The Start of School 2026

We just sent a small cadre of children out into the world again.

Jesse. Senior year:

Jesse is the first of our kids to attend all of high school in Logan. 

Anders. 9th grade:

9th grade is officially at the high school up here (as opposed to part of junior high), so he and Jesse will have a final school year together. (Which they haven't had since Jesse left elementary!) Anders has experienced the most in figuring new schools since our move. (He's attended elementary, middle and now high school in the short 3ish years we've been here.)

Summer--7th. Mette--6th. Summer and Mette entered middle school together (they bumped 6th grade from the elementary to the middle school this year):

Hans. 4th grade:

It seems so strange that he was younger than Starling is now when we first moved here.

Starling. 2nd grade.

Starling doesn't really belong in school. And I don't mean homeschooled either. She should just be free to wander barefoot outdoors--carrying scraggly cats about, never doing her hair, wearing a white nightgown, and minding her own little business--without ever answering to anyone or learning anything that doesn't suit her flitting-about, wilderness-fairy self. A friend suggested she ought to have lived in Little House on the Prairie.

Never, since Goldie joined her two older siblings at good old Lomond View Elementary back in 2009, have we had only two children in elementary. I think we've probably had four for most of those years. But now? Just these two little friends.

We have had very few new school years that haven't involved big changes these past few years. 

First everything (every school, person and teacher) was new for everyone. 

The next year Anders had to figure out the middle school that none of his older siblings had navigated first for him. 

Last year we finally had a year with no major changes (though we moved into our house midyear and had to figure new bus routes, etc). And Penny did start life out of high school. 

But then this year felt like so much change again!

Anders at a new school (again). Summer and Mette leaving the comfortable, safe innocence of elementary to go to--not even the middle school that we'd come to know a little bit through Anders' time there--but to a large, newly built, middle school (that was finished so last minute they couldn't get in to figure out the halls or their lockers until just a few days before school started). And Hans and Starling were suddenly left alone with no older sisters looking out for them. (Starling, bless her wandering soul, is often unaware of where on earth she is and needed Summer to make sure she made it safely from the classroom to the bus every day last year.)

Having all this newness looming has made me anxious these last weeks as we've gotten school supplies and filled out forms and gone to back-to-school nights. And there have been some hiccups now that we've started--Mette struggling to find friends (her closest friends all went to the other middle school), a missed bus, etc. But it feels good to finally just BE IN all the newness--navigating it and figuring it out rather than having it looming, and I really can't wait until a few more weeks have passed and it has all become routine and familiar again! (With cooler temps and fall colors coming along to give everyone an extra boost of cheer.)