The First Day!

Would you believe that MY son, who is always awake at 5:45 a.m. slept until I woke him at 6:20 this morning?!?!? Go figure.

Our preparations went smoothly; then we all trekked to the bus stop. This is the expression I captured when I asked Ben to stand still for just a minute. "But Mommyyyyyyy! We can't sto-op! We'll miss the bu-uuuuuus!"

LOVE this shot. What a big boy!

He gave me a pleasant smile once we were there - standing and waiting. Take note of The Tag. He is expected to wear this for the first three weeks! Each of the twelve (yep, 12!) kindergarten teachers has a different shaped tag. The string is color-coded to tell people "in the know" something important. His bus number and name are displayed prominently. And the smiley face sticker's color also means something to those with "top secret clearance."

And off he goes! Remember how he is assigned to Bus 10? Yeah....well, apparently it's Bus 53 masquerading as Bus 10. That teeny tiny white number painted on the window above the 53 is a 10. This should help greatly.

Three little boys in one bus seat. Cozy. Can you see his little bespectacled silhouette?

And this is the "other woman" in Ben's life these days - Miss Shufelt. I took this picture last Friday at our open house. I was inspired by my friend, Rob's, picture of his son last year on the first day of school with his teacher. Since we don't get to drop our kids off, I figured the open house was the next-best thing.

And look who returned in one piece!!!!! Miss Karen, the bus driver, drives Jim's percussion kids to almost all of their competitions. She was thrilled (as were we) when she found out that Mr. Weaver's son would be on her route! :-)


We're still piecing together tidbits from the big day. So far, we know that they sung (and Ben very much liked) the "Goin' on a Bear Hunt" song. We also know that he couldn't find Henry, his good buddy in a different class, on the play ground. And he also brought home a picture that he drew titled "What I did on my first day of Kindergarten:" He drew a picture of himself buying lunch. He explained it to me, "I know I didn't really buy lunch. I was just pretending."

Tomorrow he's going to buy lunch. :-)

One down. 179 to go...