Saturday, August 18, 2012

Gearing up for the Fall.

Annaliese starts preschool on Monday.  The school supplies have been purchased and delivered to her cubby hole at the new school, she has a dozen or more new outfits after the family doting/spoiling of this summer, and after the shots episode, she's all set on the medical front.  

We went to an open house at the new school on Thursday evening.  The couple in the top left, with their daughter on the far end of the couch, live across the street.  Chloe and Leah, the other two little girls, are the adorable children of good friends a few blocks over.  

Which is all to say, there isn't much adjusting that any of these kids have to do when they start a new activity.  Everywhere they go, they know everyone.

The preschool is offered by the local dominant, (read huge, center of town, largest congregation in town, supporters of the current mayor, etc.) Baptist church.  We had mixed thoughts on this, but the school is 8 to 11 each day, for $60 a month, and the kids all know each other.  I'm not so worried about them picking up something like intolerance, my biggest concern when it comes to the more evangelical Christian sects, in this environment.


Caspian and his mama.  Alexe took on the challenge of consoling this little guy every time he remembered the new school was for Annaliese, and he couldn't go with her until he turns four.




Their classroom doesn't have any windows. However, it opens into an indoor gymnasium, a nice one, and there is a playground outside that they will use every day, according to the schedule.


Annaliese was a bit serious during the visit.  Since then she's been asking every day if her first day of school is tomorrow.


Meanwhile:

I'm spending my non-children-focused time planning for Burning Man.  In my spare moments this week I fabricated the parts for a geodesic dome, (I'll put something up dedicated to that project,) and did this little project to put together a pair of prescription sunglasses.  The last few pairs of expensive RX sunglasses I had were lost/broken very quickly, and I've lost my desire to try that again.  

The kids and I picked out a cheap pair of sporty-looking sunglasses, dug out an old pair of prescription glasses, and put them together with a little Sugru.


Voila.  I wore them while mowing the lawn this morning, and they were great.  I can just feel the inside lenses with my eyelashes, but after a few minutes I stopped noticing.


Nap time. They both need these every day.  I don't see any signs of them growing out of this.


The figs are coming in.  I was never a big fan of figs until I had them straight off the bush.  


Last night after Alexe got off from her long Friday shift, we went for snow cones and seafood at the local Crawdad Hole. 


This is in an old service station, and they just repurposed one of the old work bays as inside dining.  


This morning we had to scoot into town to get the Farmer's Market sign up before 8.  (The Main Street Manager called me last night from Florida and asked me to cover for him.)  Since we were up, we marched over to the BTC for a pancake breakfast.  We got there before the official opening time of 8, but another booth was already full of hungry patrons.


After breakfast we headed out to the athletic park to sign the kids up for Fall soccer, and walk off a few of the pancakes.  Caspian was excited: this is the first organized sport he's been old enough to participate in.


Annaliese's legs are still a little stiff from the shots, at least when she remembers they should be.



They wanted to watch the baseball field.  I explained that the person hitting balls in the batting cage on the other side of the field was not a baseball game.  


To round out the morning, and in the interest of making sure the kids' education is as robust as possible, we crossed the street to attend a storage unit foreclosure sale.  


Two units were auctioned off, both won by the local junk shop man, Deedee.  Listening to the crowd talk about who the units belonged to, what they were up to, what their mother's thought, and whether their no-good girlfriend's crap would be in the unit: awesome.


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