Anna's Last Hurrah, or Steve and Cheryl Meet the Principal

Anna started Kindergarten today.  We made a big deal out of this weekend and planned extra family fun to commemorate her last weekend of summer before she started school "for reals." We called the weekend "Anna's Last Hurrah."  Our weekends start on Thursday (so there!), so we spent Thursday night dining out and dancing in Seville Square--enjoying our local wedding band's hit parade of cover songs. 

I will pretend that Anna did not spend the evening crying and throwing fits about how every other kid in the entire place was getting to ride on the swings before her.  Instead, I will tell you of the five minutes of crazy fun she and I had getting down to "Dancing Queen." We had to sprint to the front and hurdle a few trannies to get to the free tiaras though.

(Yes, I AM very sweaty in this picture. It was 8 p.m. and still 80 degrees with 80 percent humidity. Go take your judgy pants to someone else's blog.)

Friday night's itinerary was supposed to include an outdoor showing of Monsters vs. Aliens, but we decided to take a night off due to the aforementioned crying and fit throwing.  Saturday took us down to the beach for a dinner at Peg Leg Pete's where the kids meals come in a sand pail with eye patches all around.

Then we went to the boardwalk for the Smart Brothers concert, but it was apparently cancelled due to thunderstorms earlier in the day. So, we played in the water till sunset instead.  Not a bad alternative, really.

You can see from the picture that things are overcast, but not actually rainy (what up Smart Brothers?).

So that brings us to this morning.  The big day.  She was fantastic.  So sparkly and shiny and ready for the big leagues.

And only a tiny bit apprehensive...

We live directly behind the school, so Steve took the morning off and we walked Anna to school as a family.  The school seems wonderful, as is Anna's teacher (I loooove her).  You can see Anna in her classsroom below, though she's dwarfed by her gigantic Tinkerbell backpack :-) After we left Anna in class, the school served breakfast for the parents in the cafeteria, so that was cool.  I did not cry, but we did have to see the principal soon after...

See, even though we live directly behind the school (the buses unload 30 feet from our bedroom window and all last school year we awoke to a lady teacher yelling herself hoarse: "Waaaalk!  Waaaalk!), we can't just hop our 7 ft. fence to take Anna to school.  We can, however, walk 7 minutes down a side street to go in through a back gate.  But if that gate is closed, we have to shlep the baby into the car, drive over 3 miles around the neighborhood, out onto the main highway, and turn onto the long road to the school lined with cars for drop-off. Naturally, I'd rather walk as long as it's not raining.

So, as we were leaving the school, feeling like we had this parenting thing down, we came to a locked back gate.  Our backyard was right there!  We could see our cars! But, unless we wanted to climb a 7 ft. fence in our business attire and hoist the baby over between us, we were looking at a 3 mile walk in 80 degrees. Carrying a baby. Steve wanted to hoof it. I told him we were going to the office. But neither one of us wanted to be the idiots that got locked in the first day. We started walking the perimeter of the school grounds looking for weak spots in the chain link but failed to find any.  Into the office we went, smirking, to ask for help. A nice lady said she would let us out with her key, so we followed her and tried to chit-chat politely.  Things got downright embarrassing when she introduced herself as the principal.  Nice one, Samahas.  

Thankfully, though, there was another couple stranded at the gate when we all got back out there.  They joked about climbing it too, until the principal smilingly mentioned that perhaps they needed a security camera at this entrance.  We all laughed, ha ha ha ha, but it wasn't so funny when we told them later she was the principal. Now we're all busted.