The First First Day

After a busy summer, it was finally time to relax.  And by relax I mean to send the kids back to school so that I could finally sit down and have some free time.  Kidding (sort of).

The day before school started, we had a meet the teacher at the Elementary school.  So Stinkerbell and I drove over and met both of her homeroom teachers and marveled at all of the gorgeous painted murals that had been done over the summer...

 Her teachers are Perez and Rovito - hence, they are the Pros.

 Her class is on Bobcat Boulevard South...

 And this mural is HUGE and so fabulous.  I do love her school.

And then it was off later that afternoon to walk MadHatters schedule.  She was very nervous about Middle School and being able to find all of her classes.  She was afraid she would get turned around and not make it in the 5 minutes allotted to pass.  After getting her schedule, we walked from class to class and then did it again.  And again.  We finally headed home when she felt like she had it down pat.  It truly helped alleviate some of her stress about the next morning.

She has a great schedule and even better teachers.

*Now that we are a couple of weeks in, she laughs about how worried she was to start Middle School*

*Yes, I laminated her schedule.  I love to laminate*

 And suddenly, it was upon us.  The morning dawned early as we tried to wipe the sleep from our eyes and make it to the bus stop on time.  Thankfully this year they pushed back the pick up time by 20 minutes, so we get a bit of extra sleep.  Stinkerbell is my sleeper and no matter what time you put her to bed the night before if you wake her before 8, she is going to be a bit groggy.

She was dressed and ready for her first first day in the U.S.  I say it is the first first day because we moved back last year over 2 months after school had started.  Technically they had the first day, but it wasn't when everyone else did.  So this is the first one at a U.S. school according to my logic :)

 Outfit and hair by Stinkerbell herself.

 And I had to get one of them together - it is tradition after all.  But MadHatter doesn't start school until over an hour after Stinkerbell starts, so she went with us to the bus stop and then had some time to kill.

 Off she went.

 Too cool to have the picture taken without attitude :)

I dropped MadHatter that first morning instead of adding to her anxiety by making her also brave the bus.  It was the last time I drove her.  We left the house at 8:30.  We live less than 3 miles from school.  I dropped her at the front gate of school at 9:17.  47 minutes to go 2.7 miles.  Never again.

They both came home bursting with excitement and stories of their first day.  They both had a fabulous day and loved being back in the swing of things.  Stinkerbell is very excited to be the Big Kid at school, and MadHatter found that being the little kid didn't make much difference.  And they both came home saying that they made new friends already!  Win, win, win.

Bits and Bobs

Random goings on in early August as we tried to unwind from a crazy summer before school started.

It's not home until the Latitude/Longitude signs are hung.

It was good to have B here for a few weeks too!  I think Dulce missed him.  I know we did.

Oh no!  Braces day was here.  She did get a bit of a reprieve though.  Her bottom braces cannot be put on until they move her top teeth away from her bottoms enough to get the brackets on saftely.  This means she doesn't have to have that tooth pulled quite yet.

I love that new smile!

 School haircuts and dr's appointments for Stinkerbell.  Luckily no shots for her this year which promoted the second picture.

Poor kid wasn't so lucky.  First braces and then shots.  Going to middle school is tough on a body.

We watched more than a few of these.  Summer sunsets paint the sky in such incredible ways.

MadHatters first schedule.  We went to school on pick up day and walked her entire day so she wouldn't have any trouble doing it the first day.

The Junior Olympics

Race Day was finally upon us!  And we had one nervou-cited (nervous and excited all at once) girl on our hands.  She was up and ready before dawn and spent her time pacing while the rest of us got ready.  She wasn't racing until noon though we had to be at the track by 10 am and with MadHatter having woken us all up earlier than necessary, we made it to the track by 8.  Which we won't be doing again!  That sun is brutally hot in July and an open track doesn't give off a lot of shade.  And all of that extra time just gave MadHatter too long sit around, get inside her own head and build up her nerves.  We have added a normal arrival time to the list of things we now know and shouldn't do next time.

After what seemed like days of waiting, it was time to warm up.  While MadHatter ran through her sprint drills, I went to the heat sheet boards and found which heat she was in and which table she needed to check-in at...

There were 14 heats of just 11-year-old girls!  

MadHatter was in the 4th heat.  It is all done by qualifying time - and let's just say MadHatter's time was far from her best.  In fact, is was almost a second slower than her usual.  But she made it this far and that is all that counted!

Warmed up and ready to go!

Off she went to check-in.  No parents allowed past the security fence so I said good luck, sent her off and headed to the stands to wait for her heat.

And then watched her trip over her own foot while coming off of the starting line and knew that her nerves had gotten the better of her.  She placed last in her heat.  But you know what - She will always and forever be a Junior Olympian and no one can take that away from her.  She was a bit disappointed in her performance but it didn't keep her down for long.  She said she was just happy to have been able to participate in an event that she never thought she would get past Regionals in.  She also told me that next year, if she made it, she wouldn't be so nervous because now she knew what it was all about and how it all worked.  Personally,  I was just so proud of her for setting a goal and working so hard to achieve it no matter how she placed.

And I got an Olympic athletes autograph!

We had a couple of days between events so we had to fill our time somehow.  With a waterpark just 2 miles from our hotel room, we knew we would be beating the heat for one of those days. 

And for the other day, we picked up B and went to the movies, shopping, and dinner at his indulgence spot.

Suddenly, it was Friday morning and time for the Long Jump competition.  This time she really did have to be at the track early.  With an 8 am start time and a 6 am call time we had to leave the hotel by 5:30.  Not a problem!  Once again she was up and dressed before any of us could get out of bed.

It is always a little weird when I can't be on the track watching her warm up and telling her if she is on her mark or not but thankfully one of the line judges was helping her out a bit.  It also meant that I didn't get any clear pictures of her jumping in her heat. 

She did well, but again, she said her nerves got the best of her.  She was jumping behind the line by quite a bit because she was afraid of scratching which cost her almost a foot on each jump.  You could see that she knew she wasn't doing her best but she just couldn't shake it.  She was beating her self up and it wasn't doing her any favors in helping her jump farther.  She forgets sometimes that she is still very new to this and is competing against girls that have been doing this for many years, not just months. 

After finishing her 3 jumps, she came back to the stands and we set off for home.  It would be hours before they finished running over 100 girls through their jumps but we already knew she hadn't made the top 10 (though she did finish 3rd in her heat).  When we finally had the standings we found that she had placed in the top 50.  She was a bit disappointed about that but then I explained that it means that she is one of the top 50 11-year-old Long Jumpers in the United States!  Pretty impressive if you ask me.  That seemed to cheer her up.  And then she looked at the medal-winning jumps and was sad for another few moments.  She realized that if she had just jumped what she usually did in a normal competition she would have medaled (at 5th place).  But it was only for a second and then she was back to herself saying that next year she would work even harder and take home the gold!  And I truly believe she might.

Our 12 hour drive home.  We made it in just before midnight!

Opening Ceremonies

It was finally here!  The Opening Ceremonies for the 2019 Junior Olympic games!  MadHatter had been dreaming about this day since she decided to become an Olympic runner about 4 years ago.  Sadly, back then, we didn't live in the U.S., so this goal was entirely out of her reach and relegated to daydream status.  Then we moved home, and what seemed like minutes later she handed me a brochure for the Coral Springs Blazers track team, and I signed her up on the spot.  Nevermind that training didn't start for another 3 months.  Since that first practice, she has trained for this moment.  And suddenly we were on the road to the Jr. Olympics - literally.

We left Savannah behind us early in the morning and made the uneventful drive through South Carolina and most of North Carolina before settling in at our hotel room in Greensboro.  A short shuttle bus ride to Aggie Stadium and we had our official start numbers and a swag bag of souvenirs.   That didn't mean we didn't need one more - a shirt with her name on the back, and her events on the sleeves...

The back of her T-shirt.  This was the 8th of 13 sheets of just 11-year-old girls!  SO many athletes.

And of course, Stinkerbell had her frozen Ice.  Tradition can't be broken even though she was sick as a dog...

A few of the athletes from her team that came for the Walk of Athletes.  Little did I know that parents and siblings would also walk the track with them...

We lined up alphabetically by state and off we went...

The cauldron was lit (yep, just like the big Olympics)

And we made the jumbotron...

And then it was time to cut out.  They did run the 200 m girls 11-year-old race that night, but Stinkerbell was feeling worse and worse the longer we sat.  I needed her to be up and out early the next morning for MadHatters race, so we called it a night and tried to get some sleep.  With all that nervous energy in the room, how successful do you think we were?

Georgia on my Mind

As soon as MadHatter qualified for the Junior Olympics, we knew we had another trip to plan.  The problem was, we were leaving on our currently planned trip in just 2 days and it was jam-packed with little time to research and book hotels.  Planning for JO would just have to wait until we got back.  Which was a rookie mistake on my part because I didn't realize just how big the Jr. Olympics was.  By the time I went to make reservations 2 1/2 weeks later all of the room blocks set aside had been fully booked.  And the surrounding hotels were charging 2-3x their normal rates.  And flights were out of this world expensive, as was renting a car.  Since Greensboro isn't that far from us, I decided that we would be driving and turning the whole thing into an adventure.  But since it is about 1000 miles I thought it would be best to relax on the drive up and not try to make the 11-hour drive in one day just to have MadHatter have to compete the next morning.  That meant I needed a stopover spot and lo-and-behold my midpoint was Savannah, Georgia.

The final of the original 13 colonies, Savannah has a rich and storied history which it has valiantly worked to preserve.  With its grand mansions, stately Oak trees, and historic squares it is a feast for the eyes and a photographers dream.  Sadly, I had left my big camera at home as we rushed out the door so I could only capture its beauty on my iPhone.  

We arrived about dinner time Saturday and decided to just call it a day as no one was feeling like playing tourist at this point.  But when Sunday dawned we were out the door and ready to take it all in.  First stop - Wormsloe.

The Wormsloe Plantation was built on 822 acres of land on the Isle of Hope starting in 1736 by one of Savannah's original founders, Noble Jones.  The Plantation, used as a country residence for the Jones family, was handed down from generation to generation until 1979 when much of the grounds were given to the state of Georgia which opened it as a National Historic Site.  The Jones family still retains control of the large manor house and its surrounding acres but the rest of the grounds are open to the public - including this 1.5-mile avenue of Oak trees that greet you at the entrance.

It's a slow drive so this one stuck her head out of the sunroof as we drove to the walking trails.

Once parked, there is a museum,  walking trails that lead through the dense maritime forest and into the ruins of the tabby fort built by Jones in 1745. There is also a colonial life demonstration area, which includes a replica wattle and daub hut ( pictures below)...

A picture to show just how large those Oak trees are...

 She thought it needed a hug.

 Noble Jones' grave marker and the remains of the original house.

 Looking out across the marsh.

 She braved the grasshopper! (That is not her hand on the left, just a man who had found the grasshopper and asked if we would like to hold it).

 Living conditions of a slave (or indentured servant, they had both) at Wormsloe.

The hut is made of wattle  and daub (interwoven sticks covered in mud/clay)

The road back out again.  Still stunning. 

 We had done a lot of walking that morning and were getting a bit hungry so we decided it was best to head to our next stop, the historic district, for some lunch.  But when I drive in unknown locations it is never that easy.  I missed a crazy turn and ended up on this bridge...which ended us up in South Carolina.  OOPS.  Turned around and finally found a place to park.  All of those gorgeous town squares also mean a lot of one-way streets that make it difficult to get to the garage entrance.

We finally got situated and headed over to see if we could catch the trolley as there is a lot of ground to cover in the Historic District.  But we were just a bit too late as it was Sunday and they close early.  They said we wouldn't have enough time to complete the route with them but gave us a map and we did what we could on foot.

 But first, lunch.  It was already almost 2 pm!

We spotted these steps and a river so headed in that general direction.

 Which brought us to this shopping/dining street on the river.

Lunch was eaten, we shopped, we wandered and we saw the sites before heading back up those historic steps and into another fabulous square.  And then to another.  And another.  We stopped to check things off of our map as we went (still trying to follow the trolley route) and just enjoy the scenery.  We finally stopped for ice cream, but not at the most famous place in town as it had over an hour wait.  We instead asked locals where they had ice cream and went there.

 The waving girl.  The legend goes that Florence, and her collie, would wave at the ships coming into port day and night.  For 44 years.  It is estimated that she welcomed over 50,000 ships.

 Built in 1921, this 1000 seat theatre is largely unchanged.  I thought it was fabulous that they were showing the original Star Wars trilogy (at LUCAS).

 The famous Leopold's ice cream.  That line goes down the street and around the corner and had an hour wait.  We decided to move on to another square with outdoor music and lots of seating for a locally recommended treat.

Recharged, we set off to see the famous Forsythe Square and its surrounding estate houses.

 Forsythe fountain.

 Houses from the 1800s that look like a movie set.

It was getting to be about sunset but no one was especially hungry because of our late lunch and even later ice cream so we decided to gas up the car and grab gas station snacks for dinner in front of the tv in our hotel room.  Which was greeted with whoops and hollers because it's a rare treat.  As we all lay in bed, binging the Disney Channel, we reflected on a day well spent learning something new about another city in this place we call home.