Back to School Time!

Well, not for me. School started the last week in July. Kids here go back to school while they still really need to run the a/c to keep them from falling asleep in class. I can't even imagine with the 94 degrees out there how they keep the kids alert in class.

Little Podunk town has a school year where they attend classes for 9 weeks, are off 2 weeks and then back in school following this routine until the end of May. Looking at the school schedule they are scheduled for a 10 a.m. dismissal on May 30th, a Saturday. Is this for real?

I always enjoyed the back-to-school routine even as a kid. New school supplies. Not new clothes since I went to Catholic school for grades 1-12. Uniforms. The ugliest uniforms on the face of the earth. I guess they were cheaper than my folks buying new clothes for six kids, but still.

When my own kids came along, I was thrilled when the school year started. I remember being scolded by my youngest daughter's kindergarten bus driver for being so happy she was going off to school! I guess the happy dance was so obvious!

School shopping was always an adventure. Scrambling to get clothes they both liked that didn't match, and weren't tainted by being gang colors - oh yeah, my third grader was crazy about red, black and white. After filling out her warddrobe, we were informed those were gang colors. I know my kids get their eye-rolling from me.

Our girls would always talk DH's parents into taking them shopping for school supplies a month before school started. This was generally a waste of time and money, because the kids didn't have their supplies lists from their teachers yet. Being indulgent grandparents though, they would take them. Most of that stuff got used at home because it wasn't on the supply list.

And the supply list usually had don'ts on it rather than dos. Don't buy this type of binder, I don't want this type of paper, yada-yada. One spiral bound notebook for each class, except for the Journal they were expected to write in daily. But since we had plenty of big box office supply stores, it was no hardship to take them back for what they really needed.

So, as a new school year draws near for my older college student (her last she hopes), my younger daughter informs us she has applied for re-admittance to college to get her degree. Yes! Doing that kindergartener on the bus happy dance again!