School

A five year old is so much fun.  Its fun to stay up last reading "just one more chapter" of the Chronicles of Narnia.  Its fun watching Colin want to make a mask store and spend the morning creating masks out of paper plates and feathers. Its fun to spend an entire day at a water park and go down slide after slide with my sweet boy who would exclaim "that was awesome" with a few fist bumps in the air after each one.  Its fun just hearing the funny things that come out of his mouth all the time.

The only bad part about a five year old is that he has to start school in the fall.  As in a few short weeks.  I don't like it.  At all.  I have cried each year on the first day of school watching the school buses go past our house.  In fact the first year when Colin was just a few months old we were helping with freshmen move into WVU and I made a Walmart run that afternoon.  We were stopped at a light and I looked over and saw a mother who was sobbing in the car, having just dropped off her baby at college. I heard Colin cooing in the backseat and started crying too. 

We've been going back and forth about homeschooling/public school and had even found an amazing academy 10 minutes from us that was both. They kids go to school in the morning and then home schooled in the afternoon. The best of both.  I was all ready to sign him up - I loved everything about that school. Still do.  Can't find anything I don't like about the school or the program.  But then I was running by the elementary school we are zoned for and praying about school for Colin and heard God say "send him to school" So of course I was excited about sending him to the academy but then I heard God say "send him here"  To the elementary school.  There are very few times in my life where I've heard a clear voice like that from God.  But I wasn't convinced and spent the next few weeks praying and really going back and forth.  I would run by the public school, cry in the parking lot each time but then kept hearing God say "send him here. I have great plans for him"  So I registered him for school - public school last month.  And I didnt cry when I turned in the paper work.  (I cried in the car a few weeks before when I went to pick up the paper work...)

We sent Colin to VBS with some friends at their church a few weeks ago and he LOVED it.  It was the first time I had ever dropped him off and left him somewhere.  But we thought it would be a good trial for school.  A few nights I went back early to pick him up and was able to watch Colin in his class without him seeing me and he was just beaming.  Loving every minute of it.  And one night as I sat in my car and watched Colin play some sort of tag game outside with his class I heard God's voice again say "Send him to public school.  I have great plans for him."

So I'm writing all this down so that one day Colin can read it and know without a doubt that God has some amazing plan in store for him this next year.  And also so I can read it too as the summer comes to a close and it gets closer and closer to putting my baby on a bus for the morning (good thing its only half a day kindergarten here)