School Choice Acceptance

(Last night, my website was down, and I had a long phone call with with my sister, and then long chat with Jeff, and by the time he got my website back up & running, it was too late for me to blog. So this is the belated post for Wednesday, 3/23/2022.)

The girls sit next to each other every morning watching a YouTube kids video while I pack my breakfast & lunch, but this was especially sweet with Emmie laying in Addie’s lap yesterday, and Addie patting her on the head.

Then we just so happened to get to school at the same time as Uncle Bo, so by the time he opened their van doors, the triplets were all screaming and squealing in excitement to see us! So then all seven of us marched around together taking the girls to their four rooms, and we all had a good drop-off. (And although you can’t see much of it, Emmie was wearing a SKORT, which we worked very hard on her learning that word, and we repeated it 4 million times, and I’m still not sure it sunk in completely.)

For lunch, I went out (even in the yuckiest, rainiest weather), to meet my friend Britteny at Pitaria, because she was jealous of my Greek food lunch I had last week, and craving some for herself. This was my first time at Pitaria, but it was really good! (And definitely more “affordable” than Sahara, which I think tastes better, but for the price, this was definitely worth it.)

After lunch, I took a few minutes to check my emails, and when I saw the below email, my heart started racing and I started getting super anxious. You see, when we bought our house in August 2016, we knew we didn’t like the school zones, but we didn’t have little’s at the time, so we were like, “Oh we’re not worried about it, we have plenty of time to figure that out!” But then! In November 2016, we found out I was pregnant with Emerson, so that timeline got pushed up much quicker than we realized. So fast-forward to this year, knowing we needed to figure out the whole “kindergarten thing,” and not knowing what to do yet…

So, back in January, we went to the open house & toured at CLA (small, private Christian school), but it was going to be expensive, and we didn’t know if we would get the scholarship we planned to apply for. (And honestly, I just really wanted some free, public school education, after paying thousands of dollars to daycare for years.) So a few weeks ago, at the end of February, I created my Leon County parent portal account, and applied for “school choice.” (I also entered the lottery at both locations for the School of Arts & Sciences.) They said we would hear back by the beginning of April, so yesterday’s email was a complete surprise. And as soon as I opened it and saw that at least one of our three choices were approved, it was excited. But then when I logged into my portal, and saw that our number one choice had been approved over the other two, I was completely ECSTATIC! I literally squealed sitting at my desk in my office because I was so excited. Almost as if she had just been accepted to her number one choice for college, not kindergarten! So I’m very happy that she will be attending Gilchrist in the fall when she starts kindergarten!!!

After “accepting” the school choice we were approved for, I called Jeff to tell him the news, and then texted some people, and then went around telling my coworkers. I was just so excited and felt like such a huge weight of uncertainty had finally been lifted off me, and it was such a relief!

Here’s a few pics we got of the girls at school…

At home for dinner, I made pesto chicken wraps with a cheddar bacon ranch side salad, and both things were delicious. I just forgot to put my caramelized onions on my wrap, so I had them on the side and ate some with each bite of the wrap.

We had some play time and practice-walking-time after dinner, and Emerson had a second GoGurt, and then we started on the girls’ bedtime routine. Emmie actually did really well, but Addison was the one fighting sleep this time, even though she hadn’t napped since 2pm, and from 8-8:30pm she was still fussing and whining and crying and fighting sleep. Finally around 8:45 Jeff got her calmed down and she eventually fell asleep with him, and I was able to transfer her to her bed later.

So with Addie’s late bedtime, my long phone call with my sister, it was 9:30 before I realized my website was down (just needed some updating), and then Jeff and I talked for a long time about everything under the sun, so it was 10:30 before he got the website fixed, and I was just way too tired to write anything by that point. So instead, he uploaded all my photos for my, and I just wrote this post on my lunch break on Thursday, the next day 🙂