School - and freedom!

Hot on the heels of turning five, Eleanor started school this week! (For those interstate or overseas, in SA, prep or reception is the first year of primary school, which follows the non-compulsory year of kindergarten.) Children are required to do a minimum of 3 terms in prep, so because Eleanor is starting mid-year (term 3), she'll actually continue in prep next year, and will end up doing 6 terms. While this may nto be completely ideal, there are advantages, a major one being that it will put James and Eleanor 2 years apart, which much more closely resembles their age-gap (20.5 months).

Because we've been going to the school for the past year and a half with James, Eleanor was already familiar with it, and she's slipped into it with barely a sideways glance.

All the current prep classes were full, so a new class, with a lovely new teacher has been started with just the 8 new children, so she is very lucky. They will be joined next term by anouther 12 new children.

She started on Wednesday, and has been doing short days (until the end of lunch) this week. Because of that. I decided to take the extra week of leave after the school holidays, and am suffering through three long mornings all to myself this week. So far I've done lots of quilting, had a morning nap on one day, had a hair appointment yesterday, and this morning I've just been for a massage! I'm not going to change my work days/hours just yet either, so for the forseeable future, I will have 9am-3pm free to myself, two days a week. What a wonderful thought!

Now I have half an hour before she needs to be collected, so I'm off to try and finish quilting a customer's quilt first.