Rocking Out at Lunchtime

The kids finished their first full week of school.  Leo noticed there was a kid that played guitar at lunchtime.  He got permission to bring his guitar too, so on Thursday he took it to school.  He shared it during their "mentor circle" class (kind of like homeroom).  His teacher sent me this picture of him playing for Mr. Rob, who is in charge of the cafeteria and also plays guitar.  

He got to play at lunch with Ethan, the other guitar player, and Johnny, a bass player, but Leo was the only one that made it on the school's social media.  

We celebrated a successful first full week of school by driving through Starbucks.  Mousse got a "puppuccino" (unsweetened whipped cream in a little cup).  

He gets all the treats with this sweet face. 

 

New Slobber Socks

When Mousse was tiny, he took over Serafina's slipper socks and they became his "slobber socks".  They are his comfort object; the way he soothes himself. When I come home after being out of the house, he'll grab a sock and sit on my lap, even though he barely fits on my lap.  His socks are in bad shape after lots of love and washes, so when I found a fresh pack at Costco today, I grabbed them.  

Here's what happened when I brought them home...

Old socks compared to new socks. 

 

First Day of School!

It was the first day of school!  For both kids!  In person!  At the same school!  It was so exciting and nerve-wracking.  Well, they were calm and confident. Me? I was much more anxious.  It helped that yesterday they had a full-day orientation at school.  

I made them take a picture even though they objected because it was just the orientation day.  

The orientation day helped them feel more comfortable starting today.  It also gave me a chance to learn the best spot for drop off to avoid the absolute madness of the school parking lot.  The orientation was only for new students.  There were 14 new 8th graders, and Leo thought that was all that was going to be in the 8th grade this year.  I guess coming from a super small school previously made him think this was an acceptable number.  Each grade has a max of 100 kids, so there were a lot more people today, but still just a fraction of the population of our local public school.  All the sixth graders were there for orientation, and Serafina got to reconnect with girls she met at a summer meet-and-greet, as well as make some new friends.  Leo came home with plans to join the Dungeons and Dragons club that meets on Thursdays at lunch run by the English teacher. They also got to meet most of their teachers.

Today was the official first day.  Things went smoothly in the morning, and I had no problems at drop off because I knew how to do it.  

Required first day pictures. 

Serafina was super annoyed that I made them take this picture out front of the school. She was in a hurry to go see her new friends.  

They still had more of an introduction day than a real day of school, but they got their schedules and rotated to different classes.  I'm optimistic it will be a good year for both of them.  I'll certainly enjoy having both kids at the same school for a year.  I just have to keep my fingers crossed that this damn pandemic doesn't cause problems and they can go to school in a mostly normal fashion. 
 

Auntie Sheila visit

No matter where I've lived or what is happening in my life, I've always seen my Aunt Sheila a couple of times a year, at least.  But along came a global pandemic and we went way too long without seeing her.  That all changed this week when she made the visit up to see us. Yay vaccines!  I didn't take nearly enough pictures, but we did a lot of catching up, marveling at the goofiness of Mousse, and of course, planning and eating good food. 

We went to Santa Cruz on Friday afternoon.  

It was beautiful and windy.  We hit our favorite ice cream spot, Marianne's, on the way back home.  I had the dog with us at the order window and the cashier asked if they could him a "doggy scoop".  Um, yes!  This dog loves all food.  He gobbled up his scoop in the back of the car.  

My mom got to do lots of visiting with Sheila too.  

Her visit was exactly what we needed to take our minds off the stress of school starting and the Delta variant rearing its ugly head.  We hope to take a trip down to Southern California to visit with Sheila and all my family down there some time this fall.  Keeping my fingers crossed things go in the right direction, and we can make that happen. 
 

Shake Shack

School starts in two weeks.  It's been a long time since my kids were in a classroom.  Despite the rise of covid cases because of Delta variant and the return of mandatory masking, the school is committed to bringing kids back on campus.  Last week we did a little back-to-school shopping with our friends at the mall.  It was fun, but of course, we needed to make a return.  So today we went back to the mall and had lunch outside before making our return.  

It was great weather out and we had a table in the shade.  

There were some photo spots in the mall, so obviously we had to take some pictures.