First day of school 2011! (already behaving badly)

This year we have a crew of four headed to school! Granted, Siobhan is only headed to pre-school, and it's located in the same exact building where she's been going to day care forever, and she already started pre-school last spring.... but it's the first day of school dammit! Let me have my moment! (I just need to point out here, that spell check did not like the word "pre-school" and instead suggested "pee-school". Seriously?)

The first day of school is such a momentous occasion. Our babies walk out the door; ready for another year of learning; ready to go be educated; ready to re-unite with their friends; and ready to stop driving their parents nuts and fighting with their siblings because they've had no structure for so long. Yahoo I say, Yah-Hoo.

On our first day of school here in the Frugoli house hold it's tradition to take the kids out to eat on the first day of school. Al has historically done this because, well, in the past the first day of school for them has also been my first day with students. My new job, however, allowed a little bit of flexibility, so I had the honors this year.

Breakfast at the Apollo Diner:

Ready for Preschool!
Siobhan has the same pre-school teacher that Connor and Aisling both had.
We LOVE Miss Erica and all the other teachers at Little Feats Too!!

Ready for second grade!!
Gasp!
And ready for fourth grade.
Well; he is. I'm not.

Those of you wondering where Wyatt is in these pictures have obviously never been around the boy first thing in the morning. Let's just say; he is not a morning person! Not his favorite time of day, but a long shot! In addition, his bus picks him up at 7:15, so there would not have been time for him to join us out to eat.

Now, on to the behaving badly....
As any good parents who are invested in a quality education would do; we took our children to the fair on the first day of school. I took Connor and Aisling to see Bruno Mars at the fair. That was a phenomenal concert. We really had a blast ,and I was impressed at his talent. Great music.

We went to the concert with some of our best friends. It may have been a bit of a late night for these two:


Since my children also seem to have the memories of elephants; and since we did promise them back in June that the could do the bungee jumping ride at the fair; and since we didn't do it the first day we were there.... well, you know where this is going.


Of course, if you're going to keep the kids up late on a school night with a concert and fair rides; why not go for the trifecta and give them crap food at 10:00 PM?

Welcome back to school kids.
Welcome back to my kids, school.

Back to school!

This year brings us one sixth grader, one second grader, and one kindergartner. (Along with one toddler!) The first day of school was adventurous. Wyatt had an incident in his chair, and fell on the ground, getting road rash on his face; poor guy. So, you'll see a swollen eye in his pictures. However, he's doing much better, and sixth grade is off to a decent start. Connor had an eventful start as well. On the third day of school his class pet, a guinea pig named Zach died. The class wrote letters and helped bury little Zach. Aisling's start was a tad simpler! She is, however, exhausted to tears by the end of her first full day today.

school, marshmallows, and the circus

When you're screaming in the morning because you aren't given the peanut butter toast you want, you may have marshmallows as a consolation prize. Lesson learned.It turns out we didn't take the camera to the fair. None of the four times we went. However, I did promise you a unicycle story, so here it is. Aisling and Connor earned a free day at the fair for reading their summer books. They went with Al, as I had to work that day. Al reports that Aisling participated in one of the shows by riding on the shoulders of a person riding a unicycle while doing dog tricks. My crazy brave girl! When the kids got back from the fair, they had high aspirations of becoming carnies themselves. (Dream big kids....) I've included for you a video of their first ever circus. It's good stuff. Be prepared for the not-quite-so surprise ending.



School has started of course. We are now a proud family of fifth grader, first grader, preschooler, and babyroomer.
Wyatt's classroom is now upstairs, so he gets to ride the elevator multiple times during the day. I don't know what he thinks of that, but I would think it were cool if it were me. (But I am a very simple person).

Connor's teacher has a guinea pig in the classroom. He is extremely excited about that. I don't hear about much else about his day, but I know for a fact Zack the guinea pig is healthy and happy.Aisling is again in preshcool, with the same teacher, which we managed to convince her was actually way cooler than it sounded. She enjoys taking care of the new younger preschoolers, mostly by trying to talk to them while they are still sleeping during nap time.
Siobhan has, of course, also started day care. She is in the baby room, with the other babies. She doesn't tell me much about her day.
I have also gone back to work. Milton is a town that passes its school budgets notoriously late. Like, July late. For those of you unfamiliar with school spending, let me explain to you what that means. We put a budget together and present it to the town in March. They turn it down. We present another one to them in May. They turn it down. We then present another one in July. Thankfully, that one they passed. (Saving themselves about 10 cents each in the process. Thank GOD we fought for that money). Anyway, when the budget is not passed, we are not allowed to make any purchases. We were in desperate need for a new accessible bathroom for our needy students. This was not able to be started until August. (remember, the budget). we go back to school in August........ The bathroom was created by taking away 2/3 of my office. So, when I returned to work I literally had NO office. It was gutted. Now, remember back to May, folks. I was scheduled for a C-section on May 19th. Instead, on May 7th my water broke. This left me no time to get my room cleaned up for the summer. So, all my stuff was thrown into boxes and stored in random places throughout the building. The first few weeks have found me scouring the school in search of curriculum, pens, pencils..... I finally got my office back today, but have no phone cord, or computer cord. *sigh*. At least we'll get a new bathroom!

We redid the girls' bedroom. We will post pictures, once we actually take some. Aisling now has a little reading lamp above her bed. Tonight, for some odd reason, she decided to put Barbie into the lamp. Lo and behold, Barbie's hair melted to the lamp. Aisling decided to peel it off. The screaming was impressive. All of her poor little fingertips got burned. I would assume she's learned her lesson, poor baby.



Just being silly:
the making of the silliness:

What he did last summer

Connor came home from school on Friday with a really great piece of work that he had done. It was a piece of paper folded into four sections. Each section described something he had done this summer. It was great, and I could tell he worked really hard on it. Here it is:
Unfortunately, it scanned really lightly. But, what is says is this: "I played baseball"; with a picture of him playing baseball. "I played with Cain"; with a picture of him and our neighbor. The next one is an image of him swimming. The last one (in yellow) says "I had a baby", and it shows a picture of me (or Al, the story changes) laying on the bed holding Siobhan over our head. How totally cute! It's a great image, as we do that a lot to the baby. I love how he says "I had a baby"! It just cracks me up! This one's a keeper for all time!

Overheard at the dinner table...

"The lady who gives me my hot lunch", says Connor,
"is waaay older than grandma.
She's 28".

Kindergarten

So Connor's going to kindergarten in the fall. I used to laugh when I heard of other moms crying when their kids went off to school. "Poor co-dependent saps" I used to think. Well, I guess I am not much better! Connor's been at the same day care since he was 6 months old. It' s pretty weird to think of someone else molding my kid for six hours a day.

We have a form to fill out with some questions about our kid and his or her placement in school. How do I describe my first born on one sheet of paper? How can I be sure that the one paper will sufficiently describe his strengths and weaknesses so that they will know who he is? Now, just so you don't think I am completely neurotic, I had a really really crappy education. Seriously, grades K-12 were all bad. I do not want that for him. I am a teacher, I have seen the good and the bad in our school system. I want him to be comfortable, happy even. I am sure that he will be successful; we have an amazing support network of friends, but I also want him to enjoy learning. It took me 25 years to get to the place where I actually wanted to learn.

I could also play that game of "oh, it happened so fast, I can't believe he's already 5!" That sounds so cliche, but it's true too. Of course, I have loved these 5 years, and am excited about the next few changes.