Back to School

Oh, holy cow - there is so much that has happened this summer that I've wanted to post about, but didn't. The Jacks family reunion to Yellowstone, Alyssa's eighth birthday and all that went along with it (her first slumber party and getting her ears pierced), and Cousin Camp. I hate not posting about things, because then I feel like I need to catch up before I post again, and then I don't catch up, and the posting is delayed even further. But we have had a fabulous summer, and I actually love that I've barely been on the computer. I actually spent most of my summer reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, which I think everyone should start reading right now, because it was that good. We also spent a good amount of time at my parent's house, swimming and running around the yard with cousins. But most of all, we've been bumming around the house watching TV all day. That's Alyssa's favorite part of the summer, because usually TV is only allowed on the weekends, and she is our movie freak.

Marcus broke his clavicle last Thursday. He and Alyssa collided and fell to the ground while they were playing hide and seek. He cried and cried, and he almost fell asleep on my lap, so I put him in my bed since it was nap time anyway. When he woke up, he was just-woke-up-cranky, but mostly he would cry when I tried to pick him up, which seemed like something wasn't right. I thought it might be a dislocated shoulder, so we took him to urgent care and then to the emergency room, where they diagnosed him with a dislocated elbow, because they thought the pain in his shoulder was radiating from that. We waited through the weekend and took him into the orthopedic surgeon yesterday afternoon. Around Saturday, when Marcus started letting us touch his shoulder, Brian found that there was a spot that would kind of crunch together when you touched it, and yesterday we found out it was his broken clavicle. He's a touch little kid, though. He's acting normal, and the doctor was impressed at how well he was doing for it just happening on Thursday.

Yesterday we started our first day of school. We're getting a late start this morning, because I slept in and Marcus is still sleeping, but we're going to have Math and Reading this morning and then call it a day. We're definitely taking things slow this week to work back into our regular routine.

We decorated the school room, which is a huge upgrade from the blank walls we had all last Spring. After I put up our letter wall and a few posters and a huge map of the world, I thought, "Wow, it was really boring in here before." I love our school room now. I still want to eventually paint and start decorating in our Alice in Wonderland theme, but for now I'm quite happy with how it is.

We got a classroom mouse from Eric and Claire, and the kids are absolutely in love with her. Her name is Artimus, and she is very sweet. With Callie the Cat and Artimus the Mouse, we actually have four pets now, if you count the caterpillars the kids have brought in from the back yard. We have one that's already formed a cocoon and another that's scrunching around the canning jar, eating every bit of leaf it can find.

So we're very excited for the school year. Opening our curriculum materials when they arrived was like Christmas. I loved seeing all the books we're going to read and the activities and experiments we're going to do. Even though we've started school, I don't feel like summer is over, because Alyssa's still home with us, and we're taking it slow, and we're still planning loads of fun stuff to do before it gets cold.