Das ist mein schultüte!

The first day of first grade is a huge deal to Germans. Parents take off work, get dressed up, and escort their kid to school ....AND the kid also gets a schultüte!

Thanks to my mastery of the German language I know that schultüte means school bag, although it looks more like a schule-waffle-cone.

The good parents, such as myself, buy a plain carboard cone and decorate it themselves. The slacker parents buy a pre-made cone that comes covered in sponge bob or pirates pictures, which seem to be the only two boy themes acknowledged in Germany. :) Of course, I think the best-est of parents probably form the cone themselves from a piece of poster board.

So being in the second-to-best parent category, I bought a plain yellow cone; and being in the busy-mom category, I made Happy decorate it with little dirt bike people going in circles. I guess this technically made Daddy the good parent here. :)

I saw other schultütes had felt on the top and bottom so trying to fit in, I put some felt on and stuffed it full of school supplies, a toy, and a piece of candy. :)

At first The Boy didn't want to bring it to school because it's a giant pain in the butt to carry and you can't set it down anywhere. German engineers did fine at making a BMW, but perhaps a Schule-box would have been a little more reasonable shape for a six year old to deal with. However, as soon as he got to school he saw that some other kids had cones and he was suddenly very proud of his.

This is my son, who within three minutes of being in his new classroom, was sitting at a table drawing a dirty bubble. Don't ask....