Picture This Dinner: School, Storms, and Dance Class

It's been an interesting week at our house. Allison started school on Monday. She will be going every day from 1-4pm for whats' called VPK (voluntary pre-kindergarten). The state of Florida actually pays for 4-year old's to attend pre-school to ensure they are ready for kindergarten. It is so wonderful and saving us thousands of dollars! She has a lot of her friends from last year in her class again and another good friend who we know because Jeff works with her dad. I was worried about who her teacher was going to be because I know that can really make or break how Allison feels about school. We lucked out because both of her teachers knew her from last year and she was familiar with them. One of them was her music teacher last year (Ms. Maggie)and she is just wonderful. She has a terrific personality and she just loves Allison to pieces. That really put me at ease. School was cancelled on Tuesday because of the storm. It was a good thing because Allison was sick again (go figure) so I would have had to keep her home anyway. We got a lot of rain and some wind but overall the storm wasn't too bad. The only scary part was the F-2 tornado that touched down about 1:30am Tues morning a few miles from our house. It destroyed a bunch of horse barns and damaged some homes. I didn't find out about it until the next morning but the weird thing was I woke up almost exactly at that time and went upstairs to grab Daniel and bring him down to our room to be safe(Allison was already in our room). We had intended for both kids to sleep in our room that night but Daniel would not go to sleep unless he was in his crib so I decided to let him go to sleep in his crib and then bring him down in the middle of the night. It was quite loud outside at 1:30 am which woke me up. Not sure if I actually heard the tornado or not, but I'm glad I brought Daniel down to our room.

So it was back to school on Wednesday. When I took Allison into school, she wasn't as excited as the first day and she claimed that she had a stomach ache. I knew it was just nerves and she'd be fine. So today I took her into school and before I could leave she started crying. Her teacher, Ms. Maggie, swooped her up and let her cry on her shoulder. I hate to leave her when she's crying but there's not much I can do. She was fine when I picked her up. I asked her how long she cried for, and she said "through snack time" but that would have been quite a long time so I'll have to ask her teacher tomorrow. Anyway, it's going to be tough until she gets back into the swing of things. She doesn't like big groups, so a class of 17 is a little scary for her even though she knows at least half the class.

On a brighter note, she started her ballet/tap class this morning! She's been wanting to take ballet for at least a year now and the time had finally come - and she loved it! After the class, the teacher asked me if she had ever taken dance before and I said no. She said that Allison really did a great job, so that was comforting. Here are some pictures I took of her all dressed and ready to dance!