Summer Comes To A Screeching Halt

I was raised in the land of Southern California. Now, I know that plenty of you out there despise Southern Cal, but it has many, many fine points. Moderate temperatures year round, an ocean breeze at 5:00 pm sharp, plenty of great shopping, entertainment, and restaurants, and beautiful beaches. One thing that it offered that I failed to fully appreciate as a child was that summer doesn't end there until Labor Day. We always went back to school somewhere between September 4th and the 9th--at least a few days after the holiday that is supposed to signal summer's end.
We clearly were not considering ideal school schedules (or ideal weather patterns and climates) when we decided to move further north. Here, school starts in the middle of August, when we should still be relishing in family vacations, swimming pools, homemade ice cream, etc. In fact, I always thought that those "dog days of summer" came in August. So why in the name of everything good would they send kids back to school? It was 98 degrees today (those of you in Phoenix are jealous, I know) and all the moms were completely sweaty (not just lightly perspiring) when we picked up the kidlets after school. Yikes! And there was no way that I was sending them in anything but summer clothes--all those adorable fall styles with "back to school" written all over them won't be pulled out for ages. No sirree, my boys started school today in cargo shorts and short sleeved shirts, with a cold water bottle in their backpacks. Aren't they cute?
Henry started kindergarten today, something that has caused me great anguish all summer, wondering if he's mature enough, if he knows his letters well enough, if he'll suck his thumb in class! He did marvelously well and thankfully didn't notice my eyes welling up when we said goodbye. I love his teacher, Mrs. R and I can tell that she will be great for him. And because Heavenly Father knew that he can be a bit on the shy side when he's not around people he knows, He made sure that Henry had four other kids in his kindergarten class that he already knew from church or preschool. Here he sat with three of them while we waited for the class to open: I already adore Kimball's teacher, Mrs. C; after meeting her yesterday for a preview of the classroom with Kimball, I can already tell that she is a dream teacher for a kid with special needs. She has already thought of lots of things to help him succeed including placement of his desk, hand fidgets, a book nook for breaks from the stimuli of the class, and room to move around. I fully expect Kimball to thrive in her class. Yeah! We have been so blessed with his teachers.
At 3:15 I picked up my boys, who were so excited to tell me all about their day. We came home for brownies and cold milk and to relax. Bummer that by tomorrow, they'll probably have homework--since it'll only be August 22nd, it feels like we should be headed to the lake or bumming around the pool, still being too lax about bed time and housework. Oh well. They don't realize that they've been cheated out of two and a half weeks of summer.

At least I'll have a few hours every day when they are at school and my other two are asleep. That'll leave more time for blogging!

Alli & I headed back to school (AFTER LABOR DAY) in 1980 (1st grade and 2nd grade, respectively.)