First week of school

Happy to say that our first week back to school was a total success! Busy, as always, but ever exciting! The pics below are actually from the second day of school. We met CJ's first grade teacher the night before school started, and saw several of his friends from kinder there, including his best friend Dylan. This first grade teacher seems to be absolutely wonderful, having written a note home to CJ after the first day of school telling him happy she is to have him in her class. What a difference one little note with kind words can make to a first grader and his family.

BJ, as you might guess, strode into his school with joy and smiles from ear to ear. He was SO happy to be back. I don't know what we're going to do when we ever have to part with his preschool. He looks SO tall now that he's back with his group of friends. What happens over a summer to make all these children grow so?!

Rick and I had a busy, busy week ourselves, and are enjoying a three day weekend to regroup, order text books (me), get a jump on some reading, etc. I'm REALLY looking forward to a fun sememster. I'm taking 12 hours of graduate classes, and TA'ing 20 hours a week, but the professor I'm TA'ing with is my major professor and I get to assist her in teaching her Children's Lit. class! I'm looking forward to the learning experiences that will come my way. My own classes include a linguistics class, a library acquisitions/censorship course, quantitative research (yikes!), and a reading assessment/intervention course. I LOVE IT!

For all those involved in equipping my family with bikes over the summer, I'm happy to tell you that the boys and I went on our first bike ride yesterday and it was absolutely delightful. We went to Mountain View Park (where the boys play soccer, mom, Sarah, and Charles), and we had the long bike path all to ourselves. A couple of runners passed us and a couple of walkers, but other than that, no traffic. We probably rode about a mile and BJ was walking his bike by the end of our ride b/c he was so tired. Last night BJ fell asleep at 6 PM and didn't wake up until 8 AM! He was really tired!!!! It's been a long time since I was on a bike and it was such fun. We're looking forward to going out as a family once Rick gets his tire fixed.

Enjoyed a nice day today, about 70 degrees with a nice breeze. Rick cleaned out the entire garage and some of our window wells. Fall is coming, we just know it, and if memory serves, fall is just BEAUTIFUL in Idaho!!!

Love to all and hope to post pictures more regularly now that we're back in school. Fingers crossed. Soccer starts in two weeks.