My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

Danny’s turn!  In early September, he started two mornings a week at preschool.  He was very excited to join the school fun!  And although he’s always a little nervous the first few minutes of class, the teacher has assured me he warms up quickly and it’s smooth sailing the rest of the mornings.  And every day when I pick him up, Danny joyfully announces that once again, God has answered his prayers for a good day at school!

Jimmy has taken his education very seriously, and wanted to tutor Danny in the alphabet now that they’re both in school.  I was so tickled to watch them practicing together!

It’s hard for me to fathom that Jimmy is now in Kindergarten.  He’s just so grown-up now!  He took to Kindergarten like a fish to water.  He hasn’t expressed an ounce of nervousness or hesitation about school. He loves his teacher, his classmates, he even loves doing any homework that gets assigned (which isn’t much – he’s asked me to create math sheets for him to do so he can be like his big sisters!).  He’s very eager to learn to read, and even though he hasn’t quite put the ideas together yet, I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s a reading machine. 

The day before class started, he was able to meet the teacher and see his classroom:

He even got to ride on a bus for the first time:

Here is Jimmy the night before he started school:

And on the first day, Jimmy was ready to take on the world!

A few days before school started, the girls were able to go meet their third grade teachers and see their classrooms.  They were excited, and relieved by how wonderful their new teachers were!

Here is the little chat Jim and I had with them the night before they officially started school!

And because I’m a glutton for punishment, here’s a video of the girls only two years ago, before first grade.  My heart can’t take the cuteness!!

Whenever the school year approaches and the summer winds down, I find myself frantically dragging the kids outside to enjoy every last bit of freedom before they’re stuck in a classroom all day.  We made the most of this summer!

Since we didn’t cram quite enough fun into this summer (!), we decided to take one more trip to the Connecticut shore in the RV a few day before school started.  It was a glorious capstone to the summer!  We took the long walk/ride to the beachside nature center, which was a highlight of the trip for me (well, it wasn’t THAT long, except any bike ride involving four kids on a hot day is a bit of an adventure!).  I’m so glad we were able to visit the shore one last time this year as a family!

I have so many pictures of our trip, I’ll split them up into a few posts:

Here we are at the nature center.  I loved the frogs!

Susie looking stunning in the sand:

Jimmy quenching the thirst that apparently seized all four kids so intently that they couldn’t cycle another foot without falling over and declaring their parched status:

Back at the campsite and fully revived, thanks to candy from the camp store:

This is the life!

My rollerblading men:

Daddy instructing Baby T on the fine art of RV camping:

Night rides:

Nothing more beautiful than sunset on the beach:

See!  I can prove I was there – it’s my sillhouette!