School Begins!

Thursday, August 20th was the first day of school for my kids. They all had mixed feelings about starting, but mostly excitement. It will be quite a huge change having them gone 6 hours each day. Tanner - 5th grade - He has his first male teacher this year, Mr. Cox. Tanner isn't in his class with many of his friends, but seems to make them wherever he goes. He has so far loved his teacher. Mr. Cox plays the guitar and will pull it out during class. I just love when teachers incorporate music into their classroom. His favorite subject is Math. He constantly is asking me to print off math practice sheets at home.

Parker - 1st grade - This has been such a long awaited year. He is so excited to be able to be at school for the whole day and being able to eat in the cafeteria is also such an exciting milestone. I went ahead and put Parker & Carter in the same class again this year. They have Mrs. Skillicorn as their teacher. I am so impressed with her so far. I heard from other moms that she has quite a few boys - including a set of twins - so she definitely knows how to handle boys. I was so happy about this since I know my little guys can be a handful at times. Math is his favorite part of school. He also loves doing centers.

Carter - 1st grade - He likes eating lunch. His favorite meal so far has been pizza and he is excited that he can eat it every Tuesday. He says that Mrs. Skillicorn is a funny teacher. He also loves having 2 recesses (last year he only had one). I just found out that he has girls chase him during recess - funny boy!

Johnathan - 4th grade - This is the first year that he has had so many of his friends in his class. He actually has around 5 from our ward and especially loves that his favorite friend, Tyler Atwood, is also in his class. Johnathan started out the school year with Mrs. Tuckett as his teacher. Then the 5th grade ended up adding a new class and Mrs. Tuckett went to teach that class. Poor Johnathan - he seems to always get the new teachers every year or gets moved around. Luckily the change happened only 2 days into the school year. His new teacher is Mrs. Knutti. She is really into the cowboys and gives out "sheriff badges" as incentives every day. Johnathan has loved having her as a teacher. His favorite part of school is recess where he plays four-square with Tanner.

Johnathan, Tanner, Parker & Carter before heading out to the bus.

Camille - 8th grade - I will have to say that I can't believe I have an 8th grader already. I feel like it wasn't very long ago that I was in 8th grade myself. She is growing up way too fast - I just want to freeze time to keep my sweet 13 year old this age for many more years - Unfortunately it isn't possible, so I am trying to just enjoy every moment. This year was a lot easier for me to say "goodbye" and let her go to Junior High (last year I remember having such a hard time with my oldest going to a new school, having 8 teachers - let's just say the emotions were very high for me). I guess since this was her second year at this school and she had such an amazing 7th grade year, I wasn't as nervous to send her off this time.

She has some fun classes this time around - Chamber Choir, being a teachers aide for a cooking class, Dance 2, Algebra, PE, Health, Drama, Science, Foods, Keyboarding, US History, and English. She was very excited to be able to spend time with her friends she has missed during the summer.

Bradley - home with mom - I am now down to only one child during the day - what a HUGE transition! I almost don't know what to do with myself. I'm not sure that Bradley actually likes the idea of all his siblings heading out in the morning and not coming home for 6 hours. He has adapted well, but some mornings he cries when they leave. The first week he wanted me to entertain him all day long - what a week that was! I tried to entertain him as much as I could, but unfortunately I can't play all day and have things I need to do. Bradley has learned to play by himself more, which has been a huge blessing. He hates taking naps knowing that his siblings will be coming home soon. He must have great radar because as soon as they walk through the door he wakes up or wakes up right before they come home. Once the kids step foot in the door he can't quit smiling and showing them everything he has done during the day. The kids can't get enough of him either and enjoy playing with him for the next few hours.