emgup: First Day of School

Let me bring you up to speed on our life lately. Scott's office wanted to transfer him from Sunnyvale, CA to Salt Lake, so we put our house on the market around Memorial Day. We accepted a contingent offer that fell through after being under contract about a month and had to go back on the market. But we got another offer and were eventually able to move forward with that sale. And that house is now sold! Goodbye Gilroy house!! In the mean time we bought a house in Kaysville, Utah. We had thought about building a new house again but decided buying a resale would work better for us this time. Many people ask me why we chose Kaysville. Scott's office is in West Valley City sort of near the airport. I researched cities in Utah for A LONG TIME and settled on the Kaysville/Farmington area even though I didn't have a lot of first had experience with the area. I had kind of narrowed it down to Lehi/Highland or Kaysville/Farmington which, strangely enough were the same distance from Scott's work but in opposite directions. It finally came down to 1) commute time 2) schools 3) crowdedness (or lack thereof) and 4) lot size of homes. Those aren't the only factors, but some of the major ones. After our tiny yard in California I was really hoping for a large lot and there were a lot more of them in Farmington and Kaysville than other areas. The schools are great and highly rated, its not as crowded as Utah county seems to be getting and the commute time is shorter to Kaysville than Lehi even though they are the same distance from Scott's work. More people go south I guess. Also its a plus for us to be closer to the military base up here. We like being near the base and among some military families. So that's why Kaysville. And so far we're happy with our choice. It's meeting and exceeding expectations.

So we bought a house, spent about a week getting new carpet and thought we would be able to move in just before school started.

We found out our stuff was stuck in California (due to a busy moving season there) and wouldn't be able to be delivered in time for school, so we moved into the new house with just our suitcases. Its 45 minutes to my parents house, where we were staying, and that's too far to commute for school. So we came the night before school started and set up camp. Scott's sister let us borrow some pads and air mattresses and sheets.

Here we are on the morning of the first day of school. Matthew is starting 6th grade, Anna 5th grade, Grant 2nd grade, John Kindergarten and Emma is home with me and not happy about it.

Matthew and Anna go to a school across town for a program there. They were in a similar program in California but had to be retested here to get into it. But it all worked out and they are loving their new school and teachers so far. The pick up/drop offs are a little tricky and I'm nervous about dealing with it in snow since their school is up on the mountain side of town. But all is well for now.

Anna came home telling me how much she loves her teacher so I'm excited for her and her school year. Their school is great!

Grant goes to our neighborhood school which is also wonderful. He loves his class so far and is starting to make friends. The girl who lives next door sits next to him in class.

And John is really excited for kindergarten. On the first day of school he had a short kindergarten orientation so it wasn't a true first day for him. But he is excited for even a little bit of school. More on his first day to come.

And Emma is really sorry she is not going to school. Learning time at home with mom is just not as fun. I must try harder.

I dropped the older kids off then drove back to the neighborhood school to walk in with Grant. Here he is waiting for his teacher. The first day seemed to go well until pick up time. I went to pick up Grant and it started to rain while I was waiting. And then hail. Grant was fast and got in the car quickly but while driving to Matthew and Anna's school across town the hail really picked up. By the time I got to their school it was thundering down large hail stones. I didn't know where to go to pick up (first day) but I spotted Matthew. As I drove up Matthew disappeared behind some classrooms. I tried to jump out of the car and yell to him but the hail was so loud. I had to drive over to park 'cause I was in the pick up only line. There I saw Anna looking very sad. I parked and ran over to get her. We got wet and hailed on running back to the car. Then I looped around again looking for Matthew and we found him this time. We all got in the car and the hail was still going strong. It was a really crazy first day pick up. This seemed to happen in Colorado too. If it was going to rain or hail it would do it about 3pm - that's just how the weather seemed to work there. So school pick up was often very unpleasant and/or wet. We made it home and it stopped hailing by the time we got home, but started up again an hour or so later.

Here we are watching hail storm #2 from inside. I was able to get the car in the garage even though we still had the storage shell on top. It just fit.