first day of middle-school jitters

This morning we woke up bright and early and got ready for school. The kids were super excited. We immediately started back into the pattern of reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon out loud while the kids ate their breakfast, and then after they finished getting ready, they read their own books until it was time for Ashley and Josh to go. 

 We hoped that Ashley would get Ethan's 4th grade teacher. She was so amazing and made learning interesting and fun. But we got a different teacher, who seems just as interesting and fun. Ashley is happy about her situation.

Ethan got into his Cambridge program, which will be accelerated classes. I hope he can keep up! He also didn't get into band (we dragged our saxophone back to the swamp for no reason...), so he gets to take P.E. and keyboarding. He seemed fine with P.E., and hopefully it will be a good experience.

Josh is in a second/third grade class this year. I'm not sure what that means, but a neighbor whose 3rd grader is in Josh's class was concerned that her son was in a 2nd grade class went in to ask the teacher why her son was with younger kids. The teacher explained that they picked younger kids who are smart, independent students to share a class with the older kids (maybe there weren't enough students for an entire other 2nd or 3rd grade class?) So it will be interesting to see how that works out.

Ethan thought it was cool that he got to walk the kids to their bus stop this morning. His bus doesn't come until nearly 2 hours later. That left him with a lot of time to be nervous about starting middle school. He paced around until I told him to read for a while. After reading, he paced around until I told him to go say a prayer to calm his jitters.

Chris was going to give the kids back-to-school father's blessings for Family Home Evening tonight, but Ethan asked if he could have his this morning. So Chris gave him a sweet blessing, and Ethan seemed to relax a little.

Luckily one of the girls at the bus stop has already been through 6th grade, and has a perky, positive outlook on life. She had a lot of fun in middle school, and it was nice for Ethan to hear her excitement about going back to school.

It will be a crazy year of new experiences here in The Swamp. Can't wait to see what happens!