Congratulations!

We are so grateful we have dear friends visiting us from Colorado, because it distracts me from thinking about when the mail is going to come. (Oh, and we really love mommy's college roommate, Alice, and her daughter, Kate, because they are superb people, not just great distractions.) Today, as I was driving the crew back from the Children's Museum I spotted the mailman one street from our house.

I won't lie. I started to salivate. Mostly, I was hoping that we would have an acceptance letter from a school (any school) so that I could cancel an interview we had this afternoon (in one hour) with our final school. It retrospect, we probably wouldn't have cancelled at the last minute, but still. I was hoping for some break from the whole "describe Sadie..." routine. Between the time we got home from the Museum to the time we had to get into the car and go to the interview, I checked the mail 3 times. In 25 minutes.

I finally surrendered and got into the car with Jeff and Sadie. I was wearing jeans, which felt sort of sacreligious. For every other interview I picked out outfits that projected school-friendly images: Room mother! Host of the Annual Auction! Bake Sale Coordinator! Book Drive Champion! Today's outfit said, "I just came from Navy Pier, where I lost a little piece of my soul when I bought Sadie a Happy Meal at McDonald's so judge me if you must, but I am not putting on any tweed for you."

Here's me, letting the chips fall where they may.

So, we all showed up for the interview. Sadie was required to be with us and let me just say that after a morning at the Pier and a Happy Meal and lots of fun with out-of-town guests, she wasn't really up for sitting quietly while we chatted about curriculum. I would probably do it differently next time. Jeff and I were not really on our best behavior and we had zero mojo for answering the questions. When asked what I would contribute to the school, I blurted out that I would organize a career fair day for parents to come in and talk about their jobs. To the preschoolers.

Awesome. There's nothing a three-year-old likes MORE than hearing about accounting or being a consultant or being a legal writing instructor. Do I know kids or what? Jeff, sensing me floundering, offered that I could teach legal writing to the kids.

More awesome-sauce from the Ellis family. I know kids want to learn to use the Blue Book and work on legal citations.

We really just choked and Sadie kept trying to steal post-it notes and sheets of the calendar off the principal's desk. We asked if we could show Sadie a classroom with students in it, which seemed like a great idea to generate more enthusiasm for school. Maybe we overdid it, because Sadie had a four-mile meltdown on the way home because she wanted to stay at the school. Forever. I should never have gone to a classroom where they were having snack.

Anyway, we shuffled home and consoled ourselves by saying we did the best we could and hopefully we'll just get in somewhere.

When I got home, what did I do?

CHECK THE MAIL-- are you paying attention or not?

Yep. We got a fat envelope from a wonderful school inviting our resident genius to come and join a community of learners. It's terribly exciting. Now I can breathe easy because it means Sadie and Simon will be educated enough to get jobs and support me and Jeff in our old age.

Sweet.