First Week of School

Wow! This week has flown by!  Tomorrow is Friday and rather than wait until the weekend when I will also have a birthday party to blog about, I figured I may as well get this post published. 

One of the best things about having this blog is that I get to write about all the exciting things that happen to the boys.  I hope that one day when they can read, they will be interested in how their childhood was, and also get a little of my perspective too.  I tend to write about all their antics on my other blog, Life’s Ups and Downs…and My Place in It All, so I hope they end up reading both at some point.  This place is used as our Family album so first days of Kindergarten should definitely go here.

Day 1:

Nicholas started school this past Monday on August 24.  He had met his teacher last week and also we knew he would have a neighbor friend there.  He was really timid about starting the first day of school.  Eddie was post call that day, so he was able to be there both for drop off and for pick up.  That was a real treat because Eddie is so often missing these moments.  You could tell he was really excited to see his little man go to school.

We parked on a side street to the school because we walk him to his door.  Both Nicholas and Christian had their backpacks (Christian was insistent and I didn’t want to fight…pick your battles, right?)  We crossed the street and said hi to the crossing guard and then we walked into the school.  Everything went fine.  We went inside and had Nicholas drop off his backpack.  He sat down and would not let me leave until A, his friend, showed up.  I squatted at his table, which was filled with 3 other boys.  No one was talking, so I figured I would introduce Nicholas to them.  We met B, L and W.  B is a big boy…he might be a little older than Nicholas, or maybe his parents are just tall.  He was very friendly.  L was also really nice.  He smiled and said hi.  W was really hard to understand because he was so nervous and quiet.  He has a slight accent as well.  I found out on Tuesday that he is most likely a Mennonite.  That is a culture I had never heard of until I came here to this area.  I believe they have a German background and many of them are bi-lingual or only speak their language.  Ed tells me from his experience at the hospital that their language is not German because other doctors are unable to communicate with them.  Anyway, their culture is radically different from ours, I suspect, and he seemed scared out of his mind.  I just wanted to scoop him up and make his nervousness go away, but then he probably would have really been freaked out.  Anyway, it was right about then when A got there and Nicholas was okay with me leaving.  He seemed to have calmed a bit as well since he knew his tablemates’ names.  In the meantime, while all of this was going on, Ed motioned to me that he and Christian were going into the hallway.  Apparently Christian wanted to sit and color and participate too!  He was getting mad because Ed had not let him do that (obviously).  Christian was crying as he left with Ed, and in a couple of minutes after I got Nicholas settled, I went out and joined them.  We left and Christian cried and whimpered the entire way back to the car.  He was so disappointed that he didn’t get to go to school.  Poor guy doesn’t understand it when I tell him he will start school in 2 weeks.  In the afternoon when we picked up Nicholas, he said he liked his teacher “alright” and really enjoyed playing outside and pizza (that apparently had no cheese or anything on it according to him—I think their cheese doesn’t look like ours) and he had to be quiet at rest time, but he didn’t have to sleep.

Day 2:

This day I woke up to a cranky (tired?) boy who fought me on going to school.  He wanted to be at home with Christian and I.  When we dropped him off, he didn’t want me to leave, but eased into coloring pretty easily.  I could not help but notice W and his mom come in.  W’s eyes were full of tears. Poor guy.   We got him to school only to pick him up and be told “Mommy, I had fun today.  I won’t  give you any more problems in the morning.  I like school!”  He also told me how they got to go to computers, but that they stood there and didn’t get to get on them yet.  Christian, on the other hand, was still upset when I made him leave in the morning, and still insisted on wearing his backpack, although this day I asked him to leave it in the car.  Poor guy asked me about “Bubba” several times throughout the day and got mad when he couldn’t stay and color again.  We colored after working out that morning.

Day 3:  As promised, Nicholas was up and running this morning.  He did everything I asked with no problems.  He went to school and reported to me after school that he had made 3 new friends.  They are J (a cute little blonde girl), L (the same L from his table the first day) and T (another little boy).  T apparently had told his Mom that Nicholas was his new best friend (too cute) but that he didn’t know Nicholas’s name—just that it started with an N.  His mother had T point Nicholas out and she introduced herself to me.  Nicholas also informed me he got to go to the computer lab, but that he had to just stand there again(I guess they are not putting them on computers yet), and he also went to music where he got to see his keyboard he will learn on (a new program this year—the kids all got keyboards to learn the scales and hopefully play some songs).  Unfortunately he did not get to play the keyboard that day either.

Day 4:  Another good day!  He says he saw one of his old classmates from pre-K, but that she is not in his class.  He was excited about that.  He has had Apple stamps everyday this week so far.  Tomorrow they get to celebrate July and August birthdays with cake and ice cream in the cafeteria at lunch.  He’s excited about eating in the cafeteria again.  I told him he could eat there twice a week.  $1.75 a day is a little expensive when we have our pantry stocked at home.  He seems happy with this. 

Nicholas is into his “cool dude” poses…he does this in front of the mirror and says, “I look good!”  LOL!!!  His first day Tee-Shirt is Super Mario Brothers.  He loved it and it goes with his Nintendo DS. 

Christian on his brother’s first day of school…he really thought it was his first day too.  It is not getting through that Nicholas’s first day of school and Nicholas’s birthday party are not also his.  He wants to share everything…poor guy.  He’s only doing what his mommy and daddy preach all the time, “Share, Share, Share!”

Brothers!  They love each other so much! 

Nicholas’s teacher, Mrs. W.  She is really nice and has been teaching this grade for a number of years.  Excuse the way I look…that is me, too early in the morning and ready to go workout.  No makeup.

Mr. Shyguy.

Another Week at the Ozuna House

Well, another week has flown by! The boys and I have been without Daddy for the most part this week. He's managing to get through this weekend of awful call duty. He went in on Friday morning at around 5:00am and it is now 8:30am Saturday morning and still no sign of him. He should be home to sleep in a little while. He will sleep all day today and we will see him to eat and spend a little time with us this evening before he goes back to bed to start another call day/night tomorrow. He will be post call on Monday morning--he'll sleep and we will see him for dinner again. Then the new week starts for him. Thank goodness he is done Friday and we will have him all to ourselves for a week. The boys miss Daddy and so do I. :)

We have kept ourselves busy this week. Nicholas went to school Tuesday and Thursday. They are winding down for the school year. Next week will be a big one as we will have a trip to the petting zoo here in town, and then his graduation ceremony is Thursday. ;) I'll get pictures and video to share on both days. Look for it to come up next week sometime.

Christian and I chilled out most of the week. We went to the Falls every morning on schedule except for Thursday. Ed needed us to bring his pager and I wanted Christian in bed by 11:30 to let him get plenty of sleep before picking up Nicholas from school.

This morning the community center is having their Summer Kickoff Carnival. The boys and I plan to head out and spend the morning over there playing games. The boys are excited about it. This will give Ed a chance to have some peace and quiet in the house today while he is sleeping and it will get the boys out of the house without costing us money. Win-Win!

I have not cooked much again this week. We also did not make it through all of the meals I planned. I still have tonight and tomorrow, I guess. I improved on my freezer Lasagna, we had grilled steaks, fresh French Bread, and homemade mushroom and cheese pizza (YUM!). I love my breadmaker! The french bread and pizza crust are so easy to make in it. I made the pizza crust last week and froze it for this week. It takes me 5 minutes to put the french bread together and creates nothing to clean up except for the pan and it is nonstick! Score!!

Another thing I have been doing this week is messing with photo editing in Photoshop Elements 5.0. This is the program that I got for scrapbooking a couple years back. I like it, but I am still learning it. This is the first program I have truly had to work at learning. It is not as user friendly as other programs. The product is worth it, but if it were not for the free video tutorials that I find on youtube and other similar programs, I would be completely lost. Here are a few of the photo editing projects that I did this week.


This first picture is from the September 11th Memorial that is put out every year here in Lubbock. Nicholas and Ed and I went out there a couple years back and walked among the flags. In this pictures I played with changing the image to black and white and highlighting just the one flag with color. I later found a much easier way to do the same thing....whew! next time I will do it the other way. :)
This next picture was taken by Grandma last year when we went on summer vacation. My mother loves this picture and I hope she really likes the improvements I made on it.
This last picture is kind of "scrapbooked". It is my favorite picture of Nicholas. He had just turned 2 when I took this picture during a summer rain storm. He was having so much fun playing in the rain. Precious!
Here are the originals, just in case you wondered:

Kenny’s Korral Field Trip

We have a little place south of town that is called Kenny’s Korral.  The idea is that it is a petting zoo where the kids can go and play and feed animals—all kinds of animals.  They have buffalo, camels, emus, chickens, pigs, and a bunch of other animals I don’t know the name of.  We have gone to Kenny’s Korral one time.  It was for a birthday party and Nicholas had loads of fun.  Tuesday we went for Nicholas’s preschool field trip.  This is the second field trip he has gone on this year.  The first one was to the Maize in October.  That one is pretty cool because it is a corn field that has been carved (cut) into a maze…but it is corn, so they call it the “Maize.”  Get it?  I don’t have pictures of that event, but I do have pictures of today’s activities.  Here they are:

The boys had lots of fun visiting Kenny’s Korral.  The fieldtrip was definitely a hit.  The most amusing thing about watching them was when Christian would get food for the animals.  He would grab exactly one pellet of food each time he went back to the box.  It was so funny because all these other children were trying to fit as much food into their little hands as they could and my child was getting exactly one pellet.  He was so proud of himself.