New School Year, Day 1

Sarah's first day of 1st grade

Here we go. The life of the carpool mom during the school year. Such is life when your school has no busses and/or your kids go to private school.

The thing I like least about it all? Is the putzing time, for sure. When there's not enough time to go home in between, but there's not enough time to get anything done either. Or, you just really don't have anything you need to do outside of the house.

8:30 Drop off Sarah

11:30 Pick up one extra boy for carpool

12:00 Drop off boys for orientation

1:45 Pick up boys from Trinity
Pick up extra 10th graders for Putt-Putt
Drop off 10th graders at Putt-Putt
Drop off extra kid from car pool
Drop off Jason at home

3:00 Pick up Sarah
Putz a while until 4pm (maybe get some groceries for lunches?)

4:00 Pick up Evan from Putt-Putt

And so it begins .....

Hums school lockdown

So this morning my garage door was broken, which meant I couldn't do the morning carpool because my van was very stuck in the garage. The other family did the morning run and I took the afternoon run, after the repair guy came to fix my garage door.

Since I was lucky enough to be at the school at the end of the day, I was witness to the drama that unfolded as our school was placed on lockdown. All of us parents were there for 3pm pick up and no kids were coming out. The security person who normally just helps direct traffic to make sure that everyone gets out of the lot safely informed us that there may have been shots fired in an area behind the school.

Honestly, I was feeling a little exposed sitting in my car in front of the school.

A few minutes later, two police cars pulled into the lot and the officers went inside the building. I was glad to see them there.

Soon, the police came back out and shortly thereafter, the principal and students started coming out. One officer stayed at each door until the parking lot cleared.

This entire situation lasted less than half an hour. While we were waiting for the kids I didn't feel all that worried or concerned. However, as I drove away from the building and listened to my son and his two friends telling their story, I felt huge relief. What a difficult situation.

I'm so thankful for the teachers and administrators whose choices kept everyone safe. I'm thankful for the police officers who showed up to rush into a potentially dangerous situation. I'm concerned that there may actually still be a dangerous situation somewhere in our city, just averted where we were for now.

As the school year winds down there seems to be quite a bit of concerning behavior happening at schools in our region. I hope today is the last of it.

At Concord Junior High School in Elkhart

Marian High School in Mishawaka

Back to School

Only eight more days till school starts again for our family. How about yours?

I've been counting down since 45 days. How about you?

I have spent only $5.43 on school supplies this year. How much have you spent?

How in the world did I do that? By keeping and using everything that came home last spring. You know those spiral notebooks that were only one quarter used? They're going back to school next week. I ripped out the used pages and smoothed down the edges of the cover a bit. J'man can use another quarter of them this school year.

Also, I haven't bought anything for Evan yet since he is staring middle school this year and we won't know what he is expected to have until he picks up his schedule later this week. It shouldn't be too bad and I'm actually thinking we'll be able to get most if not all of what he needs in mama's secret school supply stash also.

Are you ready for the first day of school? Has anyone figured out that whole carpool thing yet? Let me know if you have because it's next on my list.

Time Flies

Ugh. It's been too long. Really. We should talk more often.

So, we have participated in four Christmas celebrations, a birthday party, Christmas Eve church service, a trip to South Dakota and back and various other activities since we've updated here. And since then we've been doing laundry, laundry, laundry, and laundry. Oh yeah, and I forgot, Jon finished painting the kitchen and putting up new trim near the ceiling. It looks wonderful!

I've also been knitting since we've been back. I decided I would just make my favorite items as I have time throughout the year so they would be available when I wanted to gift them or have opportunity to do some selling.

I accomplished some holiday scrapbooking this Friday as well. I get much more done when I focus on current events and then go back to the ancient history when I have the time or the interest. For example, vacation from this summer is already complete and I'm almost done with Christmas for this year. However, lots and lots of previous birthdays and other stuff have yet to be even thought about. All in due time.

Oh yeah. The boys return to school tomorrow. Ahh. Yes, that is a huge sigh of relief. It is time. They need to hang out with some other kids. They are about to tear each other apart and I can only say "knock it off" so many times and still have it work.

The photo above is the dads and the kids walking on the lake after the big snowball fight. It looked like fun from inside the warm house where the moms were. They're great dads. And really good picture for being taken from inside the house, eh? We had a great time in South Dakota. More on that later.

Sarah puts e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in her mouth now. Don't get your fingers too close. She will put them in her mouth. Really. I'm going to have to step up the vacuuming around here.

Oh, I also helped some folks with some organizing projects. What fun that is. I finally found the thing I would do even if I didn't get paid to do it. Maybe some day I will get paid to do it. We'll see.

Guess that's it in a nutshell. We've been busy. And it's been great.

Deck the Halls

That's what we like to call a "stereo kiss." Since they were all dressed up I just had to take the opportunity for the group photo.

Last night the boys sang in the Winter Concert at their school. They were awesome! Under the direction of Mr. Swihart, the choir (including Evan) did a fantastic job with their musical selections. It was clear that they had practiced hard and that they were really having a great time.

The first graders (including Jason) also did a great job singing their songs which included one complete with hand motions! It was standing room only shortly after we arrived. Next year we have to remember to get there earlier and save some seats.

Sarah was content to play and sing a long once in a while in the audience. Afterwards we began the tradition of the "after party." Last night that meant going to McDonald's for Hot Fudge Thursdays. Jason thought that was just hilarious.

And just because I can:

School is Fun

These are our boys on the first day of school this year. They both look like they have something up their sleeve. We're all having a great school year so far.

Jason has Mrs. Karen Demske and she reads all kinds of really great books to them. She also gave Jason a packet of extra math pages (she called them "My Math Fun Pack") for homework after he told me and her that "this homework is too easy, I want some minuses."

Evan's teacher this year is Mrs. Sarah (Doty) Owens. He started participating in choir this past week and they have a concert in December. That should be very interesting. Evan also has been reading many great books. He talks about Jerry Spinelli and other authors that he has checked out from the library at school. That is so cool.