We are back in school and in the routine of school life. We have been working into doing everything a little slow this year. My school job started but my school academic starts this week. Girls start their theater class this week along with Allison's dance and Robyn's choir. I appreciated not having everything start at the same time. Its enough of an adjustment just getting everyone up, dressed and out the door early in the morning!
We have had back to school nights, Allison has been helping 7th graders tour the junior high, Spencer started an ACT class after school for two weeks and all the trips to the stores to buy school supplies. I wish teachers in the upper grades could give you a supply list before schools start. Spencer was still working a few nights a week as he had to wait for them to hire another person before he could go down to working one night a week. It has made for some really busy, tiring days for him. School, ACT prep, work, homework and fitting in some YM activities and a dance have kept him busy and out of trouble. If he isn't busy he is sleeping! He is still taking the bus to and from school as the parking lot at the high school is a bit scary for me.
Allison is enjoying all her classes and being part of PALS - a group that helps out new students. She was very disappointed when she realized that she could not do her school play and her center stage play as they are scheduled for the same time this year. Allison is either doing our home as a personal progress project or is just working on brownie points. One day she and her friend decided to organize and inventory all our food storage room. One day another friend and her decided to clean out our sand box and pick all our tomatoes and peppers for salsa. Last night I came home and she had deep cleaned out piano with q-tips. All those things I met to get to and haven't for a long time. So Jeremy and I restocked our food storage yesterday and I made salsa this week. We figured out a carpool with her friends this year so I only drive to the junior high one day a week.
Robyn had a rocky first day of school. She is in a split 3/4 grade class with two part time teachers. One of her teachers had to quit the week before school started. She has been replaced with a really good teacher but it made the beginning of school not quite as organized as it would have been. She came home trying to smile the first day but then burst into tears. She had gone to lunch with her class who splits the 3rd and 4th grade times. But they kicked all the 4th graders out just as she sat down so she went and left without eating her lunch. And her lunch was put with the 4th graders so she lost her new lunch bag. And recess aides didn't understand that their class gets to do the 3rd and 4th grade recess. So just lots of confusion and tears and emotion. But she has really nice teachers who have straightened everything out and now she is in the swing of it. She just had to realize that her class will do the best of both grades which means it won't be quite like the other 4th grade classes and thats OK. For example she was upset that they had to make bridges out of legos which is a 3rd grade project. But then she realized she really likes legos and its a lot of fun so its OK to be different. I still get to walk with her and a friend to school every day but Wednesday. Its a great way to spend some time with her in the morning. She has been putting up motivational thoughts:
Taylor is getting used to getting up and going to school again. He has been laughing these last few weeks at random times. It has been a long time since he has been smiling and laughing so we are soaking it in. Yesterday Spencer was getting his food handlers permit online which met we were all listening to a loud presentation for an hour on how to handle food. Robyn pointed out that I was failing at everything they were saying and Taylor just burst into loud laughter. Wish we had caught more of it on film. It was awesome. We have managed to go to the pool a few more times. We even had a ward pool party one night after it closed. I always feel like such a party pooper when I make kids leave activities at 9:30 on a school but they are so used to it by now that when I give them the choice they all choose to go home and go to bed so the morning would be easier.
We have had some fun things these last two weeks. We were able to go up to Meredith's wedding reception. She was our respite worker for years and was and is such a big part of our kids life. It was awesome to see her getting married and to a great guy. Jeremy even did some crazy driving so that we could hit Trader Joes on the way home and stock up on some study snacks ie chocolate for me. Jeremy and I were able to go up Provo Canyon one evening for an acoustic guitar concert. It was awesome to lay around with a picnic and enjoy having to snuggle in sweat shirts after Jeremy spent the day from 6 am to 4 pm working on photo shoots. We were both ready to just hang out in the cool canyon breezes and visit. It was so nice that this last Friday we took all the kids and went up the canyon to camp. Having me work Friday meant that we all got to enjoy practicing loading up the trailer and thinking of what we needed to bring. Its been a while. Camping with girls is a little different. Robyn had a backpack for her stuff and then another backpack for her doll's stuff.
We had a great time roasting hot dogs and marshmallows (busy mom meant no s'mores stuff but luckily kids just rolled with it). And it was super cold that night which felt wonderful. Although Taylor kicked off all his blankets and froze so we need to figure that out better before next time. Jasper was in dog heaven especially when we explored a trail the next day. One of my favorite parts was watching Robyn try to wrap roll dough around her hot dog and getting frustrated because she didn't think it was perfect. Allison made a minor adjustment and Robyn just beamed that now it was perfect.
