired and happy, and Max came in the car saying, "That school is too long!"

Why is that math so long???

The important thing is that we have the first day behind us. And now starts another school year...