Happy Fall, Y’all!

In the loooong time since I last posted, the Grandma Sandy family has been busy, busy, busy.

Which is exactly why its been a loooong time since I last posted!

What have we been doing that’s kept us so busy?

Well, let’s see.....

Peanut has been busy making new friends.

Grandma Sandy is particularly happy about one new friend she has found....

See this cute face?

Cute Face is the daughter of a sorority ( Chi Omega!) sister of mine that lives here in this little town of ours.

Her Mom and I had tried to schedule a get-together several times during the summer so all the kids could meet but we could never come up with a date that worked. As it turns out, Cute Face and Peanut ride the same bus. Once we all figured out who we were, (via texting pics of daughters!) Peanut and Cute Face became fast friends!

Upon further investigation, it turns out that Middle Man and Cute Face’s little brother, Brother Cute Face, are in the same class!!!

But Peanut and Middle Man aren’t the only ones that’ve found special friends.

Dogos has too!

more on that later...

We’ve also been busy trying to figure out a schedule that will accommodate the changes in our lives that come along with a move such as ours. One of those changes would be the fact that we now live on 10 acres as opposed to a tiny yard with barely a twig of grass in the backyard.

All I can say is.......

Thank the good Lord for neighbors like Vance who owns a big honking tractor and bush-hog!

The Chef literally got home one day and there was our new neighbor, bush-hogging our land. The folks in this little town are seriously that nice.

Since we moved here in June, The Chef had been busting his bee-hind by spending pretty much 2 solid days every other week on the big John Deere cutting the front part of the yard as well as around the barn. The previous owners shared that they’d have the majority of the property bush-hogged twice a year. One afternoon in August, The Chef and I had walked back to the barn area for him to show me the work he’d done when we saw Vance on the back part of his property, waving us over.

We were happy to meet the first of our new neighbors!

After we made our introductions, Vance says, “Did the former owners tell you I used to cut all this back here with my tractor every now and then?”

To which we replied, “Well, they said they’d have it bush-hogged, but......”

“Do either of you know how to drive a tractor?”

Trust me when I say you have no idea how quickly Grandma Sandy replied with a very emphatic but polite, “NO, No, no, noooo, no-no-no.”

To which Vance replied, “Well, if y’all don’t mind waiting a few weeks, I’ll get back here on my tractor and bush-hog it.”

I guess he meant what he said!

Thank you, Vance!!

School is now in full swing.

Here are Peanut, Middle Man and The Boss on the first day of school.

The Boss was so proud of her matching backpack and lunch box on her first day of school.

The Boss had a rough start to Kindergarten. She is ridiculously shy and change is hard for her. At the time, I was working as a Kindergarten assistant in a classroom across the hall from her classroom. You’d think that seeing me throughout the day on the playground, in the halls and in the cafeteria would be a comfort to her but instead, was just the opposite. It was really hard for her to see me, then leave me, see me again, then leave me again. Thankfully, as you can see from the photo above, she adjusted after some time and soon was all smiles.

Speaking of school, the school system here is THE reason we chose to buy a house where we did. It’s one of the top 3 school districts in the entire state.

One of the things that impressed me the most about this school district is the emphasis it puts on Fine Arts. Every aspect of their Fine Arts program is valued as highly as athletics and academics, the band program being one of them. The marching band is 175 members strong, competes in 4 marching contests each year and even marched in President Obama’s inaugural parade.

Here is Guitar Boy (second from left) with some of his fellow alto sax players. He was particularly proud when the head band director asked him to play bari sax in their jazz band because first of all, he loves jazz and improvisation and second of all, he’s the only freshman in the jazz band.

YAY, Guitar Boy!

Grandma Sandy is proud of YOU!

There’s no question that one of the main reasons why this school district is of such high quality is because of the strong community support.

This community literally pours money into it’s schools.

At the beginning of the school year I went by the athletic office to get my season tickets. The office is on the 2nd story of the field house so as I came off the elevator and rounded the corner, my jaw dropped when I saw this.....

This is part of the weight room on the ground floor.

Now, Grandma Sandy has admittedly never before been in the field house or weight room of a high school athletic department so maybe I’m unduly impressed, but for a school system that only has 4,000 students in the entire district, I thought that dang weight room was amazing!

After all, we’re talking public school!

In Mississippi!!

Middle Man and I had a date for the first football game.

Folks around here take football seriously. There were 10,000 people in attendance. For whatever reason, this game was on a Saturday and folks were tailgating starting at noon that day.

Tailgating for a high school football game.

I’mnotevenkidding.

Grandma Sandy quickly learned her lesson when she and Middle Man got to the game and literally had to park at the primary school and walk over a mile to the stadium.

Now we go park a car early in the day and drop off whichever family members are going to the game.

(season tickets are $75 each so we only got two!!)

In other school news, Grandma Sandy got a promotion.

I started off the year as a K teacher’s assistant.

And now?

I’m teaching 4th grade Language Arts!!!

The principal at the elementary school here got permission to hire a new Language Arts teacher because of high numbers (30, yikes!) in each class.

Long story short, that new teacher is now ME!

I interviewed on a Friday, got the call the following Thursday, started school the next Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I walked into my new classroom and this is what I saw.

After a slight panic attack, I took a deep breath, ran to School and Carnival

(you can’t very well put up posters of color words for 4th grade, right?)

and got busy.

With the help of the assistant principal and the 2 lead 4th grade teachers,

We were able to create a somewhat decent classroom in just a few hours!

I was sad to leave the little K students I’d gotten to know, happy to be out of the situation I was in, and totally terrified of the situation into which I was headed.

But before I left the familiar to head into the unknown, I was able to use my K skills for one last K class project.

Pretty cute, I think!

One thing that I have not gotten used to yet, are the thunderstorms that roll in from time to time.

Living so close to the Gulf, we get storms with some pretty scary skies.

A few weeks ago we were headed into town to go to church and the weather I was driving into about scared me half to death.

Oh

my

word.

Needless to say, we turned around immediately and went straight back home!!

Clouds like that in West TN would’ve meant tornadoes, tornadoes, tornadoes.

It rained and was windy but other than that it wasn’t too bad.

Since arriving here, the Grandma Sandy family has acquired a new family member.

Introducing.......

Suzy!

Suzy and her flop-eared little self appeared in our carport one day. We have no idea where she came from but she was clearly a puppy. We tried relentlessly to chase her off but she was not to be deterred. We checked with the local vet and asked all the neighbors but no one claimed her.

For whatever reason, Suzy decided to adopt us and we didn’t have the heart to not keep her.

She seriously is the sweetest, sweetest dog and fits right in with all the rest of us.

Even Spook agrees!

(well, most of the time!)

I hope your Fall and new school year has gotten off to a great start.

I have plenty more news to report and will begin a new blog post as soon as I post this one.

Hopefully it won’t take me 2 months to complete it. Sigh.

Nonetheless,

Happy Fall, Y’all!