Sep. 4: Back to school-ing

School starts soon. Have you heard?

Yesterday the PTO board members served lunch to the faculty and staff as a big ol’ welcome back to the school year. Sunshine—a fellow board member and one of my new favorite people—coordinated the event and chose a western theme that was a lot of fun to put together. I forgot my camera, as always, but got a few shots with my phone.

Sunshine’s table decor—is that the cutest? YES. It is.

Pulled pork sandwiches, chili, potato salad, cole slaw, watermelon, chips, trail mix, puppy chow, cake

I’m not sure how none of us PTO-ers ended up in the photos; probably because we were running around while everyone was eating. But I do love that I caught Mr. N—above on the far left—making a very angry looking face because I can’t think of when I’ve ever seen him angry.

Speaking of Mr. N, he’ll be Jack’s teacher this year. Katie was in Mr. N’s class for second grade, and with the confusion of the school district budget cuts and the school splitting this year, we weren’t sure if we’d be lucky enough to get him again. Big hooray! Another thing I was thrilled about was to find out who Jack’s classmates will be—lots of kids we know and love, as well as awesome moms like Dawn, Stephanie, Lovely Lori H, Kristen, Dina and Julie. Our field trips will be so much fun this year! Mr. N will probably be tired of all of us hens in a few weeks but HA!—he’s stuck with us.

I met Katie’s new teacher yesterday and she seems very nice. What I’m most happy about is that Parker, Sophie and Erika are in her class too. Again with the fun moms!

Obviously these things all contribute to the year starting on a very good note. Feed people and they’ll be nice to you. Help them get ready for school and they’ll be even nicer.

And that’s what a bunch of us did today; we assembled back-t0-school student packets, worked on bulletin boards, created math folders, stapled volunteer forms, laminated signs, distributed piles of stuff to teachers… pretty much anything that needed to be done, we helped with. Our fingertips were dry and flaky from all the paper handling by the time we left. It looks like the first week of school will be a LOT more of the same.

I’m planning on getting a lot of around-the-house projects tied up this weekend. The kids’ room re-do is finally coming to an end, thanks to our trip to IKEA today. Like many families on Labor Day Weekend, we’ll be sorting through clothes, getting school supplies put in backpacks, filling out forms, and cleaning as much as we have energy to do so. Which hopefully will be a lot.