First Day of School

Today was the first day of school here and Ben and Delaney are getting settled back into the routine.  Delaney had a great day meeting new friends.  She told us that her favorite part of the day was Art Class.  She drew a great picture of SpongeBob SquarePants that is now prominently displayed on our refrigerator.  It looks as good as the original (which, quite honestly, isn’t saying much)!  She loves Art Class, and says she would like to be an artist like her Uncle Eric (in addition to being a singer like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, of course).  She is very creative and has an eye for detail.  Ben enjoyed getting to meet his new teacher and classmates.  He actually gets recess here in Virginia, which is a warmly welcomed change from the schools in Florida (his last Principal didn’t believe in recess).  He told us he really likes his new teacher and thoroughly enjoyed the first day of school.  He also noted that he must have, in his words, “slipped over to the dark side” because he was actually looking forward to getting back to school!  Ben is just the greatest kid, with the best manners and a really pleasant demeanor.  I expect he will soon have a whole host of new friends to play with….but he still misses his best friend Matthew from Florida.  He is feeling a little guilty tonight, however, since he infected his PC with a virus (or three) while trying to download free games off of the internet.  Dear old Dad had to come to the rescue with some anti-virus and spyware programs to clean up the mess that he got into.  I thought I was going to have to dump and reformat the drives, but I think I may have gotten it licked.  He thought I would be mad (I was a bit frustrated), but he doesn’t realize that I secretly like having to debug and fix the PC.  I know, my Geek meter is bouncing off the charts.  School is a blessing in that it is a great opportunity for them to get back into a much more structured schedule and interact with other kids.  With the move, they have pretty much only had each other as playmates for the past 6+ weeks, and I think they have had enough together time!  Karen celebrated her first day at home today by missing the kids……actually, she got some work done around the house without having to play referee between the kids.  I am getting settled in at work and still learning my duties.  It looks like I will be the primary Program Manager for a fairly large program.  It will be challenging learning some of the new processes of the large agency I now work for, but the Program Management work is similar to what I have been doing now for 17+ years….so it should come fairly easily.  One of the smaller programs (a broadcast mapping tool) I worked in the first couple of weeks actually deployed in support of the Tropical Storm Ernesto last week.  This is definitely a very different job (product-wise) than I have had in the past…..