McKenna's 1st Day of Head Start

As all of you know our economy is crap. As a direct result, the funding provided to schools across our state is crap. The Anadarko school district is down nearly $1,000,000 from what we received last year, not counting the hundreds of thousands that we lost the year before that and the year before that, etc. All of that to say that in an attempt to cut spending across the district we may no longer be offering after school tutoring services to our students, which means that Nathanael and I will no longer get paid for providing tutoring after school. We are figuring on about a $400/month loss because of this, therefore we were starting to get desperate as to how we were going to make ends meet. Luckily, last Friday I received a phone call from the Caddo Nation Head Start Program and they informed me that McKenna had been accepted into their 3 year old program (she misses the 4 year old date by 16 days)! We were elated and quite honestly shocked because this is a low-income, Native American program and they only accept a set amount of over-income, non-native kids each year. Daycare for our 2 girls was running us $600/month, so that will save us $300 of the $400 we are needing! Woohoo!! Yesterday (Monday) I picked up all the paper work that needed to be filled out, took McKenna by to see her classroom and meet her teacher, and made some last minute preparations for her to be ready to start school today! I was a nervous wreck...I told Nathanael that there was no doubt in my mind I was going to bawl and I even considered waiting to put my mascara on until after we left. Thankfully, I kept it together and made it through drop-off without shedding a tear! Now Keely, that's another story. She loves her big sister and has not really been apart from her since she was born. When we were leaving, she started boohooing, saying "I want McKenna". So sad but so precious at the same time!

At 2:30 the bus dropped her off at the high school and I could hardly wait until she got in the door to start grilling her on what happened throughout the day. Her day went as follows:

1. She ate cereal, toast, milk, banana, and grape jelly for breakfast.
2. She has no idea who any of the kids in her class are and she cannot remember any of her teachers names.
3. She has no idea what they ate for breakfast or if she fell asleep when she had to lay down to rest.
4. She has no idea what games they played, songs they sang, or information they learned today.
5. She did get to brush her teeth with a yellow toothbrush and pink toothpaste.
6. She played in the sandbox at recess.
7. Her class has mostly boys. (At first she said there were no girls and then she said there were just a few girls.)

Not exactly the information I was hoping for but hey, I'll take what I can get!