We are in session...

Oh my. School is in session. Um, mostly.
We didn't have any fancy "1st day of school" pictures this year. I love fancy first days. But in all honesty, nothing has gone as planned. It has gone as expected. :)

Sarah is starting 1st grade. Lots of new curriculums, some old favorites, some fun extras. So far, I'm just trying to get the 3 r's done. Because, well... have you ever tried to concentrate outside during a Hurricane? Yeah, Sophie strikes again. :)

God bless this sweet Hurricane. She is only 27 months old and absolutely acting her age. But sitting for any length of time for anything is not her priority right now. (the picture at the top is of the only 5 mins Sophie sat in one place!) She wants to do what ever Sarah is doing, so even sitting with a highchair tray of Cool-Whip isn't good enough. But she also doesn't want to sit still and do whatever Sarah is doing. So coloring is a full-on contact sport. For me. Because she won't sit and color...she prefers to wander and color. If she spots a book, or 20, that she likes she'll pull them out. Not to look at mind you (that I could deal with), she seems to be more testing the theory of gravity than anything else.
I pull out all the great toddler activities that I thought would be a lot of trouble changing out every 15 minutes. No such luck...she was done with ALL of them in about 8 minutes. *sigh*

But we are plugging away. Sarah is a hard worker most of the time. But she doesn't like if things get too independent for her. Some of it is just wanting to be with me, some of it is her jealousy that I'm with Sophie. Both of which we'll hopefully make progress on this year. She is so smart. It's almost freaky. But it is so fun to watch her make the connection with something. What a blessing to get to do this.

I haven't taken many new pictures. Today, when I was trying to get this post done initially, I needed a few quiet minutes. What to do? What to do? "Here Sarah take this bag of flour and pitcher of water (and Sophie) and go mix it on the patio." heehee... they had a blast, but would not touch it no matter how much I encouraged them to. Boy, did they miss out! But, it bought me a few minutes. Strangely, Sophie had it all over her face and on the back of her head. They did not appear to be self-inflicted splatters either. Sarah was pristine. Go figure. ;)
I wish I had not been downloading pics at the time... they were pretty cute.
But here's a little of what I do have right now...

Below is our VERY popular "why am *I* the one always in trouble??!!" looks. Just melts your heart doesn't it?? :)



I had soooo many great ideas for educational fun stuff (thanks to other mommy bloggers), but, well.... the Hurricane.
One thing I did manage to do is this growing sting ray. We measured it pre-water and everyday for a week. The thing really did triple it's size, just like the packaging said! I usually don't believe the hype on that stuff, especially from the Dollar Tree. But I figured we'd either learn about false advertising or measuring. :) Now I'm thinking those Sea Monkeys might be worth the investment!! ha! And the Obama Chia Pet. That would be fun too.
Anyway, here we are with Squishy the sting ray.









And then there is the end-of-day unwind.