Ahhh, sixth grade. It truly was the highlight of my scholastic career. We were rulers of the school, I dominated both sports and academics and I looked like a complete dork but nobody cared.
Kindergarten: Still cute (though our 1970s couch and wallpaper were hideous).
How I LOVED The Rescuers
Sixth grade: Not Cute.
Luckily for Hadley, she’s not going through my awkward stage and her transition back to our elementary school has gone smoothly. The good: Her bestie Alex is in her class and they’ve been inseparable since school began. The bad: some of Alex’s longtime school chums aren’t always the nicest.
I’ve tried to shield Hadley but fortunately she’s either clueless or just doesn’t care to get wrapped up in the drama. When our girls were invited to their Halloween Party, my friend Lisa (Alex’s mom) and I put a kibosh to that by throwing a soiree of our own and inviting some friends from church.
Something tells me I have a lot of avoid-drama-by-throwing-parties in my future.
Lisa and her husband went out of town a couple of weekends ago so I offered to let Alex stay stay with us, which was pretty delightful until they begged me to go Halloween costume shopping. Originally, Hadley and Alex wanted to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss until their little clique convinced everyone they needed to be Archers.
And then I convinced them back that they could be any darn thing they wanted.
In the end, Hadley still wanted to be an archer because she really does like archery and Alex was undecided when we entered the Halloween shop. I’ve complained about shopping with Hadley because she hates 99% of what she sees but when she finally finds something she likes, there’s no going back. Almost immediately she latched onto a costume she loved.
Alex is quite the opposite and likes everything and could decide on nothing. Finally, I convinced her that she simply could not live another day unless she was a Zombie Bride.
I texted my predicament with the polar-opposite shoppers to Lisa and she responded, “And both will drive you nuts.”
Amen.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 