Kindergarten!

Can I just say that applying to kindergarten was even more complicated and more competitive than applying to grad school?

To start, we had to get Chad a "Power Number", but showing up at some office with his birth certificate (or, two birth certificates in Chad's case) and proof of residency. You could go during normal work hours, or on Tuesday nights. I figured it would be an in-and-out thing, but Andy was there for like an hour. There were tricky questions to answer, and since I was too busy tending to children to pay attention to my beeping cell phone, Andy started paging me over the security camera to ask questions about bussing. Yay, technology.  I still don't understand the point of the Power Number, but I think it is just like a school ID number. 
Then we were left on our own to do our internet research on which schools to apply to. Our choices were neighborhood school private school, magnet school or charter school. 
Our neighborhood school is super close, but it has a low ranking. Not that we need to care just about that, but it's kind of scary to see a low number next to your assigned school. However, if you're looking for reassurance, this article proposed that the schools in Durham are just as good as the ones in Chapel Hill and Cary, at least for "economically stable" and English speaking students. (Also, Freakonomics says that as long as parent's care about entering their children in a lottery, it doesn't matter where they go. These are the things that helped me sleep at night during the application season.
Our church's private school was so expensive, that I think I laughed out loud and closed the informational email before I even finished reading it.
My internet sleuthing turned up two were magnet schools, which are part of the public school system, but are "special" for some reason or other. The ones we were interested in were "special" because one had a year-round calendar and one was a gifted and talented STEAM school. STEAM is STEM + Arts, which I think means they teach everything but writing and history. That school gives everyone an iPad.
Then there were charter schools, which are private but free. One was too far away, and they get 2,000 applications each year for 100 kindergarten spots. Didn't seem worth it. The other one was year round and in an annoying part of Durham to get to, but it was close to Duke.
If we were smart and organized and on top of our schedules we would have visited all three of the schools together. But we are none of those things. The first magnet school only had tours on Fridays, but I had plans for every Friday morning in January, so Andy had to go himself while I gave rats erections. (Yes.) Andy liked that one. They said they would get 400 applications for 120 spots, but there really aren't that many after you give sibling preference spots away.
We planned to both go to the charter school tour together, but then Theo got a stomach bug, at least according to the teachers, so I ended up going alone. I wasn't sure about it. They were kind of progressive and did things like call the teachers by their first names and have lots of student-led learning. There was a parent volunteer requirement, each month, which could have been OK, but this school has a chicken coop and and one of the volunteer options could have been to feed the chickens and I was like, "Not on your life," and walked out right then. Kidding. But my enthusiasm diminished with that thought. That school got 500 applications for about 20 spots.
The STEAM magnet school only gave tours through December, which had already passed by the time we got to organizing everything. Whoops.
We applied to both lotteries online (the charter had a separate one from the magnets, The magnets you could rank your top 3 choices, but you really only have a chance at getting into your top one.) Our odds were not great. Everyone applies to the lottery, plus many of the seats are already taken by sibling preference. I listed the STEAM school as a second choice, even though we hadn't been able to tour there, only because I felt like I had to give a second choice just in case.
The magnet lottery happened first, and all we knew was that they would post it online on March 1. They didn't say what time. I considered staying up until midnight just in case that was when the results went up. (I didn't.) When I randomly woke up at 3 AM, I almost ran downstairs to check, but I held off until my alarm went off at 5. No results then, and none when we left for work. 
They finally posted the results a little after 10:00, and Andy saw the reults and sent me a screen shot in an e-mail that said, "READ NOW" and we found that we got into our top choice, the year-round school! Oh my gosh, I was so excited I started crying all over my experiment.
We accepted our seat right away, and then went out to Tomato Jake's for dinner. :) He will start in July, and as long as they don't change any of the current policies, Natalie and Theo will get priority placement in a few years (which is a relief because it seems like the paperwork and rules for twins in the lottery is even more complicated) and they should also get priority placement into the year-round middle school. Hooray!
I'm not sure exactly what they teach in kindergarten these days, but after finding out that the reason my checkbook was missing (yes, I still write checks, I am not a fan of online bill paying) was that Chad had taken it to use to give out fake tickets, I'm kind of hoping lesson #1 is "Don't steal your mom's checkbook."