To Bus or Not to Bus?!

I found out shortly after deciding not to homeschool that our neighborhood actually gets bussed to Daphne's elementary school. I was pretty surprised because we're not that far. The maximum walking distance is 1 and 1/3 miles, so we must be just outside the cut-off. Our neighborhood is right off of the same main road that the school is on, so there's no crossing busy streets or whatever. Anyway - now I'm trying to decide what to do.

I always liked the idea of walking my kids to school. And like I said, I don't feel like we are that far, it would probably take about 20 minutes to walk there. BUT. There is a big, huge, steep hill between us and the school. Getting there would be okay - as long as Daphne and Alex don't run down the hill and fall headfirst to their doom. But getting home will be no easy task and would definitely require a double stroller for Alex's sake, which I don't own. And to be honest, once it starts raining I will probably be done with the romance of walking.

Which leads us to the next obvious option: driving to school. Again, we're not that far. It would take us about one minute to drive there. Plus about five minutes of loading the kids in the car and a few minutes of unloading them and then a few more minutes to get Zoe and Alex BACK in the car after walking Daphne to her classroom. IF we can find parking without having to arrive twenty minutes BEFORE school starts. And then we can do it all again in the afternoon! Yay!

Of course there's always the "no-parking" carpool lane option, but that, to me, doesn't seem MUCH better than just sending her on the bus, because I still don't get to see her all the way to her classroom. I guess it's a bit better, but maybe not worth it in my opinion.

Which brings us to the bus. Oh, the bus. I never minded riding the bus (until middle school, where it became an unsupervised place for kids to swear all they wanted and talk about all kinds of super-inappropriate things...) But even in elementary school, I always kind of wished my mom would pick me up at the end of the day. I can still remember a feeling of longing when the teacher would say "Walkers stay in your seats, Bus Riders line up at the door" and wishing I could be one of the "Walkers". But maybe that was just a simple "grass is greener" scenario?

So on the one hand we have the ultra-convenience of only walking five minutes from our front door to the bus stop, and sending her happily on her way down the hill to school. On the other hand, I don't love the idea not being able to see her all the way to the door. And not just for safety reasons - for sentimental reasons too.

So yeah, I'm basically undecided at this point. I guess I still have 26 days to figure it out...