First Day of First Grade. . .

Finally, I'm getting around to posting Emma's First Day of School pictures!! After a hot summer with her long hair, we decided to chop off her pretty locks and go for something shorter.

I do most of the trimming of hair in our house, but occasionally, Kevin and Emma will go to someone who has more training than me. They both sit more still when someone they don't know is cutting their hair!

I feel like she aged with the haircut!! I couldn't believe how mature she looked afterward! She was pretty proud of her new hairdo! Look at all that hair on the floor!

Emma didn't have far to go for her first day of school. We decided that I would be her teacher again this year and we're all very happy with that decision. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like for her to go to public school, but for now, we feel like this is the right place for her. She's such a great student and fun to have around. She loves learning and loves most assignments I give her. I think she's a teacher's dream. . . not that I'm biased or anything:)

She doesn't call me Mrs. Schrag unless she's trying to be funny.

We had an exciting, full day of first grade. Emma told me some of her favorites and we recorded a little time capsule for her to look back on at the end of the year. Favorite color: silver. Food: pizza. Holiday: Halloween (??why??). Animal: ladybug (yes, I know it's an insect). Season: winter. TV Show: Wild Kratts. School subject: music. Book: The Littles. Sport: Tag.

Her reading level is incredible to me. I don't really have anyone to compare her to, nor do I need to, but I feel like she reads exceptionally well and I love listening to her. She says math is fun and she really enjoys hearing about other cultures and ancient civilizations.

On the evening of the first day of school, we had to go to the grocery store. I was in a hurry and pushing the cart quickly through the aisles. Emma was keeping up and in good spirits when all the sudden she yelled, "Mom! Stop please!" I turned around and reprimanded her for yelling in the store. She had a strange look on her face and said, "But Mom! My tooth just fell out and I have to find it!" Yep, there in HyVee, her loose tooth just flew out of her mouth and blood was oozing through her remaining teeth. Knowing how important the moment was, I had to capture it! We did find her missing front tooth and celebrated with a photo, bloody mouth and all! As we were talking about it, we both remembered that she had lost her first tooth on the first day of Kindergarten. That was pretty exciting. Big things for a 6-year old!! Well, the tooth fairy forgot how much she had given for the previous 3 teeth an apparently gave significantly more for the HyVee tooth. Emma was ecstatic!

This is the sunset on our drive home from HyVee. Beautiful ending to a pretty great day!!

We actually had two first days of school. In addition to homeschooling Emma, we decided to send her to the public school for P.E. and Music. Those are two classes that I have a harder time fitting in to our day and the school is just around the corner from our house. She goes most afternoons for about 45 minutes and absolutely loves what she's learning. One day she came home and said she had learned a fun new game in P.E. When she said it was Tunnel Tag, I realized that's not a game I would have taught her during our homeschool P.E.:) Can you imagine playing Tunnel Tag or Freeze Tag with just the two of us? I'm so happy she's loving her other school and I love that time I get with Adri. She cried the first few times we dropped Emma off, but now she says, "Emma, P.E., mooo-zik!" We read and snuggle and play games and I think she's liking her time with me.

Here's Emma on her First Day of First Grade at Hopewell Elementary.