School!

Princess is in 4th grade. Her teacher is quite nice and young, as opposed to her 3rd grade teacher who was older and, though a good person, tended to be severe. She's thinking of joining the extracurricular choir since I've decided that having them both in a sport as well as school as well as their church activities would put me under very quickly. Her class didn't seem exceedingly full as I escorted her to the outdoor access to the room where she will now spend the majority of her waking hours. Her body language was defensive and miserable, but not as bad as I expected it might be on the first day of school in what still feels like a new town. She looked so much older than her peers, towering at 5'3", carrying a purse with her glasses in it, and already turning into a physiological teen.

Tag bounced right into his classroom with nary a backward glance for his old mum. His teacher is also young and seemed to have an easy-going attitude that I think will make all the difference for him this year. His last teacher's level of oppression increased in direct proportion to his level of difficulty in class, and the converse was true as well. It was a nasty spiral. I'm really hoping that this teacher will give Tag enough breathing room to feel like working is his own choice, without allowing him to let his work get lazy. It's a tough balance and I know I'll be conferencing with her on this one several times over the next year.

Pebbles has her Dibles (sp?) test this morning. She was to identify the letters of the alphabet (cake) and identify the letters that make the sound with which some simple words begin. We find out tomorrow who her teacher will be and then she starts full day kindergarten on Thursday. She's so very excited about school, but the thing about which she's most thrilled is the idea of eating lunch at school like her older siblings. I'm trying not to dampen her enthusiasm for the activity which caused me the greatest discomfort in school at any grade level. Whatever.

Frieda is already soaking it up. She has the tv all to herself, her pick of lunch options, and either mom or dad at all times since we're working to stagger our different obligations. Life is tough, being the youngest.

My school is starting off a bit rough. My books are all online but the access codes are invalid. The technical difficulties are fairly easy fixes, though, and I fully expect to be able to dive in in the next few days. My volunteer hours with the Angle Food Ministry, Bountiful Baskets food co-op, cub scouts and teaching at church all keep me fairly busy. I've been preserving boxes of peaches and cherries over the past month or so, polishing up a food storage plan, and trying not to freak out too much that Man has decided to go to graduate school rather than earnestly hunt for a job. My successes have outweighed my failures, even though those failures have been slightly spectacular at times. I've made a few friends out here, including a couple of walking partners. We average between 3.5 and 4.5 miles a day. I've also made friends with a young, aspiring author in need of a pool of beta readers for a series that will begin publishing soon. There's a quilting group at church that meets every Wednesday that makes a huge stack of blankets to give to shelters around the holidays, a playgroup that meets on Tuesdays, a group that travels up to the big city to work in the wet pack cannery once a month (have you ever three 100 gallon pots of tomato soup all in a row before? Neither had I!) and temple trips about once a month. Am I busy? You bet your sweet Aunt Sally!

Man starts school next week. His degree program is Masters of Innovation: Game Design and Development. The program is engineered to teach people how to make games and build business that make games. He hopes to be an entrepreneur in the gaming industry. Honestly, I really hope it works out. He has already invested a lot of time and effort into learning how each aspect of game development works, teaching himself how to use various software programs and beginning his learning in several programming languages.

I'm still low carbing it but took a day off yesterday to celebrate a great new bread recipe and our latest bunch of peaches that "need to be used." Today I get back to it with a breakfast of chicken breast and asparagus.

And maybe I'll sneak in a nap.