saying goodbye to summer

Last night, Haley and I had a lovely swim in the pool. We said goodbye to summer. We said goodbye to the delicious smell of someone bbqing in the neighborhood somewhere, we said goodbye to long afternoons with nothing to do, we said goodbye to nice refreshing swims, we said goodbye to elementary school. Many of the things we said goodbye to will go on for several weeks to come, but tomorrow was a new beginning. Summer, although not over on the calendar is officially over for school kids everywhere.

Haley and Nolan show off their new school clothes....
And their new school shoes. Nolan has a convert to converse! Poor Haley, just a few minutes after this picture was taken, she went out to feed the rabbit and stepped in fresh Socks excrement. Fresh is the worst. I don't know if you have ever seen the bottom of a converse tennis shoe, but it is filled with tiny ridges and diamonds and more ridges. I was outside with a tiny screw driver for about 15 minutes digging that stuff out so she could wear her new shoes today. But we didn't loose our sense of humor. Good for me.
It's fun to have pictures in the same place each year. Someday, I'm going to line them all up together and see the progression from year to year.

Nolan heads off on his scooter, refreshed and renewed. He is ready to take on this semester in a way he has never done before. He is looking for A's and B's in some pretty tough courses. This is a make it or break it time for the nursing program. He needs those grades to be able to apply in the spring to several state nursing colleges. He also has a new girlfriend. Alyssa has been his good friend all this past year and he has known her since high school. After several months of professing that they were just friends, they have finally discovered what we all knew all along! Alyssa is also at JC, but at different times and they are anxious to support each other in their prospective studies. Good for them!
Here is Haley with all of her first day of school stuff! She had a backpack stuffed to overflowing with all of her new text books, which they handed out at round up -( it would have been nice just to find them in the classroom) but if they had done that, then she and I would have missed out on a good time last night. We spent about an hour covering her books with paper grocery bag covers. She has never had to cover her books, so it was fun to show her how to do this and how she would have fun personalizing them. It was fun to tell her how I used to do that with my mother and how sometimes, my mother would be out of bags and use old wallpaper remnants to make covers for me. Then mine looked different. Haley also had a bag for gym clothes, her lunch and a water bottle. She was loaded down!

When we got to school, Haley saw the hundreds of kids milling around and had a minor panic attack. She told me to keep on driving and drive her right back home - We could home school. She panicked that she had too much stuff and no one else was loaded down so much, so she reorganized and left the gym clothes bag behind. She nearly ripped her back pack trying to zipper it up so her things wouldn't be hanging out. She was in a lather. But I got my kiss and reassured her that it would all be fine and there she goes. Our little girl is off to middle school.