First Day of School 2017

Boy were these two boys ready for the first day of school this year!

School started last Wednesday.

On Tuesday morning, bright and early, the boys proudly appeared in our room dressed and ready to go.  They had even eaten breakfast.  They were bummed when we told them they were a day early!  Ha!  We told them that was a great practice for the real day.

Here they are on the real first day of school.

 Camille had to get in on the excitement too, of course!

Here are the boys playing with our cute next door neighbor friend.  Grant was so nice to play in the "little kid" area and make sure Brett knew all there was to know about the first day of school.

Luckily one of the other moms got this cute picture of Grant with his two best buddies.  They were so excited to be in the same class together again this year.  And they got the teacher they wanted!  Score!

Here they are after their first day.  I was a little worried about Brett throughout the day because he can be timid and unsure about new things (to the point of tears).  When I went to pick him up the first thing he said was, "I LOVED IT!"  It brought a few tears to my eyes and made me so happy!  I love Brett's face in this picture below.  He looks so excited!

We started off the year with our annual Back to School Dinner.  I wised up this year and held it the Sunday before school started instead of the actual night before the first day.  That proved to be too crazy and rushed last year.  

I tried to keep this years festivities special yet simple and short.  For our dinner this year we had Taco Salad.  Easy peasy.  Then we had our Family Home Evening for the week (which we usually hold on Mondays).  I had prepared a lesson about putting on the whole armor of God.  I even purchased some really cool "paper dolls" on Etsy and laminated them for the kids to put together.  They loved those!  But they quickly lost interest in the lesson and were being rude, Keith had to leave halfway through to put Tyler to bed (who was losing it), and after a valiant effort to refocus the kids attention I left in tears.  Sometimes it is just so frustrating to put effort into something and not feel appreciated!  You know?  Keith came back and after I convinced him that I needed a time out, we all got together and talked about showing respect and listening during Family Home Evening.  So I guess the kids got two lessons that night!  Then Keith gave each one of our kids a Father's blessing to help them with this new school year.  We ended the night with yummy ice-cream cones.

A couple days into school, Brett proudly told me, "I had on the whole armor of God all day!"  Yay!  I guess they weren't totally tuned out.  ;)