The First Week of 1st and 3rd Grade

Monday the 12th was the first day of school for the boys.  Easton was practically as excited as he is at Christmas and therefore was up bright and early to get ready.  So cute. 

Poor Jason had to report for jury duty that morning and had to miss out on the festivities.  He helped me get the kids up and at 'em and left as we went to the porch to do our traditional first day of school pictures:


Kindergarten was half day for Dalton last year so he's got a lunch box in his new backpack for the first time as well.  We actually don't have to/get to buy school supplies at our school but instead pay hefty per student fee at the beginning of the year which covers all their school supplies, technology fees (each kid has a laptop at school), all field trips and guest speakers and what have you.  Anyway, I always loved school supply shopping as a kid and miss it now.  So, every year each kid unnecessarily gets a new backpack.  This year Easton chose a light-up Superman backpack and Dalton chose Skylanders:


And then we were off!



We arrived at the school and headed in with the masses.  The first day is the only day we're allowed to escort the kids inside so everyone does.  Autumn too.  With her paper towel roll "sword" which she wielded in the face of the principal on our way in.  Eek!


First stop on our way in the door was Dalton's classroom.  Which was Easton's classroom last year.  And Dalton chose the same lil cubby that Easton had last year:



Mrs. H snapped a picture of us (for the end-of-year montages I make, I'm sure) and he found a spot at a table with some of his favorite friends from last year (four girls) and we bid him adieu:


Next it was off to the 3-4 pod and Easton's new classroom.  He waltzed right in:


They don't have cubbies but rather this way too tall, yet way too small rolling metal cart that doesn't have enough backpack hooks and the coat rack is out of the reach of children.  This should be interesting.  One boy "M" was shouting, "Eastie! Eastie!" and pulled over a chair right next to him for Easton to sit in.  Only problem is Easton doesn't not quite return this friend's enthusiasm.  He can be quite intense.  Furthermore, Easton's best friend Z is in the same class and Easton would, understandably, rather sit with him.  I felt awful.  We need to work on some advanced social skills like, "I want to sit with Z but you're welcome to come join us at this table" or whatever.  He worked on his name tag and stayed where he was.  Poor Sort of Friend M :(


Autumn and I bid Easton farewell as well and then spent the next hour and a half talking to Sort of Friend M's mom in the parking lot.  She is one of my closest friends lately and the mother of Autumn's best friend.  Those two factors are the only reason Easton and Sort of Friend M ever began a "friendship" in the first place, prior to this year they'd never had a class together and were only ever around one another when the rest of us were around each other. 

After our long chat, Autumn and I headed home and Jason showed up not too long after we did.  He was dismissed from his civic duty and took the rest of the day [mostly] off.  He cleaned the garage, we went looking for window coverings and tried to spy on the boys at recess.  They were supposed to have recess together but only Dalton was out.  Hmmmm. 

When we picked the boys up after school it seemed they'd had a fairly good day.  Learning more in the car on the way home, Dalton was on the verge of tears telling us about how boring it was having to listen for so long to all the rules.  Plus he's afraid of anyone yelling or "firm toning" him and his teacher definitely makes use of the firm tone.  It's kinda just how she talks.  Hope it works out okay for our sensitive guy.  And the kids don't get any recesses together after all.  That's not how it was last year nor how it's "supposed" to be at our school.  Dalton has looked forward to lunch and recess with Easton for years. I'm going to have to ask why it changed because we're all bummed about that.

On Tuesday Jason took the boys to school:


And Autumn and I headed to a couple of grocery stores:

Around lunch time we met up with some of our friends at the library.  They were all friends we made last year due to Dalton's half day kindergarten.  Now that all those former half day kinder kids are in full day school, the moms and little siblings (all 3.5-4) still like to get together.  So there were 4 moms and 4 preschoolers and the kids just played and played until it was time to get the big kids. 

When I picked the boys up, Easton was upset.  He reported his best friend Z told him he didn't want to be friends anymore and was referring to him as his "ex friend" and such.  I asked Easton what part he played in Z coming to this conclusion and he told me that he'd said that the 12 Greek gods that this boy believes in are stupid.  :/  Oh buddy.  That's not how we like to show God's love.  Granted, this friend was frustratingly trying to change game rules when it was Easton's turn and then chose another friend over Easton so Easton and Sort of Friend M talked about their shared belief in the one true God and Easton told Sort of Friend M that Best Friend Z believes in the Greek gods and they had a laugh at his expense.  Ugh, Easton!! 

That mom texted me as soon as school was over and we talked about each kids' side of the story a bit but we were also at Autumn's back to school afternoon and making our hour long drive down to Easton's dry land training for diving.  Lots to deal with. 

That night as we were getting ready for bed I found Easton sending an iMessage to the pal to apologize:

And we got the response that he did feel better now and "I'm sorry I didn't want to play with you, and only J_____.  And I forgive you."  Hopefully we'd learned something there.


On Wednesday Autumn and I ran the boys up to school in our jammies. 


Dalton was having a hard morning and did not want to go to school. :(  That makes me sad.  It's a big adjustment after a fun summer to go to full day school where they're really not learning much yet.  He did alright, though.


When we got home I took a shower and Autumn had a bath.  My view from my shower:


Then we did a little back to school shopping for her at Kohl's and headed to hip hop.  It was the last day.  She chose a little hat to go with her outfit to look more hip hoppy.  So cute.


Showing some of her freestyle moves:



She did the class with her best friend MJ.  MJ is Sort of Friend M's littlest sister.


After hip hop we all (me, Autumn, MJ, MJ's mom) drove over to a rec center with a fun indoor play area to join the same friends from the library the day before.  Well, 3/4 of them.  Again, they played while the moms (and one dad) visited all the way until it was time to get the big kids again. 


We hung out with a few friends playing after school.  We often do this when the weather is nice and I walk up to get the kids as opposed to going through the car line.


On Thursday, Autumn and I watched Beauty and the Beast and then headed to the "Pixie Skate" at our roller rink. 


It's a special session for kids under 6 to play games and have a snack and get comfortable on skates.  No grown ups allowed on the rink.  We joined a different friend of ours for that.  It's weird, the other little girl is not even a month younger than Autumn but she's going to be a year behind her in school!  Autumn did so great out there and happily skated the whole hour and a half (the little girl we went with did not):


We hung out with friends after pick up at school again.  Easton teased Best Friend Z again. :( This time for peeing on the playground.  Easton was horrified by this.  Where we live, no one ever just whips it out in the back yard or in public like a dog around here.  I could see it being a peemergency and finding a more out of the way spot to take care of business if there's no bathroom available (the school was locked), but dude, not right where everyone plays.  So, while Easton definitely should never call anyone names, I couldn't fault him for having an issue with the incident.  And I could totally hear myself calling one of my kids "Pee Pee Pants" or something.  Great example, huh? :)  Anyway, the other mom took it upon herself to correct Easton for his name calling and needing to respect others (hope she talked to her son too, though!).  I totally agree E needs to show respect and it needed to be addressed but dude, if I'm right there it really bugs me when other people try to deal with my kids that way.  It's one thing if I'm not around, of course, but if I'm there.....  That's always been a pet peeve of mine.  I may be alone in this, I dunno... 

On Friday, Autumn and I took the boys to school again.  I had a fundraising meeting I needed to go to right after drop off and Autumn had to come along.  She entertained herself with snacks and the Leapster under a desk.


After we left the meeting we stopped by a friend's house to pick up their son for a playdate.  They're moving this weekend and we offered to have him over to keep him out of the way so Mom could do some intense packing.  Autumn had been so excited he was coming over.  Apparently he'd been very excited too. Well, we got there and the little guy refused to come with us.  :(  Autumn was so upset.  And it's hard not to take it personally too, you know?  But, whatever.  So she was sad and we came home without the friend she'd been expecting so I tried to make it extra fun for her. 

Instead she helped me harvest a few tomatoes in the garden:


And we jumped on the trampoline together:



And we baked some banana bread together:




After our morning at home, we made a quick run up to the grocery store for a  few things, came home and whipped up some lunch to eat in the car and then headed over to the boys' school for the afternoon.  You see, despite having a school full of gifted children, we don't tend to score well on the state standardized tests (they start in 3rd grade).  Our school doesn't "teach to the test" by any means, like so many schools do.  And furthermore, we don't put much stock in "standard" anything at our school.  We have lots of creative learners and twice exceptional kids at our school and, well, most of us at our school don't put a lot of value on standardized tests.  However, last year's scores just came in and our school had the highest rate of improvement out of the entire school district.  So, they planned a big school-wide celebration because, even though my boys didn't take the tests last year, it is a community effort with the younger kids making encouraging signs to hang up around the school for the test takers and they had to be super quiet in the halls or give up afternoon specials so the specials teachers could administer tests. 

So, the school rented a couple of bouncy castles and provided free popcorn and popsicles and the much older kids did face painting for the entire afternoon.  Families were welcome to join in the fun so Autumn and I headed up.  The boys didn't hang out with us much at all, they were having too much fun on their own, which is fine by me.  So, I went around with Autumn who had a couple of popsicles and jumped in a bounce house, ate popcorn under a tree with MJ:


And got a lame kitty painted on her face:

We signed the boys out of school about 15 minutes early and headed home with a successful first week of school under our belts!  That night we watched "James and the Giant Peach" for a Family Movie Night.  We had listened to the audio book over the summer and we then like to watch the movie.  We recently did the same thing with "Matilda".  It's fun to point out the inconsistencies however, my crazy kids so far prefer the movie version to the books.  Hmmmm. 

Anyway, here's to a successful first week and many more to follow!
 

Last Day of Summer Break

I moved the Disneyland recaps to the days they actually happened back in April 27-May 3.

I don't know what Phineas and Ferb mean with "104 days of Summer Vacation".  This year, my boys had 66.  That's it. We've got 2 hours till Back to School night tonight where we find out each boy's teacher and classmates. 

We've had a full summer.  After last summer I said we weren't going to do that again but alas, we didn't have a lot of "free" time for things like play dates and trips to the zoo or museum.  We took in a few movies: Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Turbo, and Planes plus second run movies like Charlotte's Web, Ice Age 4 and Megamind.  We made it to Gramoo's pool several times.  We met up with friends at the library a few times (mostly mine, Dalton's and Autumn's friends--poor Easton).  We made it to one amusement park and one water park with passes the kids earned from summer reading programs.  They did read quite a bit and with our long drives to swimming, diving, and Gramoo's we discovered the joy of audio books.  It was a half an hour each way to swimming lessons and one of the diving locations is an hour's drive each way!  We listened to quite a few Roald Dahl books on CD.  They are all narrated by British actors so that proves a bit challenging at times. :)  As Easton will continue with diving, we'll have to find more audio books to check out.  Two hours in the car every Tuesday is a lot!!!

For scheduled activities, Autumn took a hip hop class with her best friend MJ.  Easton continued with diving lessons twice a week and he did a video game programming camp with a friend from school.  He still had drum lessons once a week at the beginning of the summer as well.  Dalton and Autumn both did two sessions of swimming lessons.  The kids did two different Vacation Bible Schools. 

Given that our Disneyland trip was in early May we didn't go anywhere at all this summer.  Well, the kids spent one night at Gramoo's in June.  At least we had a visit from G-ma and July!  Plus, the boys have a one night camping trip planned in a couple of weekends. 

I can't believe they're about to start 3rd grade and 1st grade on Monday.  I can't believe Dalton will be in school all day now and I'll have to pack 2 lunches every morning.  Autumn starts Pre-K the following Monday.  She'll be gone 3 mornings a week and before you wonder what all I'm going to do with myself, most likely two of those mornings will be spent volunteering in the boys' literacy classes (like I did last year) and the other kidless morning will be probably spent at the grocery store.

Easton will continue with diving and drums, Dalton will be starting piano (preparing to move to his instrument of choice: guitar) and he actually is interested in doing a hip hop class, and Autumn will be continuing with dance.  Even though we'll stay quite busy, it'll be nice to get back into more of a routine. 

And before I go, Easton's teacher and I worked together once again on individual montages for each of her students (meaning she gives me all the pictures and the song idea).  Chances are good she'll put Dalton in her class for the next two years as well and I'll be making them yet again!  But, anyway, here's Easton's 2nd grade year if you want to see....

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