The kids are coming!

So they come every other Wednesday and stay until Monday morning. They also come every Thursday night but its exciting every time. The only thing that's hard is figuring out what to feed those two. I'm HOPING their latest decision to eat in the cafeteria at school will help them branch out a bit - I still have NO idea where that came from. Anyway, I did get to pick them up on their first day of school and I'm SO glad I did.

The good news: They both survived. Blake, as expected, had a fabulous day and he just seemed so grown-up all the sudden. I think he's been waiting to enter the land of the big kids for so long now (he has 2 older cousins and his big sister that live in Fredericksburg) that he feels like he might be an official person now. He didn't really remember "learning" anything but he remembers playing on the playground and that chicken nuggets were served for lunch. Oh, and he ate all of his pineapple!

Ashley didn't really have the BEST first day of school. I am even more convinced that that stupid Tadpole Camp was, well, stupid. What they tell you is that all the 6th grade classes are in the same building so when we left her to find her class (granted she does have a map in the planner they had to buy - but that didnt' really cross her mind in a panic situation) she kept looking at the numbers above the doors and they were all 100 numbers. She was looking for 601. By the time, she found a teacher to ask, the tears were flowing. The first teacher just spouted off some really quick explanation of room 601 assuming she had any direction or was familiar in the least with campus (again, what was Tadpole Camp for?). Luckily, her 5th grade teacher is now a counselor at the Middle School and she actually took some time and gave her some good directions. She was late to her first class but because the school didn't prepare any of the other kids either, she was still the first one there. Shortly thereafter, her cousin Cooper showed up and I don't think his day was going all that smoothly either. You'd think it would get better with each class but her locker combination wasn't working either so a teacher had to help her between every class and she was late to every class. I think yesterday was a little bit better. Today was okay but she lost her permission slip for PE and her mom had to handwrite a permission note to swim (they get to swim this 6-weeks!). Turns out the PE coach is a stickler and wouldn't accept it so she had to walk laps while everyone else swam. She was devastated. They have block scheduling so she just does PE every other day so she'll get to swim on Friday. So I said, well give me that permission slip so its signed and you're good to go! Uh, she left it in her locker since she has until Friday. So even after that devastation, the lights are not clicking. So the school's complete lack of preparation at Tadpole Camp mixed with Ashley's "huh?" attitude mixed with the absence of anyone really challenging her to think for herself up to this point are making middle school a little rough. She's gonna get there though. I believe in her.

Here's a pic of Blake on the first day outside his class (that's his faux hawk at a funny angle - I think a full mohawk would be too disruptive according to the dress code). And he's still having a great time and making friends but he doesn't remember any of their names but he does know what's on their backpack.