The best part about the whole trip was how my kids make-believed about the ride the next day.  They carried their bells where ever we went, we sang Christmas carols in the van that was now a train and kept a look out for Santa, the two older boys hoping to see him and Isaac relieved when we never did.  It was a fun was to get ready for the Christmas season.

He was so excited to get to school we were out waiting for the bus about a half hour before the bus came, and I thought we were running behind this morning.  Andrew and Isaac were waiting with him all decked out in their backpacks so that they could be like their big brother.  Jake also brought out his Dog and Buzz so that they could watch him get on the bus.  I gave Jake the whole lecture on listen to your teacher and don’t push in line and then he told me that I needed to be gentle to his dog and bunny while he was gone and that I needed to make sure to pet them.  But he doesn’t need to worry because Isaac loves his animals and is thrilled to take care of them while Jake is away.

We have an eight year old neighbor boy named Peter who offered to help Jake get to school and get to his class on his first day so Peter arrived to take Jake off to school.  Jake was so excited he thinks Peter is the greatest thing ever.  Peter’s mom told me that Peter had it all planned out, he was going to teach Jake the rules on the bus like waiting in line and being quiet at the railroad crossings.  He also told his mom that he would take Jake all year if he had to.  I am so glad that Jake has him to help  him out at school. Jake couldn’t wait to get going, as soon as Peter arrived Jake was ready to get in line, and any one who knows Jake knows that went Jake is excited he can hardly control his body.  He was jumping up and down and talking up a storm.

They got in line and for Jake the bus couldn’t get their fast enough.  When the bus did get there Jake got on with out hesitation.  I was a little worried that when the bus finally got there Jake would be too scared to get on but he climbed right in and found a seat in the back (our bus stop is the last one so there aren’t many seats left.  So Jake is a school boy now and the only tears I shed were at 5:50 this morning.  All in all, so far anyway the day has gone really well.

So Dan is insisting that I learn to write in the family blog, so here I am.  He is totally patronizing me so I suggest to anyone out there who doesn’t know how to blog, don’t have a computer scientist teach you.  But now Dan is encouraging me to change the title of my blog entry to something else since I am not talking about the soccer practice and as I don’t know how or want to change the title I guess I had better start talking about Jake’s (and Dan’s) first soccer practice.

Jake had his first soccer practice yesterday and as his soccer coach is in our ward, Dan got suckered into being the assistant coach.  The best part of Jake’s team is that the coaches’ daughter choose the color of the teams uniforms and they are a very manly "salmon."  But I think that Dan and Jake are man enough to pull of the look but I guess you can all decide for yourself.

Jake is really excited about playing soccer especially since his friend Maddox is on his team. Their first practice went well.  They did one activity where all of the kids had to hold hands and then for the rest of the practice the kids thought that they had to hold hands no matter how their coaches tried to dissuade them.  They all had a lot of fun out there never mind the fact that they didn’t know which goal they were supposed to score in and continued kicking the ball regardless of the fact that it was way out of bounds.  But all in all it went well and Jake is excited to have his dad as a coach.

So I will conclude my blog post here and hopefully it will be satisfactory to my computer scientist husband.