First Day of School

Not only were the girls up and ready for school on time this morning (so early!) but they also managed to practice the piano and get some reading time in as well! Miracles never cease.

They had fun taking some silly pictures together, as well as some not silly pictures. These two are such good friends (most of the time). They're lucky to have each other.

My poor camera did not do well in the humidity (the phone camera actually took better pictures, I think). Here's Miriam all ready for grade two:

It's her third grade within twelve months. On July 20, 2015, she started kindergarten, then moved up to grade one, and now, on July 18, 2016 she's in grade two! That will likely be the only time in her life she does that!

And here's Rachel, ready to start grade four:

And here are the girls their bulging backpacks laden with school supplies:

They will be much lighter on the way home. 

The girls are so excited for homework that they packed extra pencils, erasers, and sharpeners in their backpacks so that they can work on their homework on the bus. I tried to tell them that they weren't likely to be assigned homework on the very first day of school, but they wanted to be ready just in case. Let's hope their enthusiasm for homework lingers.

I woke up my little ones around 8:00 because we had a friend coming over to play and they were both still sleeping. Zoë has been going to bed between 2 and 4 AM lately but last night we all managed to be in bed by 11 PM—the whole house! Between Benjamin and Zoë we still were woken up every couple of hours but we mostly slept from 11 to 6. Not too shabby for us. 

I'm hoping that Zoë will keep going to bed by 11:00. Is it very telling that that sounds like a respectable bedtime for this child? 

Anyway, we went to the park to play with our friend while his mom was at the dentist and had a lot of fun. It wasn't too terribly hot yet so we could still touch the monkey bars (though the slide was already scorching hot). Benjamin's actually pretty good at the monkey bars. He can go about this far before he needs help:

He'll be able to get all the way across by himself soon, I'm sure. He's excited to be the large and in charge one in our house while his big sisters are at school and is also looking forward to homeschool-preschool. Wish us luck!