Since he was home, he came to surprise Katie at the bus stop! She loved it, of course!
Category Archives: School
The school gang.
They ride separate buses but arrive at about the same time so everyone is always at the stop together—or at least together in Stacey’s yard as we all head to our houses.
The besties are home again!
Just as with Owen I have to physically get Katie off the bus. The bus driver called their names over the radio/intercom and then they have to tell her their name and I have to give her my name and she checks the list. I’m assuming this will get slightly less involved as time goes on and the bus driver learns who we are.
As soon as they got off the bus they crossed the street together (holding hands).
I didn’t get much info out of her about her first day before she was asking if she could go play at Sophia’s house (yes, after she got play clothes on) so I sent over this craft project:
She did say it was fun. I told her she would have to tell us more about it later.
I’M FREE!!!
Both kids are officially at school full time!! No tears…just excitement!
Katie’s first day of Kindergarten!
This is an idea I saw somewhere and decided to do for Katie…she will wear this shirt on the first day of school until she’s a senior in high school!
BESTIES!
There are only three kids at the bus stop!
Katie is in the seat right above SCHOOL.
Our 3rd grader is home!
He and Nate zoomed off the bus and pretty much immediately asked to go ride bikes!
Katie’s kindergarten open house
Mrs. Valentine
The huge playground (one of three!).
Getting to check out a bus!
She went straight to the very back seat!
That’s a “bike path” on the right. The raised circular structure on the left is for a specific game (Owen’s school has a smaller one).
Back inside to check out the cafeteria (no pics) and the gym! She made a beeline to the rock wall!
Owen’s first day of 3rd grade!
I had to go in and wake him up at 7:30!! This year he gets on the bus at 8:25—that’s a half hour earlier than what we were used to in Virginia!
Katie holding Owen’s hand as he was waking up.
Owen and his bestie, Nate (2nd grade):
They are the only two at their bus stop!
Aquatic Center Fundraiser
Papa and Grannie took the kids to the local aquatic center for a school fundraiser while Tom and I went out for our anniversary. I sent them with our waterproof camera!
Third grade open house!
Papa went with us while Grannie stayed home with Katie. Owen’s classroom is on the second floor. They have a multitude of desk areas—they have standing desks, bean bags, lap desk, etc…so the kids can figure out where they work the best. They also sit in a different seat each day.
Mrs. Gradner—I love her already!
Wiley, the school mascot.
And a few random pics of his classroom.
Making gym shirts
The kids needed gym shirts this year with their name on them so I got a tiny bit crafty.
We met Owen’s principal and teacher today!
This morning was a “meet the new principal” playground playdate—that I completely forgot about until it was almost over. It’s a good thing we live three minutes away so we were there in a hot second. We met the principal (he seemed very nice) and the kids played and had icee pops.
This is one of two playgrounds at the school (this is the one for Owen’s side). It’s nice but seemed a little small for as big as the school is (comparing it to his last school). They do have a huge grassy area and a huge blacktop area as well, though.
As things were wrapping up, I asked the principal if there was any way we could take a quick walk through the school or schedule something and he offered to take us through right then! So we walked the halls and even met Owen’s teacher!! She’s really nice and I have a good feeling about her. Yay!!
The kids’ new schools!
I had to pick up missing paperwork at Owen’s school today so we took a picture… And then Katie wanted one at her school so we did that, too.
We are now Wildcats!
Today was the Proof of Residency/packet pickup for school. It was quite the process overall as we were there for about an hour, though most of that was time doing other stuff like signing up for library cards, talking to people about school programs, shopping for spirit wear, etc. Of course they only had Katie’s packet (?!) so it was a bit more involved to get Owen’s info (they were able to print some but I’ll have to pick up the rest at his school in a few days).
End of year secret books!
I’ve had them for awhile now but haven’t read them. Until today.
Why?! Why did I do that? Because I’m an overly emotional sap anyway and add an imminent move to that? No hope. /Bawl
I know this is supposed to be a surprise but I really want to share them with him now. I’m hoping he will remember these teachers enough so that what they wrote still has meaning when he’s graduating high school. It’s only 10 short years away…
We ran into friends at the school playground!
This is the kind of stuff I’m really going to miss… We went to the school playground (like I promised Katie we would) and friends of ours were there!!
Owen pretending he was on a spaceship. 🙂
Last day of school: Field Day surprise!
After Owen gave me the yes/no business about his end-of-year grade party, I decided to surprise him and just show up at the whole-school field day event. (I had asked if he wanted me to go and he said no again.) He was happy to see me and eagerly let me take pictures of him with his friends. 🙂
The school as I approached.
Mohammed, the kid Owen ran around with the whole time.
Every kid wore one of these. They got a sticker each time they completed an event/game/activity.
I get kind of choked up when I see this. I don’t want to leave.
Racing off to the next thing.
I was surprised when Owen wanted to do cup stacking—I wondered how he knew how to do it because he’d never mentioned it.
And then I watched him do it—ahhhh, he has NO idea how to do it. (I later showed it to him on YouTube and of course he loved it.) You can watch it in the video compilation at the bottom of this post.
We saw our friend Gavin and he wanted to give Katie a hug but she started to be shy.
Miss Christina, Katie’s teacher.
Showing me he can now climb to the top. When we were there for back to school night, he refused because he was scared. We told him he’d be able to do it by the end of the year.
He mastered the rock wall, too!
This is about as high as Katie gets. They don’t play on this playground in her class—the pre-k kids have their own smaller playground.
Waiting for face (or arm) painting.
Finally getting over her shyness with Gavin.
Katie wanted to get her face painted but the lines were pretty long and I wanted to be able to follow Owen around, so I told her not unless the lines went down. I turned around to talk to someone for a minute and when I turned back, she was getting her face painted by Miss Anne (our friend and Katie’s teaching assistant). I asked Mrs. Stuhlman (Owen’s kindergarten assistant who I had been talking to) how that happened and she said she just took her over and sat her down—the privilege of being a teacher! So Katie got to cut ahead of like five kids!! Mrs. Stuhlman asked if she might get Katie in her class next year…and I had to give her the bad news that we were moving. 🙁
Owen getting an alien on his arm.
I let Katie do some of the games that didn’t have big lines. She was waiting to throw baskets (video below).
Katie with AJ, a neighbor girl who is in first grade. She’s a tiny thing.
I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten my face painted (that wasn’t a thing back in the day) so when the grades were switching areas and there wasn’t a line, I sat down to get a quick flower to match Katie’s. Gorgeous work as usual by Anne and her daughter!
Lining up getting ready to switch to the fields for flag games and kickball.
I may have to redo this photo, but you can see three tiny black dots in the sky. They were dragonflies! The field was swarming with hundreds of them! It was the strangest thing!!
After flag games were done, Katie and I left. It was HOT and we hadn’t planned for it (I was in jeans and a black tee shirt and we hadn’t brought water—and we hadn’t thought it was going to be so hot and humid). Thankfully our neighbors stayed and got a few pics and videos (see below).
Owen waiting for kickball.
Having a BLAST in the water!
Me and Katie back at home…
I am SO glad I went and was able to take lots of pictures. We are going to miss this school so very much…
Owen’s last day of second grade!
A mom and Owen trifecta:
Headed off to the bus:
And first and last day comparison:
Owen’s second grade party
So, Owen’s second grade party was today and I had asked if he wanted me to go and at first he said yes—which I was excited about because he never wants us to come to anything (when did he turn 14 by the way?)—but then the night before he changed his mind and said no. 🙁 I should have just showed up anyway because I really wanted to get some pictures, but I thought I would do as he wanted. But, I saw some friends walking in as I was walking out (I was there picking up Owen’s end-of-year book signed by his teacher) and asked them to take pics if they could. These are what she sent:
Owen & Maddie: Bus stop buddies for three years!
Last photo with Miss VanDerhoff
Beginning and end of year:
Songs from Pre-K
Beach Day!
Fridays are sprit days at school. We don’t dress up for them unless it’s easy…and beach was super easy. 🙂
Surprise! Today was Katie’s last day of Pre-K!
Yes, I said surprise. I had NO idea whatsoever—I just assumed they finished next week along with the rest of the school.
So, I dropped her off and a short while after I got home, I got a text from the class assistant (our friend) saying Whoops, they must have dropped the ball and forgot to send home the sheet about today being water day and could I bring a suit and towel for her. So I ran back to the school and dropped the stuff off and put her sunscreen on (they are not allowed to do it). Water day should have been my big clue since we also did it last year, but my brain is going in so many different directions that it didn’t even occur to me that water day was the last day of school. So I went to pick her up and saw her walking out with her art folder AND IT STILL DIDN’T HIT ME until the teacher said something about it being the last day and they enjoyed having Katie… Huh? What? Ahhhh, then it all became clear. Of course I was thinking WHAT THE HELL?!?! How could I not have known that today was the last day? Well, it wasn’t on the school calendar (and I live by my calendar). So I was bummed I didn’t have teacher gifts ready…so I will take them in Monday when I drop off some educational stuff for the classroom (donations as we purge).
KISS AND RIDE IS NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.
A quick visit to Owen’s classroom.
I needed to surreptitiously give his teacher his end-of-year book to sign so I made an excuse to pick him up. He was excited because they’ve been studying monarch butterflies and they are hatching some in class and he wanted to show me.
Other stuff from his classroom:
Artwork projects in the hallway. I asked him what pieces he drew.
The corn, apples, and pumpkin section:
The horse (which Katie said did not look like a horse):
And this—which I’m not sure what it is, but he was upset that someone scribble-scrabbled on it.
He did the red ladybug on the far right.
Owen’s final 2nd grade field trip
A friend chaperoned and posted a few pics on Facebook. Can you find Owen?
He’s not in this last one. 🙂
Look at the size of this school!
This is Owen’s school. It’s so big that they divide the kids into East and West depending on whether your address is odd or even. I think it was something like 1500 students and it’s only grades 1-3.
Our last bingo night—and we won two baskets!
Headed off to our last PTO Bingo Night! 🙁
We actually donated a big snack basket this year (I’ve been wanting to donate one for awhile now) and I debated buying raffle tickets because we don’t need anything… But it was to benefit the school so why not?! I bought 20 and gave each of the kids five tickets to put in whatever they wanted. Katie put all hers in the Emoji Basket and Owen put his in an Art Basket. I spread the rest out between some Chocolate Baskets and the Art Basket.
Owen wanted to sit with his friends…
So the first bingo game starts and Katie literally had every single number called and we were sure she was going to win…but she didn’t. But imagine our surprise when they brought up the first basket—one of the chocolate baskets—and we won!! Woohoo!!
Soon the Emoji Basket came up and I happened to record it just in case…
All night Katie kept saying “I can’t believe we won TWO baskets!” 🙂 This makes up for three years of winning nothing!
This was the kindergarten chocolate basket. We really really lucked out—everything from M&Ms to s’more fixins to brownie mix to sandwich cookies to truffles to camel milk chocolates!!!
And enough emoji stuff to choke a horse!!
A boy and his umbrella.
I usually take Owen down to the bus stop when it’s raining so he doesn’t have to deal with an umbrella on the bus and at school. But today he wanted to go himself so I let him.
