I'm on vacation!

I'm loving this afternoon school thing. The kids switched from the AM session (7:45AM - 11:50AM) to the PM session (12:05PM - 4:10PM) and so far it's working out much better.

First of all, I'm not a morning person at all. In fact, I try to avoid communicating important information before 10:30AM. (Perhaps if I went to bed at a more reasonable hour, I might be more with-it in the mornings, but I never can seem to do it).

It's like our entire day is just shifted in a favorable direction by a few hours. The kids woke up whenever they felt like it today, and so did I. . . We had a leisurely morning and I took them to school.

Secondly, dropping off at noon is so much better than picking up at the same time. Literally the entire student K - 12th student body, mom's, dad's (and even dogs in some cases) are trying to navigate through one giant gridlocked traffic jam since AM *pick-up* and PM *drop-off* are happening at exactly the same time. In years previous, I was stuck in the traffic, worrying about my kids while they were waiting what seemed like a mile away down in the hot, dusty chaotic circle drive as I strained to get a glimpse of them through the crowds and held my breath and prayed, prayed, prayed for their safety. But now, during all the chaos, they're safely in the car with me, and I drop them off practically at their classroom doors. . . .Then at pick-up time in the afternoon, there's no rush because only the PM moms and students are on campus and everybody's done for the day.

Thirdly, at noon, restaurants are open! I get to have lunch with Karlon every Monday. And Stores are open too! I get to go shopping! (Not that I had much time to play with last year anyway what with all the runs back and forth to Cedar Park for Kindergarten drop-off and pick-up), but no store worth going to is open before 10AM, and by that time, I'd be so worried about watching the clock to make sure I was sitting in the circle-drive by 11:25 or so, that the risk totally outweighed any possible benefit save the rare event I knew exactly what I wanted and where I could find it.

I'm wide awake by noon and can be all kinds of productive. . . .the kids can stay up late guilt-free. I feel like I'm on vacation! Of course, it helps considerably that this is the first year ever that I'm making only ONE drop-off and ONE pick-up to a single campus.

Surprisingly, after all of that, I do have some mixed feelings about my "baby" going to first grade (but that's a blog entry for another time). Sad feelings aside, Jon's teacher is the absolute Mary Poppins of teaching and taught Brandon Language Arts last year, a literacy rotation the year before and writing and spelling the year before that. So of all the mom's who have to drop their precious babies off without being allowed to walk them into the classroom (new policy this year), I'm probably the most comfortable one in the whole bunch!