Quick Update
Well…nothing exciting is really happening these days. The kids are all in school. That’s why it’s been quieter around here. YAY!
Elijah, Scottie & Bryce have been in school for 2 months now. Arik & Jamie started middle school last week. They’re big kids now. Middle school isn’t as scary as I thought it would be (for me). I thought they would have a million different classes to go to from one end of the campus to the other. They have 7 periods (one of which is lunch), and they actually only have a couple of classrooms. They only have 4 classrooms (1 of which is the locker room for PE). I was terrified their first day. Seth took them that day…good thing it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have come home. I probably would have walked them to each class and fed them their lunch. Leave me alone! I can’t help it! Seth told me that he had a hard time not pointing Arik in the direction he needed to go while he was looking at his little map of the campus, setting off to his first class. A teacher walked by Seth & recognized that “worried parent look” and told him, “You have to let him go”. But seriously…I prayed ALL DAY! (I know some of you were praying for them too…thanks!) They came home safe & sound. I know, because I checked them thoroughly! No scrapes, bumps, bruises, emotional distress…They were great. They even met up with some old friends that they knew from preschool through 2nd grade. I wasn’t nearly as worried about Bryce going to kindergarten as I was about Arik & Jamie going to middle school. I mean, I’ve had 4 other kids go to kindergarten. This is my first time parenting middle schoolers.
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Here’s a little incident that happened last week:
Seth had to take the car to work (we only have use of one car for right now), so I decided to walk to the boys’ school to pick them up in the afternoon. I told them that they could start walking home if they didn’t see me right away and that I would meet them somewhere along the way. When I pick them up, I drive to the back of the school andmeet them at the park that’s directly behind the campus. It was pretty hot, but I enjoyed the 1.3 mile walk. (That’s one way. Yes, I measured the distance with the car’s odometer.) I took the dog, a bottle of cold water, and my iPod. When I was most of the way there, I started seeing a lot of kids so I knew they were out and that I should see them walking soon. I got all the way to the school and didn’t see them AT ALL. I already started freaking out!! I looked at the time and it was 2:05, so they had been out for 10 minutes. I used my eagle-eye-mom-vision to look down the road I had just walked, trying to recall what colors they were wearing. Jamie had a red backpack and I couldn’t see it. By the way, I have perfect vision, so I could see down the entire street. The only problem was that there were A LOT of kids. So, I was panicking. I really shouldn’t have been out in the heat anyway, but I need the exercise and didn’t have the car anyway. The heat and stress started giving me a migraine. I felt so sick, I almost threw up on the side of the road several times. (Sorry…I know that’s gross, but that’s how worried I was.) They have never walked home before and they had only gone to school a couple of days, so I started to question whether they even knew their way home. I asked Arik that morning if he was positive of how to get home. He said he was, so I had him explain to me the directions to the house. Sounded perfect to me. So, anyway I was almost running back home and scanning both sides of the street & praying that I just missed them along the way & praying that they were safe.
At one point, I thought I saw Jamie’s red backpack turn the corner toward home, so I had a little hope. As I turned on our street I thought I saw a little movement in front of my house, but I thought it was just the leaves moving on the tree. When I was about two house from home, I saw them! I hugged them and told them I was worried sick!!
They went down the street that’s in front of their school and Arik told me that was the only way he knew to go…even though he explained to me that morning that he knew the way I drive every day. Uugghhh…Well, I felt MUCH better knowing my boys were home and that they were safe, but I was irritated with Arik. When I’m overheated (which I most definitely was), my body has a really hard time cooling down. I was hotter in my house (at a cool 76 degrees) than when I was walking. My migraine was full blown by that time and I was not able to function for the rest of the day. They thought they were in trouble. Poor kids. It was just a horrible misunderstanding. I’m so thankful that they were fine. The worst things started going through my mind. It might seem a bit dramatic, but I am always so worried about my babies. I would just die if something happened to them.
Here’s a little illustration to help you understand what went wrong:
That’s all I have to report. I probably won’t blog again for another month! LOL! The Mother-Daughter Retreat is coming up in 4 weeks!! Scottie & I are SO excited. I’m sure I’ll have a blog to post after that weekend! Hopefully it won’t involve having a suitcase fly off of the top of the car on the freeway (again) and trying to run out into traffic in an attempt to recover some lost items (again), or almost getting into a crash with a semi-truck (again).
