First Day Back.

Monday was the first day of the school year for Josh and Meagan. This day serves as an annual reminder how quickly the kids are growing up. Sure birthdays come and go, but those seem to occupy our time to such a degree that we miss the underlining tone. Then when you least expect it, at the end of the summer when there are no holidays to worry about... you get a sobering reminder that another year has come and gone.

Josh will be in 5th grade this year, his last year in elementary school. This means that the glimpse of hormonal driven behavior we have been seeing over the last year will start to grow brighter and brighter until one day it will supernova in a flash of hormones so intense it will leave everybody at ground zero looking like Wile E. Coyote with a strand of hair on their head still ablaze.

Meagan will be in 3rd grade this year. She has been placed in the GT program. GT for those who do not know is the new term 'Advanced Placement' class. From what we have seen however every class teaches to the federal/state/local mandated exams regardless of its label. So the GT class seems to be more of an exercise in volume management and not subject matter. Meagan came home from the first day of school having to write a report on the topic she choose for the 30 minutes of required daily reading, math, spelling words, and I believe one other.