We flew back to Philly August 27th, the weekend before Labor Day. I got two days working in my old office in Delaware, a visit with my hairdresser, visited family, had last dentist appointments with our old dentist, and then hit the road the around lunch time the Friday before Labor Day (Sept 2nd). We hit some crazy storms on our way south, so we spent the Friday night outside of Knoxville, TN.
We wanted to take the boys to Nashville for lunch and were thinking about going to Alabama to visit our daughter for dinner, until we realized they had a home football game and all the streets around her apartment would be closed to traffic (she lives right next to the stadium). Took the boys to Nashville and saw the stars outside of the Country Music Hall of Fame. We do love Johnny Cash!
Since Alabama was off the table, we decided to go to Little Rock, Arkansas for the last night on our way to Austin. We had never been to Arkansas and now we can say we have! We had dinner on the road, and the boys were not hungry, so we went out for drinks. The hotel we were staying in was super cool and had neat touches they left behind from whatever this building was. Here is a picture of the mail chute that was on the floor of our room.
Then we finally made our way into Texas! I thought this pic was funny of drive the friendly way and the guard rail is all messed up from an accident. I am still nervous to drive on the highways here in Texas even now months later as all the speed limits are a lot faster than I’m used to!
We hit a lot of thunderstorms and crazy hard rain from Dallas to Austin, which is about three hours. I don’t think we were ever so happy to get home. And home is an AirBnB in the suburbs outside of Austin. I picked this spot because the school looked good and the price of the house wasn’t crazy high. We got settled Sunday night, which gave us Monday to relax and get the boys ready for their first day of school the next day. We did have to buy backpacks as we’ll as school supplies, as their backpacks from last year are in the POD somewhere.
I had gone to the website for the school district several times over the last couple of weeks, and had all their paperwork assembled to bring to the school to enroll them. Did you know you can enroll a child in a school with AirBnB paperwork? Yup! Used the “Receipt for Visa purposes”. Here I am thinking I’m all organized and smart and then I go to the school Tuesday morning. The receptionist almost turned me away, as apparently that website has in very tiny print of where to go to do the registration online! All these times I looked at it I never noticed it. Thankfully someone behind the receptionist realized I was about to cry (very unlike me, but our Internet was down at the house and I had no idea when it would be back on). The person said to the receptionist to let me in and the registrar can help fill out the paperwork on their computers. It might just take a little longer. We also got the boys classes setup with the guidance department and they got a tour of the school. Whew! Glad that was over… First day of 8th grade in Austin, TX!!! Here’s the pic at the house we’re renting before we drove over to the school.
Other things we learned with getting them settled in school is that you are allowed to bring your own device, but you can rent a laptop from them for a fee. We went with the rental, as the school we came from, everyone used the school Chromebooks. It was for a fee as well, and the Tech Fee here was about the same ($75/year). The other thing the boys got used to is walking to school. Pretty much everyone got bused where we came from as it was a very rural suburban area. Here it is very suburban and they have most people in walking/biking distance to school. I did drive them to school most mornings, but they walk home, as I’m in the middle of my work day. The last thing we learned is they changed their school start and end times to be later for the older children and earlier for the younger children. So the boys don’t have to be at school until 9:05AM!!! Found out they just changed it recently. I do love it, as it allows them to sleep in a bit in the morning.
For those of you who have moved cross country, what did you find different about the school you went to? Were they good changes, or just changes you needed to get used to?