First Day of School 2010

Patrick got Natalie up at 6AM today. She usually takes a long time to dress, eat, and get her stuff together, but today she was downstairs in about 10 or 15 minutes. I was hoping to buy a new "first day of school" outfit for my only girl, but we didn't find any cute outfits that she liked when we went shopping. Natalie really likes this outfit, and she wanted to wear it today, so I thought this was as good an outfit as any we could have picked out, even if it isn't "new".

Her bus doesn't technically arrive until 7:04AM, which is actually earlier than it has been the last couple of years so she sat on the sofa reading for a bit before I took her out to the bus stop. We got to meet out new neighbors from across the street and we were glad that their old bus driver, Mr. H, was still the bus driver. The bus had a different number, so when we got the card in the mail letting us know what bus Natalie would be riding, we were afraid that Mr. H had retired. He has been the best bus driver ever.

The whole district moved to earlier start times this year. I'm not sure why they did this, but I suspect it has something to do with doing away with the block scheduling in the high schools--seven shorter classes daily instead of four longer classes with the same class every other day ("A" days and "B" days). The move was a cost-cutting measure because then they didn't have to have as many teachers. As a result, Anthony's school days are longer. The one thing he likes about it is that he has a longer lunch and that lunch is at the same time every day. In any case, the earlier start times might be due to the different schools using the same buses and bus system.

Patrick got Alex up at around 6:45AM and Anthony some time after. Generally Anthony can get ready quicker than Alex. Today is the first day of school and everyone is a little excited, so everyone got ready sooner than usual.

At first Anthony was going to wear one of his older soccer practice shirts on his first day of school. His reasoning was that he was going to wear the same shirt tonight for his soccer practice. His reasoning reminded me of Patrick's reasoning--very practical. All Patrick had to do to make Anthony change his shirt was to tell him to wear something that the girls would like instead. :)

Alex didn't get a choice in what to wear. He had to wear a uniform, which he was unhappy about, or in other words, "standardized dress", as the school manual states. Patrick and I thought he looked good, as he always does when he "dresses up" even a little. He couldn't understand why he had to wear a uniform, especially when the high school kids don't have to wear uniforms. Apparently they imposed the uniform standard in middle school to get them ready for uniforms in high school but then they did away with uniforms in high school and kept them in middle school. However, not all middle schools in our area wear uniforms.

We usually take the kids out to eat after their first day of school, but that won't be practical tonight or most days this week since one of the boys has soccer practice nightly from Monday through Thursday. Instead we picked up P.F. Chang's last night and we watched "The Spy Next Door" from Netflix. The kids had a relaxing evening in preparation for this exciting day.