Back to School

And just like that, summer is over. The two older kids are back in school. Oliver's preschool teacher stopped by this week for some basic assessment (he starts the end of the month). Dan spent the bulk of the week in meetings leading up to the start of the semester tomorrow.

Oliver was pretty upset about being left behind--before Andrew and Evelyn were even out of sight he told me he missed them. But I think he's excited about preschool.

The day before school started (Wednesday), I took Andrew to the eye doctor for a checkup. And . . . yup, he needs glasses. They should arrive in a week or so.

Aside from the general craziness of school, this week has been pretty typical otherwise. (Aside from the hundreds of pages I've read for an online writing contest [Pitch Wars] I'm helping with. Over a thousand pages so far . . .)

A final hurrah

We didn't post last week since we spent Sunday and Monday down in SG--we went to a joint farewell/homecoming for Dan's cousin's boys, spent a lovely afternoon at their home, and then stayed the night at the condo. (Oliver continues to be sporadic about the potty training: luckily, we brought spare pants to the Allton's, as I found Oliver hiding behind the trampoline to take care of his business).

In the morning, we took the kids to the splash pad--our way of a prior apology before we spent the afternoon immured in the condo waiting for our car to get a recall part installed at the Honda dealership.

Tuesday, after just a brief stopover at home Monday night, we were off again, this time for a short trip up north, mostly to go to Lagoon. (Still trying to use those season passes!) We were sad not to have cousins with us this time, but it was nice on the return trip to feel a lot less pressure to get everything in. We mostly just went on the rides we wanted to. However, because there's a pretty sizeable gap between the rides Oliver likes and the rides everyone else likes, I spent a lot of time watching Oliver on rides. (Which I didn't mind, because he was generally so happy about them). Also, I had the camera most of the time, which means, lots of Oliver pictures.

Of course, by 5:30 this is how everyone was feeling. Luckily, a very kind friend of mine had invited us over for dinner, so we had a lovely barbeque and conversation before driving home (all of the kids crashed on the drive back, especially the napless wonder here). 

The tie-dye shirts are an idea I borrowed from my sister-in-law: we made the shirts for FHE two weeks ago, and then wore them to the park. We coordinated without being perfectly matchy, and it made it easy to spot the kids.

We've spent the rest of the week recovering, playing with friends, and trying to clean our house. Yesterday, we did take a short break to drive down to SG (again), where we saw Bubby and Poppy at lunch at Red Robin, and then I got to go to a book signing for a couple of author friends: Krista Van Dolzer (middle grade author) and Shallee McArthur (YA sci-fi).

Today has been a bunch of church meetings and dinner with Bubby and Poppy. You can guess which part I enjoyed best.

School starts this week, which is surprisingly bitter sweet. I'm ready for the kids to go back to school (we need the structure!), but our summer is over.

A first of firsts

This week was a little quieter as we mostly stayed in town. We went to the park, and the library, and enjoyed the cooler than usual temperatures (but higher than usual humidity, ugh).

Summer swim team finished up for Andrew and he had his final swim meet Friday. He's not super fast (read: he came in last in most of his heats), but he had a good attitude about it. And frankly, the kid could stand to *not* be good at something.

I ended up helping time because they needed volunteers, which was fun, but I didn't get as many pictures as I'd hoped. I thought I'd video taped his swim but all I got was some weird shot of the water.

And this was Andrew between swims: he found a new book series. (J. Scott Savage's Far World).

Evelyn and Oliver dressing up. I love Evelyn's mix of armor and frilly skirt.

As far as firsts, on the first of August:

I helped with my first baptism as Primary president.

Andrew learned how to mow the lawn (Dan barely survived watching him.)

And Oliver pooped in the potty!! (Yes, that deserves exclamation points). We were at the pool and I saw him making a funny face so we rushed to the bathroom. He cried (he didn't want to) and I told him if he pooped in his swim diaper he'd have to be done swimming because we didn't have a spare.

Now, if we could just get him to repeat the trick.

Dan is almost done with classes--hooray! And I'm still in the middle of revisions. Hooray? I'm hoping to be done by the middle of the month, so if you could send good revision mojo my way, I'd really appreciate it!