Tender Mercies

Today is Lucy's first day of Kindergarten. It seems so surreal to be here. This little tiny girl that has been at my side for 5 1/2 years is now venturing off to real school. And she's crazy excited about it too. Her teacher came for a home visit on Wednesday and had Lucy draw a picture for her scrapbook. Lucy shared some of her reading with the teacher too, but she was a little nervous at first. We kept suggesting different books she could read, and she wasn't comfortable with any of them. And then I thought to myself, the book she reads the most is the Book of Mormon. So I asked her if she wanted to read some scriptures. She jumped at that chance and proceeded to read her teacher a verse from 2nd Nephi. The teacher was pretty impressed.
This morning was a bit rough, just because she was so tired. Our family is not used to getting up this early. We'll get used to it pretty fast, but it was hard this morning. It's also hard to convince other people in the world that our kids need to go to bed earlier than what everyone is used to. They can't be staying up past 9pm any more. While the teacher was here visiting us, she told us that her next home visit was to a little girl named Ava at the end of the road. Lucy and I got so excited to hear that, as this was Lucy's best friend from pre-school. Her and her dad stopped by yesterday afternoon and invited Lucy for some play time, which Max was sad to not be included in, but Lucy was thrilled about.
This morning, we picked Ava and her Dad up for the trip to school. All I can say is thank goodness for tender mercies. The fact that Lucy already has a friend at school has definitely been a blessing. Her nerves began to get the better of her a bit this morning, and her eyes were glossy with tears, but none of them spilled onto her cheeks. I reminded her that it was a short day and she was lucky to already have a friend. Lucy and Ava stuck close together and it made the goodbyes a lot easier. On me too. Now Max and I need to come up with things to do while Lucy's at school. We attempted to play Battleship and Headbanz yesterday while she was gone, and it wasn't so successful, so we stuck to reading stories. Today, we're playing Go Fish, and it's going a lot better. He's having a hard time not having his sister "right beside him" as he says.
We had fun telling Knock Knock jokes yesterday though. This is Max's favorite:
Knock-Knock
Who's There?
Banana
Banana who?
Banana, aren't you glad I didn't say apple?

It cracks me up