it was a great day

The day finally dragged on until - finally - it was time to pick up Mac.  I did get to the parking lot 30 minutes before release, but I promised him I wouldn't be late.  (The waiting at the apartment was killing me so I figured reading in the parking lot would be a diversion.)

The school sends out the extended day students first so they can get to the right part of the building.  Then the bus students come out and finally, the pick-up students are released to their waiting parents.  Except Mac never came out.  I asked the teacher's assistant I recognized from Open House if Mac's class had been released and she wasn't sure.  Then I asked another teacher and she said that the 5th graders were released from the front of the school, so I ran around to the front, only to be told that no, all students are released from the other side.  So I ran back around and the teacher's assistant said she'd go to his classroom to see if he was there.

At this point, school had officially been out for 15 minutes.  There was nobody left waiting for pick-up except that one poor first grader whose parents hadn't shown up yet.  Naturally I was in a state of hyper-DEFCON 1 and mentally had Mac crying on the bathroom floor by now, his teacher totally unaware that he'd been missing from the classroom since 9am.  I'm not going to lie.  I was nearly crying in the parking lot.

The assistant came right out with Mac, who was smiling big if not a little sheepishly.  He thought that he'd be picked up in the classroom so he'd just hung out there with a couple other kids.  I nearly collapsed with relief to see him in general and to see him so happy specifically.

He had a great day.  Of the 27 kids in his class (boy, do we miss the 16-18 total in his classes at CGB!), three were new.  Mac hung out with one of the new boys, whose family has just been transferred here with the military.  The two of them were friended by a returning student, who was able to show them the ropes.  He said the other kids in the class were friendly and talked to him, his homeroom teacher LOVES books and has a great class library of "about 200 books that she bought all by herself for us to read", there's a laptop or desktop for every kid in the class, he had PE today and one of the PE teachers is a Georgia fan so they smack-talked about the USC-Georgia game this weekend, there are 10 mini iPads in the gym (WHY?), his lunch was good but I packed too much food, and on and on and on.

He's planning to ride the school bus - another first, the big yellow school bus - on day 2.  We'll see if that plan is still valid when he wakes up.

For the blessings of prayers that were answered loud and clear, I am truly thankful.