We are officially ready for Emma Vance’s big day tomorrow — as an official KINDERGARTENER!
Summer was way too short (although I don’t really feel like it’s over since Cricket still has a few weeks left before preschool gets up and running), and although an August 1st start date seems insane to me personally, we’re going with the flow. Tomorrow E.V. will officially become an elementary school kid!
The past few weeks have been filled with preparations to transition my oldest to elementary school, including two hours spent at Target fulfilling a surprisingly detailed supply list, hemming and hawing over the perfect backpack (after much debate we went with “Cool Bunny” from PBK, which I should’ve been able to predict) and lots of effort spent measuring and ordering uniforms. Things geared up this weekend in particular as we did our annual “When I Grow Up” declarations, visited UpStreet (the elementary school environment at our church), attended our school’s Back to School Carnival and met E.V.’s new teacher at Open House.
When E.V. grows up, she wants to be a “swim teacher, artist and mommy” (no surprises there, Little Fish). Cricket said she wants to be an “acrobator,” which upon further investigation was meant to be “actor,” haha! She also added that she wants to be a princess on the side, so…#goalz.
On Sunday, we went to our church’s Kindergarten Kickstart to learn about transitioning our big girl to the elementary school environment, and E.V. was in heaven because there were about one million give aways (#swag), haha! I can’t believe she’s moving out of Waumbaland, but I promise not to cry until it’s Cricket’s turn to age out. Afterwards, we had an amazing time meeting new families and playing games at our school’s Back-to-School Carnival! The girls got their faces painted (as a rainbow tiger a la Lisa Frank and as a unicorn, of course), ate wayyyyy to much sugar, and made me wait an hour in line to get a balloon animal (or Minion and ballerina as it were). But the waits and the crowds made for good conversation and connection, and the whole event made us feel so happy about our school choice.
At Open House tonight, we braved the masses to meet E.V.’s kindergarten teacher. (I’ll blog later about our school choice because, whew, it was intense!) We lugged in our school supplies along with all the poor unfortunate souls who didn’t have the foresight to just order them from the school (newbie mistake), talked with the after school ballet teacher E.V. will have, played with every instrument in the music room, and (most importantly) met Emma Vance’s teacher (and her assistant and her English teacher). We were the first people there (because I have major tendency to be waaaayyy early in life), so naturally I got roped into being the room mom. (I’m pretty well versed at avoiding the duty with preschool teachers, but I didn’t know what to say in this situation, so everybody pray for me, haha!)
And now Emma Vance is passed out in bed, eager for her 6 a.m. wake-up call. New adventures await, and we are so excited for her big transition! Kindergarten, here we come!
“When I Grow Up” 2017
Kindergarten Kick-Start at Church
Back-to-School Carnival
Open House