The Day My Kid's Teacher TRIED to Disinvite Me to the Class Party. Tried.

I swear I was snapping pictures of our life along the way.  I just didn't put them out there to the world.  Well, lets pick up on the very next day after one of my last posts.  I had lovingly made a cute little first day of school teacher gift and lined up all of our bags.  It was adorable.

The next day I dropped Peyton off on his first day of 1st grade.  And, y'all, the struggle was real.

I think I mostly captured the good moments from the year, but first grade was not a friend to either Peyton or me.   Somehow we made it to the last day without much blood, lots of sweat, and some tears.  I know, you're thinking "First grade couldn't have been THAT bad."  It was.

Exhibit A:

The Day My Kid's Teacher Tried to Disinvite Me to the Class Party

It was the end of the year class party for first grade.  One thing I have to give Peyton's school was that they were consistent.  Every class in the school had the same class parties at the same time on the same day every year.  Not so great if you have twins in separate classes, but pretty great for scheduling purposes.  So I'm the kind of parent that has next year's school calendar downloaded into Outlook and written into the day planner (you know, as back up) a few months before school begins. (It is May 27th and I may or may not have the calendar for third grade nailed down.)  So I was aware that we had an end of the year party coming up.  Also.  They schedule the End of School Parties on ... wait for it ... the last day of the school year.

Lets just say the teacher had trouble with communication.  Or trouble with me.  I am not 100% sure, but I CAN tell you that a very good friend of mine had a kid in the same class and we had very different experiences.

By that point I was very familiar with our first grade teacher's email address as we had exchanged... words ... via email ... all year.  And she was familiar with mine.  That year I was a pretty involved parent.  By the end of first grade I was coordinating the volunteer art program and in the building once a week either for classroom volunteering or art stuff.  So the idea that she could forget to include me in the email to ALL of the class parents on the end of the year party preparations is, well, pretty unbelievable.  But "it happened".  Two days before the party (and the last day of school), I texted my friend with a kid in the class and asked if she had seen a sign up sheet or some kind of assignment for what we were supposed to bring.  She said she got an email THREE WEEKS before.  OOHH I was mad.  And I was gonna... send her a heated email....  or something.  Over the course of some texting, my friend convinced me to split Capri Sun duty with her and just show up at the party.

So I did.

The teacher seemed so overwhelmed by the kids and the parents and the sugar that she didn't notice the uninvited guest at her party.  No problem.  I stationed myself directly next to her scooping ice cream for the sundaes she was providing to the kids.  (seriously, who gives first graders ice cream sundaes??)  (also, you should know that this is a huge passive aggressive slap in the face from me.  Once upon a time I had it written into contracts that I did not cut cake or scoop ice cream.  True story.)  (yeah, I get that she wouldn't know that.  Keep reading.)  She was still unfazed and we were engaged in some kind of passive-aggressive-over-the-top-faking-it collegiality.  It was awesome.  It could be argued, up to this point, that it was the end of the year and she seriously did not realize that she didn't include me in the party planning and had no clue that I had just showed up.  Doubtful, but could be argued.  (you have no idea how many of my emails that woman ignored.)

It could be argued... Until the very last kid came through the line and she TOOK.  THE.  SCOOP.  OUT.  OF.  MY.  HAND and said "oh, I can do the rest".  Not an exaggeration, y'all.  There was ONE KID left.  My hand was grafted to the scoop with ice cream goop at that point.  So I smiled my best Edmond Mom smile and let the ice cream scoop slide off my hand into hers.  Stringy lactated sugar and all.

I washed my hands and never looked back.  I collected my sticky second grader and we blew that popsicle stand.  To this day, I remember my last words in that school to Peyton:  "Be sure you got everything, because we are not coming back."

Remember in June 2013 when I said "I'm back!" and then I totally wasn't? 

I wrote six posts in 2013 and then

FELL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!!!!!!

Not really.  I moved to Norman.

But some really fun and amazing things have happened since then that I really should have documented and you missed out on the very wild ride that has been the Anderson life over the past (almost) two years!!  So.  You ready?  ... buckle up!

... did you really think I was going to update you on the events of what I called "a wild ride" in one blog post?

Nope.

I'm probably making some kind of huge omen-like mistake by saying this... but I'm hoping to update over the summer.  You'll see why.  Stay tuned!

Just as an appetizer, though, here's an off-the-top-of-my-head table of contents:

- The time Peyton was a pirate

- The year the Andersons ruined Christmas gave the world an epic Christmas Vacation story for anyone to try to beat

- Turns out Peyton LIKES soccer!  See Here for why that's kind of amazing.

- My kid is a wrestler.  Really.

- I live Here and this is HILARIOUS to me.

- My kid rides the bus.  And that's okay.

- I have a third grader. 

- We are a two-household family.

- The day my face exploded.

But  just so you know we're alive and well in Norman, Oklahoma... I'll leave you with this.

See you soon!

UN BELIEVEABLE

I have confiscated Brandonś netbook lately for my own uses so, lucky you, that means it is now convenient for me to vent at home... and I´ve got some venting to do...

Disclaimer: this is the type of thing Im generally ¨Over" by the time I get to work to type it up so its not the most exciting thing ever... so... I know.

OK back story: Peyton has made friends with the neighborhood boys and I let him play with them outside.  I used to let them play videogames in the house until the fourth or fifth time they trashed my house.  Also, they seem to multiply.  So no more kids in the house.  Thats been the rule for months but since it has been SOOO hot the past couple of days, I told Peyton he could have ONE friend in the house to play video games if he wanted.  Until today he hadn´t taken me up on it.  This evening he asked if Matthew and Joann could come in to play.  Matthew is 6 and Joann is 4.  I figured Joann couldn´t do too much damage on her own and the boys would play video games so I said yes.  Well, the playstation controllers werent working for whatever reason so they went to play in Peytonś room.  Still fine.  I knew theyd make a mess but Id have Peyton clean it up this evening and at least it was contained.  

I walked by Peytonś room after they had gone back outside and saw cars all over the floor through the cracked door.  No big deal.  That is until Peyton came in for the evening and I told him hed need to clean up his room before bed.  he said ¨what mess?¨ - still typical.  So I pushed open his door to show him the mess I was talking about and I swear I had the same reaction as the day I opened the same door when he was a toddler and had smeared poo all over his crib and wall.  Simultaneously: horror, panic, frustration, defeat, and probably some other things thrown in there.

There were not only toys strewn about, someone had taken ALL of the hanging clothes off of the rack (that stands in as his closet) and thrown them on the floor, every toy in every bin was on the floor and board games were open and dumped out.  It was like his room exploded.  All I could say was, ẗhis is unbelieveable.  UN BELIEVEABLE.  There will be no more friends in the house.¨ Peyton: ¨Ever?¨  ¨Yep.¨

Now hereś where the poo situation was worse - when he was a toddler he didnt know any better and wasnt able to clean up the horrid mess on his own.  I had to deal with it while he laughed and splashed in the bath.  Now he is.  And he knows.  Instead of just cleaning up before bedtime he spent the next hour putting everything away.  He apparently got the point because on my last inspection, when it was finally cleaned up and I told him he had 30 minutes left before he had to go to bed so he could watch a show, he hugged me and told me I was the bestest.  Shameless sucking up but Iĺl take it.  

Also, theres this:  The kids in question (the whole group this time- not just the three of them) all asked for water while they were playing in our driveway.  Im not totally horrible so I gave them water in disposable cups.  Peyton and I went to let the neighbors dog out while they are out of town and ALL those cups are thrown at the base of our driveway.  It looked like we had a frat party at our house.  UN BELIEVEABLE.

The Night Before School

Twas the night before school ...

The backpacks were stacked by the front door with care

in hopes that the supplies were all surely there

The pencils are sharpened

For the shameless (and necessary) bid for teacherś pet 

And finally, as I tucked him into bed while the sun was still out:

Me:  Are you SO excited about 1st Grade tomorrow??

Peyton:  Not really.  I hate to take baths.  

P.S.  Brandons first day of school was today and it went very well.  Results:  MacroEconomics is going to be easy but horribly boring; Physics will be hard.  He found his classes and parking spaces all by himself.  :)

Reading Buddies

PawPaw reading to Peyton - must have been 1 year old?

 

Now Peyton reads to PawPaw.

The Cats Miss Their Boy

And here's what the cats did while Peyton was away.  I could hardly get them off of his bed.  Nimbus and Pete anyway.  Bella appears to be happy for the break.  Peyton REALLY loves her and likes to hug on her.  Tightly.  A lot.  

 

 

 

 

Big Boy Room

Project #1 DONE!

While Peyton and Brandon have been traveling the last couple of weeks, I worked on transforming Peyton's room to something he could enjoy and use for the next several years... approximately 4.  (which just happens to be the number of years I think we will be "camping")

So here's what I came up with:

The desk still needs to be painted and I need to paint the inside of the bottom drawer of the dresser.  Its a storage locker find that we didn't end up selling.  The bottom drawer was broken so I decided to just remove it and use the bottom area as shoe storage but I didn't think to paint that part of the inside. 

I forgot to take a picture of it but his book storage is a wire milk crate - the kind that my Grandpa had in the shed.  Also from a locker.   We have two and I love them SOO much!  I painted it black but didn't put a finish on it so that the black will wear off naturally and it should have a cool look to it over the years.  His laundry basket is a wire egg crate - (25 cents at a garage sale!!) that I put a canvas liner in.  Canvas liner came from a rolling laundry station mom and dad bought me.  Its the same as the liner that is hanging above the blue tubs in the picture above.  That one houses stuffed animals.  New rule:  if he gets a new stuffed animal, one of the existing ones has to be donated - that thing is full to the brim!

And who knew I wouldn't be able to find Pez dispensers???  I wanted to do a little display of them above his bed but I couldn't find them.  So that'll be a progressive project. 

Anyway... here's his grown up big boy first grader room!  Hopefully it will take him all the way to middle school.  He has a bedside lamp (for reading) and an alarm clock (because big boys need to learn to get up on their own eventually).  Sigh.