First Day Interviews

ava 3rd interview from Emma Montandon on Vimeo.
levi K interview from Emma Montandon on Vimeo.

elle 6th interview from Emma Montandon on Vimeo.

While the mice are away...

....the cats will play.   Alternately it could be titled, The School Provided Us with Babysitting. (It's definitely not free though!)  As soon as we dropped Elle off, we headed out into the big wide world to have FUN and celebrate the end of me being a stay-at-home mom and the beginning of me being a "housewife." lol

Notice anything about this picture beside the traffic?  That's right, we have a minivan...without any kids in it!!!!

We started our day at Barton Springs in Austin.  We'd wanted to go at least once this summer, and without kids, but that just didn't happen, so we went today!

IT.IS.SO.COLD.EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

I might have yelled "FREEDOM!" while jumping off the diving board.  And it could have been a little awkward since it was really quiet yet many people were in the water at the springs when I did it.

After that, we headed to a fun little restaurant/hangout called The Goodnight.  We ate some good food, we watched cliff diving on ESPN and we played pool.  I won the first round because Shawn accidentally sank the 8 ball.  But he does now realize that though I may not be the most talented pool player, I am really good at making defensive moves.  

Shawn absolutely SKUNKED me during the second round.  It was so bad that I forfeited before we finished.  I only got 1 or 2 chances to even hit the balls before he'd sunk everything.  It was ridiculous.

To commemorate our fun time, we took some photo booth pictures.  In the first picture I'm holding up a sign that says " #freefromkids. "

After that we headed to my favorite place, Amy's ice cream.  I pretty much don't deviate from what I like.  Mexican vanilla ice cream, with strawberries and today I did add semi sweet chocolate chunks...it is amazing.

 We headed home just long enough for me to make cookies to give to the kids for the traditional first day of school snack.  We had such a great time today!  I don't think it will really hit me for a few days that I have the house TO MYSELF.  It has been a wonderful and exhausting 11 1/2 year and I wouldn't have missed any of it (well maybe the colic times.)  This has been quite an adventure and I have no regrets and only excitement for what is to come next!

First Day FINALLY!!!

The day finally arrived....the past two weeks have gone so S L O W and then all of the sudden we were rushing to get them in bed last night to start their first day of a new school year.  I am usually cool as a cucumber about the first day of school, but with two of my kids starting at a new school, I was a ball of nerves on the inside!  

I saw this idea about a week ago and had to do it for Levi.  He will wear this shirt every first day of school for a picture, until his senior year.  This is an adult medium shirt and it's hard for me to believe that one day it will fit him.  

After taking 1st day photos, we headed back inside to do a breathing treatment to finish clearing up some wheezing Levi has been having for about a week now.  This usually happens in early Spring so yippy that it happened right before school.  Not.  He took it in stride.

First stop, the elementary school.  

So I had no idea how exactly Levi would handle this going to school thing.  Thank goodness, he did awesome.  He didn't even act nervous.  He was confident and ready to go!  That made everything so much easier for me.  And though I didn't shed any tears, I did go back and peek into his classroom three times before I finally left the building, which was kind of hard to do!

Then we headed upstairs to take Ava to class.  She was also quite confident and is so so so excited for this year.  When she found out who her teacher was last week, she asked if she could go ahead and stay at her house with her till school started.  I think she was a little excited.  What's pretty cool is that Levi has Ava's Kindergarten teacher and Ava has Elle's 3rd grade teacher so everything is very comfortable as far as classrooms and getting to know the teacher.  We have loved both of these teachers!

Then it was just us and Elle....weird.  We are never really alone with just her!  It took us about 35 minutes to get her to the front of her school.  Without traffic, it takes about 5.  Crazy.  But, the drop off went really well and of course I took a picture through the van window of her walking up to school.  She never even looked back.  She was so ready for this transition.  That made everything so much easier (for us!)

So....all of the sudden I find myself reclaiming my mind and house!  Shawn and I spent the day celebrating the end of a 11 1/2 year chapter and the beginning of a new chapter.

A New Frontier

First off, it has been burning up here and the days are lasting FOREVER so I have not had anything really worthy to post.  We are hot.  We are tired.  We are over summer....okay mainly I'm over summer, but I really thing most of the kids are too.  Anyway, today we entered a new frontier...middle school meet the teacher.  We picked up Elle's schedule earlier today and then spent our time before church trying to meet each teacher and check out the route she'd take to get to each class.  The way her school is set up, makes it so very easy for each grade to find their classes.  Sixth grade is on one side of the school with all of it's core classes together and then 7th and 8th are on the other side of the school.  All of her teachers seemed really kind and warm so that puts my mind at ease.  I think I am more concerned about Elle navigating the roads of friendships than I am about anything else...girls can be brutal.  But she seems to attract friends that are pretty down to earth and easy going.  I hope she finds that to be true in middle school too.  I knew I wouldn't be able to take a picture of her in front of her school on the first day, so we took one today after picking up her schedule.  

I'm not completely sure how I feel about her starting 6th grade next week.  I feel a lot like I did on her first day of Kindergarten, like I'm sending her into the big wide world and she has to stand on her own two feet.  It goes against all motherly things!