Open House

Here's a picture of Madison with her new 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Nizialek, which is pronounced as such:  Nizialek.  Today we had open house at 4:00, which was an opportunity to return to Chestatee Elementary school - the first time since May.

After a wrong turn down a hallway, we were able to find Madison's classroom, which wasn't far from the kindergarten hall where she spent her time last year.  In fact, afterwards, we went by and visited with her kindergarten teachers from last year, which was a treat.  They were happy to see her, and Madison was delighted to see them, giving each a big hug.

As for Madison's new teacher, Mommy and Daddy hopefully made a good first impression.  No doubt Mrs. Nizialek made a good impression on us:  there was a mini-scavenger hunt set up for Madsion, which allowed her to find important things in the classroom (like bathrooms, water fountains and so forth).  Madison did this while Daddy filled out the various forms for field trips and school bus days.

Afterwards, we went to the cafeteria again to pick up a few car tags, see a few familiar faces, and pretty much move on.  The place was packed with people, lots of parents checking out the place and reacquainting themselves with the school grounds.

Only two more days until school starts!  We saw the enormous amount of people, and remembered the massive line before school:  this year we're vowing to get up a lot earlier to get Madison in earlier, rather than wait in that epic car line in the morning.  That means earlier nights now, of course.

Madison is excited about the school year, which is great to see.  As mentioned earlier, Daddy was never excited about school until he was 30.  Going into school this year, Madison has even done some things over the summer in preparation:  the library reading program, and the school's website program as well, where she's pretty much in first place at the moment as far as progress goes.  Her speech is so much better than it was a year ago, and she's as courageous as ever.  She'll do fine, we think!