Walking home

I am trying to take full advantages of the limited nice days we have by walking home from school with the kids as much as possible. Plus it's good exercise and I don't have to fight the traffic around the school. My favorite thing about walking home is seeing the other kids on the way. Apparently a lot of kids know Fred Rion. We constantly hear kids saying "hi" to him during our walk. There is one kid that gets picked up and as his parent is driving up the road we walk, we see him with his head hanging out the window, waving and saying "goodbye" to Fred. Today we saw Fred's fourth grade buddy from last year. She stopped and said hello which I thought was really nice of her. I told Fred she wasn't in fourth grade anymore and he said something about how they all moved up. There are a few kids that we see from Fred's class that walk home by themselves. They don't have far to walk, but that scares me. Maybe I'm a little over protected. We have a pretty good hike so it will be awhile before the boys can walk home alone. Anyway, I've already decided that in a few years when Cordelia starts school she will be my excuse to pick the kids up after school. If it embarrasses the boys, then so be it.