First week of school

The first day of school!!!

Monday August 24 Damon, Tyler and Christopher started school.  It was a totally crazy morning.  Of course everyone wants to see their kids off on the first day.  We left pretty early, around 7:30 but still had to walk quite a ways to get to school.  We walked Chris to his classroom through the crowds of people.  His class was all set up to let the students play with play-dough.  Chris seemed nervous but excited too.  I was too busy in the morning with the craziness of getting lunches ready that I forgot to take a 'first day of school' picture at home.  So all I've got are their photos in their classrooms.  Chris was giving me a funny face.  

After we dropped Chris off we went down the hall to Tyler's room.  He seemed confident and ready for school.  He had a picture to complete for his first activity.  

By the time we got back to the van the girls were complaining of walking and we still had to take Damon to school, sigh.  It was now around 8:15 so we headed over to Cox Intermediate.  I debated whether to try and park on the street of the school or park in the neighborhood and walk across the street.  I chose the neighborhood and I think it was the better choice.  The streets were so full of cars - it was crazy.  So we walked the few blocks to take Damon to class.  His teacher thought the girls were cute besides how messy their hair was I'm sure - hey at least they were dressed. :)  The desks at Damon's school are similar to middle school or high school - no place to put anything, so that's why they have a locker.  They put their bags in their locker and just carry their big binder, lunch, and water bottle around with them all day.  

On the way back I tried to catch a picture of the traffic craziness but you can't really tell.  There are just cars lined up forever to drop kids off or park.

It was 9:00 by time I got home: 1 1/2 hours to get the boys to school, whew.  The rest of the day went by fast doing laundry and normal stuff.  Then it was time to go get the boys.  I barely made it to get Tyler and Chris.  I parked down the street and walked down to the corner to meet them.  Their school gets out at 3:05 but of course on the first day things were crazy and slow.  Then we headed straight over to get Damon.  Normally his school gets out at 3:45, but for the first week they dismissed at 3:35.  Not sure that the time change helped anything, but oh well.  

Here's the long story about Damon's dismissal:  Such a headache.  There were about 7 moms that wanted their kids to all walk together across the street into the Harmony Creek neighborhood and I had planned to pick Damon up at a friend's house who lives over there.  Well in order for him to walk over there quickly we signed his dismissal to be a 'walker to York.'  York is the middle school that is right next to Cox.  So what the school does is dismisses all the students that have a sibling or meeting them at York walk over to that school as a group.  So that is what I had told Damon he would be doing - walking to York and then I would meet him at that corner.  Well, Cox school sent out an email around 2:00 saying that they weren't going to dismiss walkers to York on the first day because they needed a signed form.  So now all of us moms are trying to figure out how we are going to get our kids and let them know of the change.  We all were calling the office and getting different stories.  We were mostly told that they were going to be defaulted to car-riders.  Well I did NOT want to wait in the car rider line so I asked if I could just physically walk up there and pick Damon up.  They said I could so I let the other moms know.   We friends had the longest group text conversation going - it was pretty funny.   So thankful a neighbor let Tyler, Chris, and the girls play at her house while I went and picked up Damon.  That saved them some more walking and the girls were pretty done.  I met up with some of the other moms and we make it up to the school and started looking for our kids.  Some were coming out of the school and sitting down on the patio to wait for their parents in the car rider line.  We finally asked about them and we told that they were going to be dismissed later, ahh.  They dismiss the kids in stages so that they all don't come out at once.  So the principle just told us to go have them paged.   We gave the secretary the list of names we needed and we finally picked up all of the kids.  What a crazy process.  We walked back and picked up the other kids and finally made it home.  I really didn't feel like cooking dinner so I think we just had pizza or something.  I'm glad that I only had to do that once.  We started a car pool on Tuesday, so now I only have to do one drop off and one pick up, instead of two.  

Damon's school continued to give us problems all during the first week, I'm writing this too late to remember all of the details but Damon didn't go home the same way twice the whole first week.  The school kept telling us changes and we were trying to figure things out.  We suggested to the school to dismiss all the students at the same time and see how it goes - or at least in smaller increments.  They had been doing 15 min. intervals so that the walkers/bikers would be leaving the school 15-20 minutes after school got out.  So now Damon is now considered just a regular walker and he meets up with a mom by the gate to the neighborhood and I pick him up on the street.  Glad we're getting things sorted out.  

I thought my life would be easier once school started, but it is more stressful and busier than ever.  I have something scheduled every morning.  Not all of them are required, but they are things I like to do. Mondays is library story time and laundry, Tuesday is PiYo at the church, Wednesday my friend and I talked about doing a yoga class in town and then I will probably run errands or go grocery shopping.  Thursdays is preschool for the girls, and Friday is play group with the ward.  So we stay busy in the mornings.  The girls don't nap consistently anymore so if they are not asleep I can do things in the afternoon now which is nice sometimes but I miss the longer nap times too.  

A few other things that happened this week.  I went to the dentist for the first time here in Texas.  Our dentist seems really good but I wonder if she is very pro-active/aggressive in treatment.  Doug has had a lot of work done and now I found out that I need 2 crowns done.  It's pretty depressing to find your teeth falling apart.  I have had so many fillings in some of the teeth over the years that by now if the filling doesn't look good or if there is a crack there isn't much tooth left to hold the filling in so they have to put a crown on it.  Bummers!  Oh well, I just keep thinking that after the resurrection my teeth will all be perfect. :)

Saturday Kaylee helped Doug do some yard work in the morning and I made chili and Texas sheet cake for a ward party later that evening.  

Then around 11:00 we went to nearby Splash Town.  It's so hard to remember to take pictures when you are swimming, so I don't have any.  But we all had a good time.  It was bring a friend day for membership holders.  So we tagged along with one of our friends.  Admission is about $40 each, so it is pretty expensive but with the sale it was only $10 for each membership.  They only have 5 in their family, so we had to pay for two tickets.  It ended up being around $130 for all of us, but that's a lot better than $280.  Splash Town is a Wet 'N Wild water park.  They have a lot of fun slides and attractions.  There is a Wet 'N Wild Junior that the girls really enjoyed.  They figured out how to go down the little slides on their own and it was so fun to see them just giggling when they came out.  (the life guard let them go down together).  I waited in one long line with Damon and Chris, it was a fun ride.  Tyler waited in a nearby line with my friend and her two oldest.  Tyler got a bit scared on his ride, it was one were you were in a 4 person circular tube that shot you out into a big funnel and had you slide up the side and then back and forth until you exited the bottom.  He was pretty white when he came out.  Of course later he said it was awesome - not sure about that.  Doug went on a couple of rides with the boys while I watched the girls.  It's hard to keep everyone happy and together when you have different interests and heights.  We did the lazy river and wave pool - everyone likes those.  It was a fun day but we didn't last long.  We left around 3:00.  You couldn't take any food into the park so we all had a bunch of snacks once we got back to the car.  We had eaten an early lunch before we went. The girls had some pudding when we got home.  Kaylee made a fun mustache.

The ward party was well attended and the kids did pretty well.  The ward provided some BBQ pork and grilled chicken then everyone else brought side dishes, chili, and desserts.  There weren't enough side dishes but there was too much chili.  Most of the desserts were gone as well.  It's amazing how much a ward can eat.

Sunday I got in the mood to do something different with the girls' hair.  I tried to do the waterfall braid on Jenna but I couldn't get it to work, so I just did a one sided french braid.

I like this one of Kaylee, it is super easy and looks pretty.  Next time I think I will try flipping the top elastic the other way so that the bumps are all going the same way.

Busy busy week!  Now for the second week of school - ahh!