Open School

Well, here we are again on the precipice of another school year.  It all starts this week, today with a visit to "open house," or at least "open school."  Here above you can see Madison at her new locker, just one of the destinations we visited today at Little Mill Middle School.  After a few tries, she was able to get into her locker, but that was the general feeling of the entire hallway to begin with.  It was funny looking around and seeing all the students that hadn't gotten their lockers open yet!

The morning involved us following the class schedule Madison has, going from room to room, meeting her teachers and hearing about basic procedures like discipline, grading, online services and other things.  It's very different than elementary school, and in some ways unexpected.  For example, the pick-up process after school seems to be an every-man-for-himself sort of vibe, with no car tags or numbers.  Instead, kids go out the front door and look for a car, and everyone hopes for the best.  But other than that, we were there to find out times for clubs - we learned that art club is on Friday mornings, so that works with our schedule.  We don't know about drama club yet, but hopefully we'll find out soon.  There is a bit of stress right now about that, because we don't know if we can fit everything into her schedule.  She's getting up later, that's a plus to sleep in, right?  But at the same time, she's getting home tremendously later - as in something close to 5pm.  That causes complications, of course.  We'll just have to see what we can do with all this, and hopefully the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place.  We know she wants to do karate, drama club, art club, and of course there's piano.  Obviously, it'll be good to go to KidPak on Wednesday nights too.  We'll just have to wait and see though.

In the meantime, the teachers seem nice, and the school is a big building.  There isn't too much distance to cover for Madison with some of the nearby classrooms, and there are a few other familiar faces there, so it seems like things should be okay.  Obviously, we're parents, so we're like...

"Dear God, make them like her."  It's funny, but we'll probably be very much like all the other parents there, hoping and praying for good friends with a similar background, perhaps even a little more than good grades.  She'll be fine, of course.  She has this inner confidence that we did not.  There are great plans in store for her, plans to give her hope and a future, plans to prosper and give her peace.

We shared a shaved ice in front of the school, and talked about the walk-through.  All the teachers were nice, and Madison said she's nervous and excited at the same time.  So are we, of course.  Middle School is a big step up from Elementary School, and I can't believe we're here already.

We got home, and it was a day off today - outside of Daddy spending time studying for his message.  We went to the pool for a while, and Madison just loves splashing people in the face.  There was quite a bit of that going on, of course.

DADDY:  "Knock-knock?"
MADISON:  "Who's there?"
DADDY:  "Breaching."
MADISON:  "Breaching who?"
DADDY:  "Breaching cow!  Moooooo!" (DADDY launches upward and falls directly in front of MADISON, creating a huge splash)

We got home and ate some of that delicious Farmer's Market corn we had, and also ate some of those peaches we purchased there as well.  Mommy heated a few slices up, and served them with whipped cream.  It was really good!

Next, Daddy was reading with Madison a few comics from the collection.  We're doing them in chronological order, so today we found ourselves reading about Bishop versus Gambit, and his throwing a charged pie... and hitting Rogue.  Madison loved that.  And what a surprise to see Ghost Rider make an appearance.  We'll have to read that Ghost Rider comic next.  These crossovers were huge in the 90's.  They probably still are, but the end result is that if you wanted the whole story, you had to find that other comic book title as well.  The end result is owning all sorts of titles, from Ghost Rider to West Coast Avengers.  We'll get to that one later, as it was a little hard to find.  Ah yes, finding these comic books:  that was fun in the "old days."  Daddy remembers scouring comic book shops in faraway places, hoping to happen upon one or two comics he was looking for in particular.  That one I found in Dalton was a great find, on a trip up to Nashville.  We just read that one recently, and though there's no significance in the comic itself, the memory of acquiring it still brings a smile on my face.

Madison did a bit of drawing, and we played a Marvel video game for a bit too, but soon it was time for a movie together - we watched "Soul Surfer" finally.  This was a better movie than I remember, a very inspirational movie about Bethany Hamilton.  Madison really enjoyed it, her eyes glued to the screen for the entire movie.  We need more movies like that, don't we?  We need things that inspire us.

Which of course, is not what "A Series of Unfortunate Events" does, yet nevertheless we were reading that tonight before bedtime, along with the devotional entry of course.  Prayers and zerberts later, we were all off to bed.  Daddy is speaking tomorrow at KidPak, so we all want to get a good night's rest.  It's going to be a great day tomorrow!