The Bus Stop and then some...

Ok, to give you a little bit of history.  Big G started Kindergarten at a Catholic school, so did JT and so did Em.  Matter of fact, I taught at the Catholic school they attended for two years before having Marebear and retiring from the teaching scene permanently.  (I think my next career is Target, but that's another blog.) Anyway, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Catholic schools and would love, love, love to keep them in Catholic schools even up here, but Ricky and chose (on purpose all you doubters) to have a large family and just rely on one income.  So with that, spending 5-8,000 a year on Catholic schools is just not feasible.  Especially in the great tax state of NY where we spend 8,000 a year in property taxes.  (BTW-that's is no exaggeration, it's actually 770 dollars a month on top of our mortgage.) But I can dream about winning the lottery one day We did buy our first NY lottery ticket this week, fingers are crossed.

Anyway, I'm getting off track, as I so rarely do *wink wink*. 

So the first three years of school life I spent driving the kids to school and picking them up (or bringing them home when I worked).  It was nice because they were with me so much. When I taught, it was great because I had eyes all over the building.  Even after Marebear was born, they went that last year and I knew all the teachers, so the eyes were still there.  Whenever any of my kids did anything, I knew it!  (without the chain of tattle telling to back it up!)

Well, this past fall, we decided to enroll them in the Fayetteville public schools.  Now, don't get me wrong, the Fayar public schools are awesome, that's not why I was sending my kids to Catholic schools.  I wanted the kids to be reinforced at school with what we were doing at home... follow that? 
So they went to Butterfield Trail Elementary and the very cool thing about that was they walked to school!  It was a rule in the school system that unless you had some written excuse (which I'm sure in this culture of LAZINESS would have been easy to do) if you lived within two miles of the school you attended, you had to provide your own transportation.  Awesome!  The kids and I both loved it and it allowed us to further our learning on making the kids aware of all the dangers of "bad people."  For you micro manangers out there having a mini stroke because I did not walk with them, I could post some stats on the % of children abducted while walking to and from school, but I will only say this, read some John Rosemond, he'll cure you of your micro managing child fears...
I digress again...
ANYWAY!!!  Here in Lancaster, the school systems actually encourage you to ride the bus and not to drop the kids off.  Less traffic, etc.  Big G goes to a school that has over 1700 kids in it, so you can imagine the traffic at her school alone.  JT and Em go to the Elementary school (K-3) and it's quite large, too.
So we send them out to the bus stop, which they LOVE, I am not so in love with it, but it's part of my letting my little birds out of the nest to test their wings program.  They are doing great, the jury is still out for me...

So I am including some pictures I took this morning of them at their bus stop.  They are funny.  I swear, I need a shock collar for JT because that little nincompoop was at the bus stop with all the kids and several parents (You guessed it - micro managers) tossing his silly putty he obtained from a SWAP thing in class yesterday (remind me to have a talk with his teacher about that) and then throwing the nasty blob at the other kids at the bus stop.  And let me tell you, shooting xray fire at him from my eyes at my house does not phase him... the other children would absolutely be shocked and feel the flames, but him?  He's got some anti-parent shield on his body that completely deflects the rays.  I will have to do something about that.  And you know, being the parent of five very busy children, if I don't write down right now what he did, I will forget to discuss (that's putting it nicely) the problem with him this afternoon when he returns home.  Then tomorrow when I am watching him from the office window of my home, he will again be engaging in silly putty wars with the poor victims at the bus stop and I will kick myself for forgetting.  Am I the only one who does this?  Sometimes I think I must be. 

Well, it's Thursday and it's going to be 71 degrees and beautiful today.  I'm going to do a little body pump and head outside for a walk.  Have a very blessed day.

The first picture is the actual view I have of the bus stop.  As you can see, it's not very far, so the burning rays of fire I shoot, should be fairly effective.