First Day of School, 2013

 Oatmeal and berries, a great way to start Middle School. She looks too old in that pic.  Both girls had very specific hairdos that they wanted. It sounded something like this - Sophie-"I want it down and curly and pulled back on both sides." Emma-"I want it to have a bump in the front, small braids on the sides that go back into the pony tail, which should be straightened so it's not frizzy looking."  Girls.  Myles just said he didnt' want it spiked.

 Sophie was excited one minute, and shaking with fear the next...wasn't sure how the morning would go once we actually got to the school.  But, she loved her outfit!

 My handsome boy, off to first grade.

 I should probably say that nobody wet themselves, I had just watered my plants.

 They also all loved their backpacks. Each is such a good representation of the kid wearing it.  Em's is a Van's bag from the skate shop, Myles is self explanatory if you've seen Monsters, Inc., and Sophie's has glitter and lights up.

 Walking to school for the first time! It was so nice!

 Myles meeting his teacher and handing him a letter explaining certain things, but the teacher greeted Myles with a "Myles, I just read all about you, we are going to have a great year!" and handed the letter back to Brian. (It was a print out of an email I sent to both Myles and Sophie's teacher).  Myles loves his teacher already.

 Sophie, this girl kills me, she is so like me in some ways.  She was about to have a nervous breakdown at this point, whimpering and saying she didn't know what to do.  We literally had to shove her through the door to get her to go in the room.  Below, she actually sits next to the boy in the yellow in the bottom right of the picture,  but she's standing over by the California state map....the kids couldnt' figure out the seating chart.

 I had told her if she has a hard day, when she walks outside to stop and take a deep breath and look at the mountain, we'd be up there waving at her.  For perspective, both the middle school and the elementary school sit at the bottom of the back of the mountain, near the Mitchel Canyon entrance.

 Parent's breakfast at the elementary school, Em wanted a cup of coffee to drink as we walked her over to the middle school.  She starts 20 minutes later then Sophie and Myles.

 We just cross the street and walk down about a block and we are at the middle school.

 She's just about to walk in the door in the above picture.  Her schedule is crazy compared to what I had at her age. It's different on Wednesdays because of the shorter day, and she has certain classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and different classes on Tues and Thurs.  So basically her first day was a short day, so today her classes will be in a different order, at different times....and she panicked as we were walking to school because she forgot her schedule today.  Thankfully for her, I have been more worried about it than she was, so I had it memorized and wrote it out for her.

 After we got the kids off to school, we got up on the mountain. Sadly, it was only a half day, so we only had until noon to run. We drove to the top and parked, did the little loop that goes around the summit, then headed down Summit Trail to North Peak.  I knew climbing back up to the summit was going to be rough because it was super hot already and not much, if any, shade, so I turned around and started the climb, while Brian continued to the summit of North Peak, then down that summit and up the main summit. Then he ran down the fun single track of Juniper trail to the campground where I picked him up.  Here's his recap of the morning.

So at the end of the day, all the kids had great first days. They loved all their teachers and made friends already.  Em loves everything about Middle School.  She loved all her teachers also, and changing classes and eating outside in the courtyard and PE and....pretty much everything.  I'm looking forward to a great year!