The New School

Monday the girls started their new school. Both Madison and I walked Katie to her new class with the guidance counselor. Her class is 20 kids total: 10 girls and 10 boys even. She has an amazing teacher, and I've heard much about her, so I think Katie will have a great 2 months here. Madison came home with me and we did odds and ends at the house until it was time for her to go to school. I dropped her off at school at 12:20 ... she goes to the afternoon kindergarten. A few tears were shedded, and I walked her back to her class. I had heard about this huge ordeal of picking up the kids and dropping them off. The bus system costs about $340 a kid to ride the bus all year... yikes! No wonder so many parents opt to drop and pick their kids up! I went to pick them up, and they don't get out until 3:40... parents start lining up at 3:00!! I got there about 3:20, and got my space in line (in the car). I learned my lesson though, so Tuesday I parked the car and picked both girls up outside ~ totally not a time waster if you do it that way!

Anyways, Katie and Madison had a great first day. Everyone is so friendly, and there is always a smile to be found at the school. We learned immediately that Katie is pretty far behind in her math at this school. They are already doing triple digits multiplications... among other things, so the amount of homework and explanations we have to do for Katie every night so far is pretty long. Hopefully she'll get some extra help at school, and we might have to get a tutor for her to catch her up to speed. I'm always leery of helping her b/c it seems the way I learned at school how to do things is not the way it's taught anymore. I would just confuse her even more.

Madison... she's a funny one. I asked her yesterday if she's learning anything new. She said "no.". I asked her if she already knew the stuff they were teaching. She said "no." So, I really have no clue what she's learning. I do have a parent/teacher conference set up for her next week... all parents do w/ the Kindergartners.

Both girls are emailing and getting letters from their friends at school. Katie received a t-shirt from her class, and so I took a picture of her wearing it and a "THANK YOU I MISS YOU TOO" sign that she's holding. We printed it out, and sent it to her school so they could know she got her package. They do miss their friends horribly.

We love our new ward .. there are LOTS of little girls for both girls to play with! In fact, I think there are more girls than boys. I don't know though, it just seems that way. At church, Mike and I walked into Sunday School, and we saw Sister Littlewood.. she and her family had moved out shortly after we came to 1st Ward. It was great to see a familiar face.

I took up Jazzercise, in the effort to lose weight and to bring myself back in touch with "me". I've gone two days so far, and my knees hurt already! It's a great workout though!