School Snafus

School started this week for all three kids.

They all handled the first day really well, despite two of them being at new schools.  There were only a few tears.  (And those were all mine.)

The year has gotten off to a good start, but of course, things can't always go perfectly.

For instance, Liam brought home a nasty stomach bug and missed yesterday and will miss today, too.  So there goes his perfect attendance a mere two days into the school year.

And Syd's bus forgot to pick her up this morning.  As I was driving home from dropping Evan off at his school, I saw her bus sitting at an intersection near the exit of our neighborhood with the bus driver shuffling through a stack of papers and looking confused.  I thought she'd already picked up Syd and was on her way out of the neighborhood to continue her route, but as I pulled on to our street, I saw Syd still sitting at the bus stop reading a book.

The operator at the transportation department told me that she thought the driver arrived at Syd's stop too early and she would ensure that the driver wouldn't get there too early next time.

Syd was at the stop a good ten minutes before her scheduled pick up time, so, yeah, I don't think that's the reason.

The bus completely skipped our street.

Thankfully, Ryan had the time to drop her at school before heading into work so that I could stay home with poor Liam who can't be more than ten feet from the bathroom.

Thank goodness we were home, otherwise she'd still be outside getting eaten up by mosquitos.

But it made me wonder: what happens to the kids in a similar situation whose parents aren't home?

And this isn't necessarily school-related but it was still an interruption to what was a fairly good first week of school.  I got a frantic phone call from our sweet neighbor on the left yesterday evening telling me to keep the kids in the house.   I'd heard some yelling coming from the direction of the house on the other side of us, but as they're always making a bunch of noise playing basketball, I didn't really give it much pause.  Apparently, our lovely (please note the sarcasm) neighbors to the right of us got into enough of a dispute with one another that the police were called out.  We had four police cars parked right in front of our house for a good hour last evening as they attempted to quiet the situation and fill out paperwork.

Nice.

And they wonder why I won't let our kids play with theirs anymore.