New School Year!

 The kids started back to school this past Friday. We had a week filled with new haircuts, open houses, and bundles of nerves as they started back to new classes. Mack and Emma's school is pretty much back to pre covid protocol, but Ellie's school is still having in the classroom lunches and they are still put together in small groups for quarantining purposes. With COVID cases rising, I'm curious to see how things will pan out this year. I'm assuming if our school system never went virtual last year when there was no vaccine that it will not do that this year with a vaccine available to all her are 12 years old and older. Ellie has gotten the vaccine, and we plan to vaccinate Emma and Mack as soon as it's available for their age group. I'm over it and ready for normalcy again!

Along with school, the extracurriculars will kick back up this coming week. This past week, Emma was fitted into her first pair of pointe shoes. I was pleasantly surprised at how excited she was about this. I guess I just didn't think she was as into it as Ellie, but boy was she loving putting those shoes on. 

Fresh haircuts were also on the agenda for the girls. 

Emma always asks Ms. Lauren to curl her hair. It looks so super cute, but unfortunately her mama cannot reproduce this at home. 

Even Mack got his head cleaned up and his ears lowered a little bit this week. 

It's Emma's last year at Westside! I had to get a picture at open house because parents weren't allowed to walk them in the first day of school :(

Friday was the first day, and I still feel like we haven't checked all of the summer boxes yet! 

Even though Ellie has been at Hahira Middle for a year, she was a nervous wreck. She was not into any picture taking and we thought she was going to throw up before I got her to school. 

This was Ellie's breakfast. She didn't eat a thing that morning she was so nervous. 

Right before drop off we prayed together and she held a squishy to relieve her nerves. I finally got a smile out of her that wasn't forced. 

Mack and Emma were on the opposite end of the spectrum from Ellie. They were bouncing off the walls with excitement to get to school. They jumped out of the car so fast, I barely got their first day picture walking in together. Note the kid beside them: he stopped to pose up for his mom. Not my two. 

Froyo to end the day put smiles on everyone's faces. After all was said and done, Ellie admitted that it wasn't nearly as bad as she expected and she's now ready to tackle the 7th grade. Emma and Mack both had a great day and love their teachers so far. Emma was just glad that she was going to get 5th grade honors day (Ellie did not get it due to COVID.) Mind you, 5th grade Honors Day is in May, and we are assuming Emma will maintain honor roll for the year. 

Leonard is still rotten in case anyone was curious.