First Day Of School 2023

This year we started school a bit differently and it worked out amazingly well. We did a slow start by starting on Monday August 21st, but I only had the kids work on Math that whole week. The following week I had them add in English. It was such a game changer in regards to their attitude towards school. Boom got your Math done, now it's still summer break. No big deal! It was a nice way to ease back into the schedule rather than going from nothing to okay sit down and do 6 subjects worth of work every day. 

Our official first day of school was Tuesday, September 5th.

I can't believe Owen only has one more first day of school picture after this! 

He's a Junior in High School! 

Yep the shirt fits now! 

When I took this picture and looked at the date I actually had a freak out moment. His Senior year starts in September next year, but he'll graduate in 2025. For some reason I thought it might be like the football season. Where the you win Superbowl in the season you started in which would be 2023, but you actually play the Superbowl in 2024. I got all confused and was thinking I had messed the kids shirts up this whole time and no one noticed. I ran in and looked at my cousin's son's graduation announcement. He had just graduated back in May and it said that he was the graduation class of 2023 so even though he started his senior year in 2022 they say class of 2023 since that's when you actually graduate. I was so confused and so thankful that I hadn't messed up years worth of pictures! Hahaha! 

Second year of high school for this guy! 

He's a Smore!!! 

Jackson's shirt fits too! These boys are growing up too fast! Back to back graduations are going to be crazy on my Mama heart! 

Even though our first day of school was on Sept 5th, we didn't actually take these pictures until Wednesday, September, 6th. Poor Ella had another one of her throwing up episodes from Monday night until Tuesday morning. She felt awful so she didn't do any work on the first day of school. Thankfully by the evening she was feeling better and on Wednesday she was right as rain. It so maddening to not understand why her body is doing this. We have doctor appts with my Naturopath, her Neurologist and a GI Specialist all within the next couple of months. Praying that we'll be able to figure out what is going on and our sweet girl doesn't have to deal with these episodes anymore! 

She in 7th grade now! It's crazy to me to think that when we started homeschool she was only in 4th grade. Honestly it was more like 3rd grade since her 3rd grade year was so messed up. She has come so far and she's rocking it! 

Her shirt is still a little big, but not by much! 

We don't have any kids in elementary school anymore...he's a middle schooler! What?!?!

6th grade is going to be awesome! 

He's still got a lot of growing to do! 

Owen saw Charlie outside while we were taking pictures. 

Our school mascot needed to be in the first day of school pictures. 

He wasn't quite interested though. 

This was the best I thought I was going to get! 

But Owen wrangled him, but Charlie almost made a break for it.

But Owen persevered and we got a class picture with our mascot! 

Buddies! 

Thankfully this years first day of school pictures went off without a hitch! 

Always gotta have one selfie with the teacher! 

Later that day I was taking the kids out for back to school shopping. It just hadn't worked out to go until then and honestly the kids didn't need much. 

I was going over the list for each of the kids and noticed something funny added to the end of Jack's portion of it. The crazy thing is at first I thought it was real so I asked Jack...why do you need a Secret Agent Outfit? He was so confused! Jackson is actually going to be in a skit at our church coming up in October so I thought that he honestly needed a costume for it. That's when I noticed that the writing was just a little different from Jack's. I took this picture and texted Michael to ask him he was going to go shopping with me to pick up this Secret Agent Outfit. He thought I would get a kick out of it! He's so silly!