Home Sweet Home

“On a hill above the valley there was a wood. In the wood there was a huge tree.
Under the tree there was a hole.
In the hole lived Mr. Fox and Mrs. Fox and their four Small Foxes.”

~Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Sophie started school last Monday. She is attending a public junior high where her class is around 80 some students, half being French immersion, so really she only has 40 or so classmates. The smaller school was exactly what Sophie needed.

What Sophie loves about her new school:

*1 hour lunch breaks

*Open campus lunch

*PE only twice a week

*Lots of clubs to partake in during the lunch hour

*A late start school…the locker area isn’t available to students until 8:40 am

In general, we have found the Canadian schools (at least in Halifax) allow for more student independence. Already the first day we drove down the street and saw Sophie walking to the St. Mary’s University library with friends for lunch. On Thursday, she even hopped on a city bus for a Starbucks trip. We love her new found sense of freedom, but we also told her she needs to text us when she decides to take these outings. Although it’s business as usual for her classmates, this is something new for our family.

I absolutely love the school drop off and pick up line because it’s nonexistent.  Most kids walk and if you drive, you can easily swing up to any sidewalk around the school and grab your child. What used to be a 45 minute ordeal in the states is now maybe a 5 minute process in Halifax.

I would say Week 1 was a success and we hope the momentum continues. There is even a school dance on Thursday night…yikes.

In other big news, we closed on our new home.

Seeing all of our stuff unloaded and then unpacked by the movers was a tad overwhelming. I don’t do well with chaos or clutter. As much as I wanted to have my house in order within a day, I had to remind myself to take a chill pill.

Thankfully, the organizing and moving of things is coming along and it feels more like home everyday. Granted, we don’t have a sofa upstairs or a television, but we have WiFi and that amounts to a lot when you have kids lingering as you try to conceptualize the flow of your spice drawer.

We even made Easter celebrations happen. I may have let the kids color eggs before realizing they were raw and not hardboiled, but nonetheless, we had eggs to hunt. I hit up the local drugstore for Ellinor’s Easter basket (I’ll make it up to you baby girl, I swear) and all was well in the new Larson house.

I even managed to make an Easter Sunday meal complete with a homemade lemon curd cheesecake. My spacious and modern kitchen has invigorated my desire to cook. There is so much room to can!

Despite the disheveled state of our home, I feel much more centered than I have in a long time.