Surgery and Back to School

This is the latest in our home:

update on Mom:

On Monday the results of the scans arrived.  As usual Mom is not a usual patient.  She has a spot on her liver again. One spot is quite unusual.  Given the choice of surgery now or more chemo in hopes of surgery later, Mom chose surgery now, and her surgery should take place on August 26th.  This is a major surgery, the Whipple.  As I have said before, mention it to a medical person, and they will gasp...it is a big deal!  However, it is the only known cure, and the decision was made with prayer and comes with peace.

back to school:

Monday was also back to school day for the girls.  Classmates from preschool and kindergarten fill Julia's classroom.  A young, soft-spoken teacher leads them, and Julia's biggest excitement over the start of school was her "under desk."  No more tables in first grade.  She has her own lift top desk and it excites her as much as lockers excite middle schoolers.

School actually started today for Zach, Savannah, and Julia with a heat index that is off the charts and a 40 minute ride in an non air conditioned bus for Zach and Savannah. Wyatt went to work with me, and we enjoyed lunch out with a couple of my colleagues.

This is the rundown from today.

Zach started high school.  He talks when I pick him up from football, and it is just the two of us in the car, so I hope I get to do this often.  During English his teacher gave the stern, English teacher warning that she does not tolerate nonsense.  During her discussion on this point, Zach poised three pencils between his knuckles, messed up his hair and posed as a wolverine.  She just stopped and looked at him.  Of course, the entire class followed suit, and laughter ensued, even from the teacher.  His quest to be the class clown seems to be perfectly on track. 

I also learned during our conversation that he has to fill a bag with stuff about himself.  He wants to include something from China.  I cautioned him to leave his things from China at home as most are breakable, and all are irreplaceable.  He then revealed that he took a bone dragon to school in sixth grade when they studied China, and it was passed around the class and returned to him broken.  As I recall, he had his heart set on that dragon when we saw it in Hong Kong, and we splurged on it despite the rather high price.  sigh

Savannah -After spending a year in classes with one of her dearest friends, Savannah learned today that they have no classes at all together this year.  Seventh grade means no more teams, so her classes are a mixture, and few of them include her closest friends.  She really likes her Bible class.  I met her teacher once when he was moonlighting at a local restaurant over the summer.  He was Zach's track coach and seems like a top-notch guy. 

It thrills us that Savannah got the same math teacher Zach had last year.  She loves Zach, and she teaches math quite well.  I told her that she survived Zach for two years, and now she gets the one who loves math.  I happened to point out that Savannah does not care for literature as much as her brother without realizing I was also speaking with her English teacher. Oops. The math teacher pointed out that Zach is better in math than he lets himself believe...hmm, kind of suspected that all along.

Julia - Julia said little about her day today.  She had some Nerds and was happy about that.

Wyatt- Wyatt did not start school today.  He starts on Tuesday.  Wyatt prays during our devotional time every day that he can return to the school of his siblings.  He also wants to return to AWANA and to take martial arts. We are working on the AWANA and martial arts, but we obviously can't return him to the school for more reasons than the tuition is out of reach.  However, I ran into the second grade teacher who had both Zach and Savannah and learned that the second grade classes have 12 or 13 students.  That would be a huge benefit to Wyatt.  The classes should remain small, so maybe next year.

a very important comparison of backpacks started Julia's day at school

Might I add that it was 10 years ago that Zach started kindergarten, and this year was the first (I am guessing the last as well) that I have ever seen my kids off to school on the first day!