Better Late Than Never

I am nearly three weeks late with this post!  It has been a little hectic around here lately.  The girls went back to school August 10.  Rachel is now in first grade.  Leah is in fourth, and Allison is in seventh.  We pushed really hard with Rachel's IEP team in the spring to get Rachel in a regular classroom as much as possible.  She is now in the regular classroom for everything except math and reading.  It has not been going very well, but I will post more on that another day.  Leah is enjoying her year so far.  She is very happy to have several good friends in her classroom, and she is liking her new teacher.  She is doing great with her classwork and homework.  I hope she keeps up the good work.  She will have to start writing soon and will be tested on the statewide writing test in February.  I am a little concerned, as she is not as strong a writer as Allison was at that age, so I hope that she makes great strides in the coming months.  The teacher promises she will.  Allison had to move on to her next step in her education journey.  Our school district has middle schools that contain seventh and eighth grades, so she had to change schools this year.  Not only that, but she is now changing classrooms for every class and she has seven classes.  We spent the better part of three hours the week school started wandering around the school campus learning the layout and locating all of Allison's classrooms.  She seems to be handling all of the changes very well.  She got off to a rocky start and had several days where she battled anxiety, but she seems to have settled down and is enjoying her new teachers.  She has become much more independent with her school work and tells me she is doing well on her tests.  I have not seen any of them yet, though.  Hmmmmm.  Below are the obligatory "first day of school" pictures.