Small Successes-September 1st

Celebrating the little things in life that add up.

1. I finally sat down and figured out what worksheets and crafts I wanted to use for the first few weeks of my kindergarten religious ed class.  Once I had that completed, I brought them over to the parish office and ran off all of my copies.  I also found out that there are currently fifteen children registered in my class.  In the past I've only ever had eight children in my kindergarten class.  This should be an interesting dynamic.  I'm very excited since I know several of the children already.

2.  I'm assuming that 99.99% of you will think I'm totally crazy, but I managed to get many Christmas presents wrapped this past weekend.  It's not the first time I've started wrapping early, in fact, I've wrapped items as early as June in past years.  Little items I've brought on good sales for the girls, as well as some other gifts I've picked up for others are all nicely wrapped and packed away from the sight of prying eyes.  And so you don't think I'm a total nut, there's a perfectly logical reason for this apparent insanity.  I have the gifts already, I have the wrapping paper thanks to my post-Christmas bargain hunting, and I had the spare time with nothing better to do.  Now that we've hit September, life in our house is not likely to slow down very much until January.

3. Both Madeline and Ellie are now oriented at their new schools.  Yesterday was 5th grade orientation for Madeline at the middle school and new student orientation for Ellie at the elementary school.

We had never been in the middle school, so it was a very useful tour.  The place is HUGE!  We met her homeroom teacher and his co-teacher and saw her other teachers briefly.  They seem like a decent bunch.  Some of them could use a little help with using proper grammar and public speaking, but I think Madeline will be ok in the school.  She even has several kids in her class that she knows.  Even better, I know three of the mothers.  That will make life a little easier if we need to contact someone about homework.

Ellie's tour was really nothing new for us.  Since Madeline had gone to the school for the past four years we were pretty familiar with the place.  I mainly signed up for the orientation to show Ellie her classroom.  We visited Madeline's teacher from last year and then we popped in on Ellie's teacher who is a new hire.  She's very nice and I feel confident that she will have a good year in this teacher's class.  Since the room was already set up, we were able to take a peek at the desks and see who is in the class.  A few of Madeline's friends' younger siblings are in her class as well as a one of her friends from religious ed.  I'm happy that she knows a few kids in the class.

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