School's In!

Summer is officially over, and all three schoolchildren residing in our home have started back to school. Isaac began a week after his sisters since construction on the Intermediate school was running a tad behind schedule. But now they are all up and out the door each day, and the first week with them all gone has been relatively quiet. Because Monday was a holiday- Labor Day- and Curves was closed, I only worked two evenings this week, so that has also contributed to the sense of quiet and calm.

Our final weekend was a lot of fun. We had planned to go camping, but the weather report had us thinking that it would be rather soggier than we’d prefer for living in tents. Instead we decided to pursue the many projects that we had started, (or promised) at the beginning of the summer. So, shelving for the library, towel bar and hooks for the upstairs bathroom, moving office furniture from our bedroom to the basement, and a tree fort are now all on their way to completion. We were given a dresser by some friends who are moving, and Isaac has been working to refinish it for his room. His diligence is neat to watch as he has sanded the entire piece and is painting it first with magnetic primer, then a deep blue he chose at Lowes.

The tree fort will be a whole lot of fun once it is done; and has been a treat in the construction even yet. Jim, Isaac and Erin have gotten the project off the ground, into a grouping of four trees, and completed the floor already. Isaac, Erin and some of her friends made a rope ladder and have been practicing the best way to ascend and descend- not terribly easy.

We finished the weekend with a campfire in the backyard around which we and a number of our neighbors made S’mores and visited. A definite do-over, we hope to do that more often- and why in the world haven’t we done it before? The weather should be perfect for more fires, so this end of Summer will hopefully be the beginning of sharing more time with our neighbors and getting to know them in the smoky twilight evenings of Autumn.