Continual State of Becoming

Only one more week until Dylan starts kindergarten!!!!  It's so crazy.  I have totally mixed emotions about it all.  On the one hand I am already nervous for him...  riding the bus, finding his way to his classroom, meeting all new people, will his teacher understand him?, will he like it?, will he cry?  (I most assuredly will), will there be a struggle to get him to do his homework?, will he be challenged enough?  too much?  it goes on and on and on.  I'm also kind of dreading the fact that our family is now stuck on a school schedule.  No more off season trips, or down time at the playground, we are in with the masses.  Not a fun prospect for a set of parents who don't like being at crowded events.  But oh well.  On the other hand I'm looking forward to setting up a routine again.  I completely abandoned any kind of routine or schedule this summer and instead we've been winging it...  or at least winging it as much ...

To his great grandpa and birthday buddy.  He left a rock on top as a token of his visit and wanted me to take a picture so he'd have a token.

Last weekend I went up to Saratoga with the kids, my dad, and my sisters.  We stayed with my Grandma and hung out with the Waldron side of the family for the weekend-- events ending with a horse race in memory of my Grandpa.  It was a really nice weekend and the kids and I had a great time.  Here are some random, non-kid pictures from our quick vacation. One of many springs around town. Spit... or Spat... I'm not really sure. At the track. Pretty much empty during the morning warm up.  Later it was super packed. Super blurry, wish I had been able to rework this shot, but oh well. I love the sculpted tree shrubs. Of course Sarah was the most stylish... Finish!

Dylan has so many interests that I have a hard time keeping track... baseball, science, music, chess, games, art...  those are the current big ones.  He spent a lot of time practicing piano today.  Mostly on his own, while I played with Aaron.  He's been working on learning the names of the white keys, but I heard him going further into his book and he was able to teach himself about the dotted half note too.  He also spends a lot of time making up his own songs, which are interesting to listen to.  Then when Matt came home the music fun continued.

This week I had a few under the weather days.  I'm pretty sure I have the same thing that gave Matt a double ear infection.  Luckily I haven't gotten as sick as he did.  But it did cause us to spend some down days at home.  It was tough on Dylan, he really enjoys the little summer adventures we've been doing lately.  But these things happen.  The nice thing is he and Aaron have been spending some good quality bonding time together.  There is a lot of fights over toys, but they are also starting to have fun together too. How Aaron lets Dylan know his turn on the blue car is up.  "I'm going to poke you in the eye!" Aaron loves it when Dylan pushes him in the blue car. Inside fun:  Playing chase with some laundry baskets. Dylan dives in. Look at all those socks. Aaron's turn to play inside the basket.

I'm not ready for it.  That means I need a new monthly resolution.  And an update on my June/July resolution. First things first, June/July:  I combined these months because the plan was to tackle the basement.  That was the plan.  But it didn't happen.  It didn't even get touched.  In fact, at this point the basement is even more cluttered and unorganized than it was in May.  However... we made big progress in the rest of the house.  The main level and master suite was finally repainted.  I reorganized our "music room"  (the formal living room), and got finally got a sideboard for the dining room.  Matt is also in the process of redoing the office.  So the basement got put on hold, because that made more sense.  But once the office is done, that is #1 on my list.  In fact, I may even start going through mine and the kids stuff before Matt joins in.  So the basement is still undone, oh well.  Life goe...

On the way home from DC I noticed that the metro windows were pretty reflective.  I seized the opportunity for a few cute shots of Dylan and then turned the camera to myself.