First Day of School

Today was a big day in our house - it was Ellen's first day of "school" and Lucas's first day of 4yr old pre-k! Lucas is not really a morning person, but he hopped out of bed this morning and was singing and dancing around the kitchen. I think he was bored with summer and really looking forward to having activities all morning, but he was also super excited about seeing his best friend, Ian. Oh, and he was also very pumped about his new Bumblebee Transformer book bag. It is so cool, according to Lucas, especially because it lights up when he walks : )

Ellen of course had no idea what was waiting for her when we all drove to the preschool together. We had been there to see her classroom and meet her teacher last week, but it was brief and Jeff and I stayed in the room. We thought it would best if we all walked Lucas down to his classroom first so that Ellen could kind of see how it worked. She bounced right in there and probably would have loved to stay and play with Lucas all morning, but she was fine telling him bye-bye and walking back upstairs with us. It broke my heart a little when we got to her room because she figured it out before we got to the door and tightened her hold on me. We handed her off to the teacher and told her (with big smiles) that we'd see her soon. She cried for a couple of minutes, but then stopped and they said she was very happy the rest of the day. There are 3 other kids in her class and two teachers, so I'm sure she got a lot of love. She is the oldest, so I'm interested in seeing how this works out. She missed the cutoff for the 2yr old class of 8/31 since she won't be two until October.

Here is Miss Priss walking in while carrying her change of clothes in her baggie...

And here is big brother with Daddy.

With the coolest book bag ever ;-)

And the whole fam on the big day.

Lucas saying "cheese" after hanging up his bag and about to walk into his class.

Lucas was the 2nd child to arrive that morning, so his teacher walked right over and helped him figure out this new toy he'd never seen before. Ellen was in tow.

Here is the bird in her class as I was arriving to pick her up. She hadn't seen me yet. Her teacher, Ms. Susan, was showing her how to work a toy. She seemed very comfortable and happy : ) I expected her to dive into my arms, but there was a baby crying in the hall so she nearly pushed me out of the way so she could go check it out. A second later she motioned for me to pick her up, and then she said, "Where's dada?" Stinker :-)

We had to walk outside to pick up Lucas. Here he is with his teacher, Ms. Mary Lynn, who is AWESOME! I'm really excited about having her as his teacher. She said that she will send us little emails in the evening if she wants to tell us a cute story about our child, and she encourages us all to take pictures and share them on a common site. She surprised us tonight by sending a picture of his whole class on the playground today! It's going to be a great year. And of course Lucas loved his first day.

I don't know but a few of the kids yet... Ian is sitting two to the right of Lucas : )