Goodbye Elementary School

Six years ago I had all three kids in elementary school (same school as where Hubs teaches so my whole family was under the same roof every day) for one year.

For the past two years I had three kids in three separate schools--high, middle and elem.

This year I have two high schoolers and one starting middle.

Here is our 11th grader:

High school starts at 7:15 am or so and their departure time is 6:45 so it was darkish outside still and I was not coherent enough to take their picture in the house before they left (so my routine is back to getting up at 6:30 am so I can see them before they take off).

Here is our 9th grader:

He was hoping as hard as his 11th grade brother that his brother would get his driver's license this summer because that meant that Middle son gets to be driven to school by his brother for the next two years.  Middle son needs lot of time in the am so he gets up at 5:30 am.

The wheels:

There they go.  This is an old Toyota truck that Hubs used to take to work and used on weekends especially for sneaking back home plants and flowers.  It is a stick shift and we told Oldest if he learned to drive it then he could have it for school and weekends.  He grumbled a year ago when trying to learn to drive it but there is no grumbling now.  We paid the $70 school parking fee and he pays for the gas and he is not complaining now that his other friends tell him how more often they have to fill up their tank with gas.  I am proud of him that he can drive a stick shift--i cannot and Hubs is a horrible teacher at that (I know, so ironic) so I told Oldest maybe he can teach me one day.


Here is Youngest:

Middle School does not start until 9:20 am and so I have 30 mins of quiet time until Youngest gets up and chats with me for over an hour until he gets his bus at 8:40.  he is the only middle school student in our n'hood--the older brothers had other boys to hang with at bus stop up the street.  And so yes, I walk up the street with him and chat and then make myself scarce when we hear the bus arrive. 

Youngest is very excited that he has male teachers for the first time--two for social studies and math and another right now for a computer class.  That late start time means school lets out about 4:00 and he walks in the door at 5:00 (he is almost last picked up in am and almost last dropped off in pm).

I heard from a dad of Oldest's friend we have known for 7 years that he heard his son talking about how I work from home and so keep a major watch on Eldest.  Hubs has always said that when he was a teen all his friends knew his mom (my mother in law) was the strictest on the block and his friends were pretty much scared of her.  I guess Hubs married a wife just like his mom.  It is not bad at all being perceived as the strictest mom, and one who is home at 2:45 when high schoolers get home.....