Mitchell's First Day of Kindergarten!

Well, the time has officially come!  Time to send Mitchell off to Kindergarten!  As you may have expected, this time comes with mixed emotions!  Quite honestly, Mitchell is my best friend.  I spend just about every waking hour with him and his conversation skills rival those of any adult :) 

The thought of him being gone from our house from 8:40 to 4:20 makes me cringe....BUT each time I learn more about his school and all of the fun things that he'll experience there, I grow more and more excited for him!  

And THAT excitement is what helped me put my best friend on the bus this morning!

 His little brothers were almost as excited for Mitchell's first day of K as Mitchell was :)  Maverick had to find his little play camera to take his own first day of school pictures of Mitchell!  

Then they happily accompanied him to the bus stop right around the corner.  Unfortunately, he's the only kiddo at his bus stop.

Mitchell is not one who is usually too cooperative for a photo shoot, but he was today! :) 

He was even inventing his own poses....true to his silly, fun-loving nature! :)

The bus rolled around the corner, right on schedule!

He is only the 2nd child to be picked up, so he picked to sit right in the front seat.  He waved a little goodbye to Mommy, Daddy, Maverick and Macallan and off he went!  No tears from Daddy or Macallan, but Mommy and Maverick were sad to see him go.  Maverick would have LOVED to have jumped on that bus with him!

We couldn't send him off on his very first day without seeing him into his classroom, so we all loaded up and met him at school.  First stop was his locker to unload his backpack.

Next stop was "morning meeting" with his class.  Once seated, he never even turned around to see if we were still there!  Mitchell certainly has his challenges, don't get me wrong...BUT a strong sense of independence/confidence is NOT one of them!  He LOVES new social situations, and I just know he'll thrive this school year!

While he was at school, Maverick helped me make some banana bread.  His request was to decorate it with birthday candles for Mitchell to blow out to celebrate his first day of school :)  He's so thoughtful!

Mitchell was all smiles when he jumped off the bus this afternoon!  He didn't even wait for me to ask how his day was before he said "It was great!"  He has a class "buddy" named Jack, who he seemed excited to be paired up with.  He also brought home a new book, which Jacob read to him and Maverick tonight.  He said "I brought home a new book, but I think you'll be really happy because it was free!  I checked it out from the library."  He may not remember that we used to do that a lot from our local library before we lost two of them and his little brothers began making a game of pushing books off the shelves!  Hence our home library :)

There are many days when I wonder if we aren't getting ourselves into more than we can handle having our fourth baby....but today was NOT one of those days!  I feel like I got a little taste of what it will eventually be like to be an empty nester...and I'm certainly not ready.  As we watched our oldest enter the "real world", I was SO thankful to have Maverick and Macallan at home with me.  Many days it's easy to "live in the blur" created by tending to three young children, muddling through task after task.  I REALLY enjoyed my day with the two little guys today!  

We couldn't be prouder of our Kindergartener!  He has an AMAZING brain and heart and we can't wait to watch them both grow this school year :)