First Day of School

School started for Hayley on Thursday. Her fifth grade year! Wow, how did that happen? I got up and gave her some options for breakfast. She decided she wanted toaster strudel and eggs. As I went about fixing her breakfast she got ready for school. I mean dressed, hair done, teeth brushed, bag packed....EVERYTHING. And I never had to remind her. She is such a joyful, wonderful girl that I can't imagine my days without her. She is so full of personality and wits that she makes me laugh so much. I just hate that she is maturing SO fast. I like having to "parent" her. It never consists of more than "Please don't do that". She is no trouble at all. She really showed her age and maturity when she took off getting ready for school with no prompts from me. She came home from school laughing. She had taken a "test" on following directions carefully and failed. It was one of those tricky ones that the first directions says "Read all directions carefully before doing anything" and then it tells you to do a bunch of stuff but then the last one says "Now only do #2." Lol, oops. She only has a couple of friends from last year in her class but she informed me she got to see all of the others plenty. I asked her if seeing her friends changed her feelings about being homeschooled next year and she said no, awww. I love her so much. This is her headed out the door Thursday morning.
So we started school on Thursday with Ty also. I figured an abbreviated week would give us an opportunity to get into the swing of things without it being too overwhelming for Ty or causing any meltdowns for me. The lessons were modified to extend into next week so that "if", after all of this planning and organizing, we were missing something I would have time to fix it. He woke up fairly easily after not going to bed until the wee hours of the morning (he refuses to give up his summer schedule). He quickly listened to all of the information I had to give him about rules and expectations, routines, subjects we will cover, things we will do, etc. I let him choose what we would start with and he chose English. I was shocked. I thought for sure it would be math or history. So we got started.....with English. He was very sleepy and you could tell his brain was not with it. We worked through it though. I mean it's the first day, you can't possibly get out early on day one. When we got to math he was falling asleep watching his Math U See demonstration. I felt bad for him but we hung with it and finished in about an hour and a half. He said "We are done? Completely done? I can have recess and play wii the rest of the day done?" I said "Yes." He said "How many hours until we go get Hayley?" I said "About 4." He said "I LOVE homeschool!" LOL He quickly told Hayley that again when we picked her up. She didn't mind hearing that and I hope she continues to feel that way. I worry she will feel left out or something because I chose not to homeschool her this year. She has NEVER given me any indication that she feels this way and is very good about telling you if something is bothering her. So this is Ty's picture of his first morning as a third grader. I don't enforce a dress code, I enforce comfort. You can't see it in the picture but he also had a fleece blanket he kept snuggling with while he listened and worked.