First Day of School

Today was Noah and Anna's first day of school. Noah started Kindergarten and Anna started 4th grade, truly hard to believe! They both got up around 6:45 this morning, we left at 7:15 to head to school. It doesn't start until 7:45 (which seems so early after our summer of sleeping late!) but we weren't sure how bad traffic would be that time of morning. Turned out traffic was fine, it only took 10 minutes to get to their school from our house.

Once I got both of them to their classrooms, Amaya and I went into the sanctuary to wait for mass to start. They had a special first day of school mass at 8AM. It was really nice, but I couldn't believe how grown up Noah looked sitting there with his class. I promised I wouldn't cry on his first day of school, but I had to blink back a couple of tears watching him walk down the hall with his class after mass! They really do grow up quickly...seems like yesterday he was just a little guy toddling around the house with his binkie!

After mass Amaya and I went to Dollar Tree (her reward for being good in mass) and picked up breakfast at McDonalds. Then we went back to the school for her preschool orientation. She was so excited! Her room is huge and so nice, she was in awe of all the amazing toys. Her eyes were bugging out of her head and she was just flitting from one thing to another. She starts school next Tuesday. She will be going on Tuesday and Thursday mornings this year, and on Monday Wednesday Friday next year. I'll be sure to take pictures on her first day of school...if I can get her to leave her uniform on long enough! It's a shame their school uniforms aren't hot pink, she isn't too happy with the navy blue/white!

More later,

Rebecca

**Once again having trouble with this journal...it won't let me add pictures!! Will keep trying, check back later, sorry!**

Journal update

I know it's been too long since I've written anything, but this summer has been so incredibly busy! So, I give up on trying to post all of the pictures from our summer...I'll have to just start with right now and move forward!

Kindra started school on Monday. She is in 8th grade at Edison Middle School, and seems to be enjoying herself. She has joined the volleyball team, practices start tomorrow. She is also auditioning for a choral performing group called Inventions and is trying out for the school musical. She is in 2 advanced classes this year (Language Arts/Reading and Algebra I), and has 2 classes that count for high school credit (Algebra I and Spanish I). She is also taking 2 dance classes, hip hop and modern. Fall dance classes started this week.

Anna doesn't start school until August 28th. The Catholic schools are 10 days behind the public schools this year because of construction at the Catholic high school. She is currently on a break from gymnastics, they start back up the first week of September. She'll be practicing from 4-8pm on Monday, Thursday and Friday when they start up. She is also taking ballet, tap and jazz...all on Tuesday nights. She's a busy girl, but that's the way she likes it and as long as she can keep up with everything (schoolwork) we'll continue to allow her to pursue gymnastics and dance. We finally received her meet schedule for this fall/winter. If anyone wants a copy of the meet schedule, let me know and I'll email you a copy.

Noah left town last Monday to spend some time in Texas with Pavan's parents. Tickets to Dallas from Sioux Falls were very expensive with such short notice, so he flew out of Omaha, which is about a 3 hour drive from our house. Pavan's mom flew to Omaha, had a 3 hour layover and then flew back to Dallas with Noah. They will both fly into Minneapolis this Friday to bring him back to us, we will be spending the weekend in Minneapolis checking out the new amusement park at Mall of America. They changed it from Camp Snoopy to Nickelodeon Universe last winter. Noah starts school August 28th, kindergarten! He is taking tap class on Tuesday evenings, and will start a beginning boys gymnastics class the first week of September. One of the little boys up the street from us is going to be in the same gymnastics class, so they are both really excited about that!

Amaya starts preschool on September 2nd. She will be going 2 mornings/week this year, and alternates between being really excited to start and being upset that she can't stay home with me. I think once she sees her awesome preschool classroom she will be ready to go! She is taking ballet and tap classes on Monday nights, and she will also start gymnastics the first week of September.

As you can see, I have been staying busy running kids all over town and keeping track of everything! However, I also find time to meet new people and have started volunteering around town. The possibilities for all of us in Sioux Falls are amazing, and it finally feels like we are getting ahead instead of just treading water!

Enjoy the pictures...sorry I've not been updating them more often. Life gets in the way, haha.

Rebecca

**By the way, I've been trying for 2 days to update the journal. AOL seems to be having some problems, hopefully they will get them resolved soon!