Today was the first day of school here in Henry County. Family tradition states two things must happen on the first day of school. First, at the break of dawn there are cinnamon rolls. Second, there are always the first day of school pictures.
James begins middle school this year, marking the first time in our parenting lives that we will not have an elementary student. James and Anna leave about 5 minutes apart and come home at about that distance as well. James will be a first year band student this year. He has been playing around with the trumpet at home and is doing pretty well. One of the ladies at our church gave us a cornet this year, so James will be able to have 
an instrument at home and an instrument at school. James is lucky — I remember dragging my trumpet up to the bus stop which probably was not too much farther than James has to go to the bus stop. But he won’t have to carry a trumpet. He’ll leave one at school.
Anna begins her senior year and will be in Show Choir both semesters this year. She is really excited about that and her choral instructor is excited about the possibilities as well. Anna is a hard worker and has picked herself off the risers many times after a misstep.
Below are two more pictures. One of both Anna and James together and then my traditional first day picture of Pam.
She loves it. 
Both of them came home with good reports of the first day, so we are looking forward to a great year. Pam and I even had to do our homework — all those first day forms and so on. In addition to all that, we had our first regular Mosaic in quite a few weeks. We celebrated going back to school with a 
little indoor picnic. We had 10 students this evening with a staff of 5 for a total of 15. We will have room to grow this year. I am looking forward to what God has in store for us this school year. One of the most important things we want to do this year is to pray for our students, their teachers, and their schools. I believe that it is important to life them up in prayer and this afternoon I changed our sign out front to reflect that. It has been a good day, but there is still much work to do. Blessings…
