Pictures from Michael - Finally!

These are some pictures that Michael finally sent to me. They may not be the clearest pictures, but at least you can see he still looks exactly the same, just a little more grown up.

These first pictures were taken in Sasebo, Japan, where he's stationed. He and some buddies had rented a hotel room for some getaway time, so these are the view from there. Look how everything is just crammed together. He also included a picture of the huge flies they have there and the creepy spiders. Gross!

These are some pictures he took while on the catwalk of the ship. This is while they were at sea, on their way to Australia and back. The helicopter in some of the pictures had just taken off from the deck of their ship. The greener waters are near Japan and the darker water is out at sea.

These pictures are from Brisbane, Australia. The first picture is when they were coming in to the city, late at night. The last picture is also Brisbane. It's so clean and pretty. The other two pictures are of him and his buddy, and some kids they met at a hostel there.

First Day of School - The Saga

The story starts about 3 days before school started. It was Meet the Teacher night at the brand new Langley Elementary. The kids were so excited to meet their new teachers and to check out the cool new school. Our first stop was the posters on the wall which named the grades and the kids names next to their teachers. We found Marshel's name right away, but couldn't seem to find Kellee's. So, we headed to the office. They pulled her file and said that she was missing her immunization information. We had faxed it about 3 months prior, but they apparently had not received it. We asked if we could just find our who her teacher would be, so she could meet her and then I would come back that night with the immunization record, which I did. So, we headed down to meet the teachers.

Marshel's teacher is Mrs. Christian. She looks like she just got out of high school, but she's actually been teaching for I think it was 8 or 9 years. She seemed very sweet and he was excited about his new room. Kellee's teacher is Mrs. Arguello (Mrs A for short). A grandmotherly lady who just hugged Kellee and made her feel right at home.

Monday morning, August 24, 2009: Mom and Dad took Marshel and Kellee to school, walked Marshel to his classroom. He wouldn't let us take a picture of him by his classroom, because he's too grown up for that now. Then we walked Kellee to her room. Her teacher told us she still didn't have the registration card. So, we had to head over to the office again, where we were told that they had no record of us ever registering her. We argued for about 10 minutes that if she hadn't been registered, they wouldn't have known her immunization records were missing. They refused to get the principal because she was too busy greeting the students. They told us we would have to fill out all of the paperwork again.

So, Mom headed home to get everything, of course fuming all the way. Kellee and Dad stayed in the office waiting. Kellee was sad that she couldn't go to her classroom - great way to start your first day of school EVER, right? So, as Mom got back to the school, she could see Dad in the office finally talking to the Principal. As she came through the doors, she heard Dad say, "If you didn't have her registration, how did you know her shot record was missing?" The principal said, "Your wife told me it was missing." Well, Mom walked right up behind her and said, "Oh no, that is not true. You went in that room, got out the file and told me it was missing and I went home and got it and gave to that nurse right there". Well, the principal looked right at me, and said, "Oh you're right - I did have that file!"

Well, Mom wanted to scream at that point. Regardless we had to fill out all of the paperwork again and Kellee finally got to her classroom about an hour after school had started.

Well, school has been much better since. Marshel and Kellee enjoy taking the bus everyday and Kellee can't wait to do her homework. Marshel goes a little postal around homework time and has to have time to decompress before he can get into it.

Not to leave Nate and RAchel out: Nate is a junior this year, leader in ROTC, and taking some pre-AP classes. Rachel is a freshman and is on Pep Squad. She has games almost every weekend and some during the week, as well as 1-2 practices after school every week. She's definitely a busy girl, but she seems to really like high school

Mom's just glad to have a quiet day to herself where she can get everything done that she wants to! Yay!!!