and....

...whooooooooooooooooooooosh!...summer is over. Well, at least the part of summer where the boys are out of school. The summer heat will drag on here for at least another couple of months.

And I sit here tonight trying to figure out if I got everything done. Back to school is complicated this year. The boys are in 3 different schools. (That happened one other year, but one of the schools was pre-school, so that doesn't count. Heh.) So much to worry about!

Getting Grant ready for high school had a lot of facets. Academics was just one of them...testing into the gifted program, then choosing honors and gifted classes...could he succeed with such a tough schedule? He's already completed his first homework assignment for Honors English - had to read an assigned book over the summer and do hundreds of study questions. And that is just the beginning.

The logistics was another...getting books, being assigned a locker, the new clothes, backpack, supplies...who would he walk to school with? Can he find his way around this huge school (2nd or 3rd largest high school in Arizona, I'm told) and get to his classes tomorrow? I worry - will they give him a darn map? And more importantly...will he be brave enough to use it?

And then there is football...so much going on with that and it hasn't even really started. Football camp, sports physical, the right cleats (see below)...one memo says practice starts Monday, another says it starts Wednesday...take the white form and the blue card in to get a blue card and a yellow card back...because you cannot play without that yellow card! Ai, yi, yi. And I spent hours today scouring the football club website, trying to get acquainted with everything so that we, as parents, won't be such the neophytes either. (Because seriously, being naive is when you get stuck with the awful volunteer jobs.)

And then there is Wyatt...off to middle school tomorrow. He is in a "pod" with many of his friends. But even if he weren't, he would be fine. He's my social one and doesn't shy away from getting new friends. Wyatt's very excited about having a vast menu from which to choose for lunch. He has never eaten at school even once in his life! And he has to take the bus for the first time ever. No big deal, except, whoever he sits with the first day, he has to sit with the entire year. Choose wisely, son.

Kent and Kurt are the easy ones this year. The biggest crisis with them was trying to fit Kurt's pencils with the pencil top erasers on into his supply box. (Kent just opted to take his off and leave them in the box loose. After all, he says, the pencils are new and have perfectly good erasers on them.)

So, the clothes are chosen for tomorrow, the lunches are decided upon, and the schedule is mapped out. Hopefully we will have a successful morning and I'll be back with a post tomorrow with first-day-of-school photos.

Thank goodness it's not yet time to get rid of the flip-flops!