I flew to Italy on Monday, which was the first day of school. My original itinerary had my departure flight from Jerez at 7:05am, which meant we would’ve had to have the kids up by 5:30am and then I would’ve missed their first day of school again. I was very fortunate to have gotten a very understanding mother as the travel agent on base who understood my dilemma and kindly changed my flight to depart at 2pm instead.

I was very happy to get to see the kids off for the first day of school and bear witness to a very interesting recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance where “under God” was omitted “accidentally”. I had to chuckle because from my 10 years of experience, military folks tend to be very conservative and religious and, well, I just chuckled to myself when that whole thing happened.

The kiddos, ready for first and third grade: