And I thought summer was busy . . .

So the new school year is off to a slam packed start. Luke has now completed 3 weeks of first grade. Kind of feels like 3 months, but things are going well.

His handwriting is getting a little better I think! Hallelujah! It's improved a lot since this photo a couple of weeks ago. A couple of his papers have been challenging to read, but for the most part a big improvement from last year's scribbled work in all capital letters.

And Luke's had some traditional back to school sickness. This photo is from one afternoon following too much spinning at OT resulting in a headache. He got my headache face mask from the freezer to relieve his pain, and requested Motrin. And pretended to be asleep when I got out the camera.

Luke cracked himself up at dinner on night and I took a picture without asking him to wipe the ketchup off his face. Crazy night.

We got new carpet!! We love it. We should have done this years ago! It's actually a little darker than it looks in this photo. But I think it might have been simpler to just move out. We're still getting things sorted out and put away and the carpet was installed a week ago. But worth every second of the hassle.

Luke's goldfish, Molly and Teddy, died. But our algae eater, Caroline, lives on. She even survived a couple of hot days and nights in a few inches on water in the garage during the carpet install. But keeping the aquarium for one algae eater who spends 99.9% of her time stuck to the Sponge Bob statue is pretty ridiculous. Yet we just couldn't bring ourselves to dispose of Caroline. So, Luke got a few new, very cheap fish. He named them Emma, David, Olivia and . . .

Luke! (pictured). Luke watches fish Luke and says, "Look! I'm eating! Now I'm swimming!" and so on.

Luke's loving first grade. We're pretty wild about his teacher, Mrs. H. She gives "hippocampus" work to do every night for "seven sleeps" just before bed.  She tells the class that practicing for seven nights puts the information in their long-term memory (I think), the hippocampus.  She gave each student a little hippo to tape by the bed and Luke faithfully does his work.  He thinks the information is literally traveling from his forehead to the back of his head and asks me each night, "Where is it now?" and I have to touch a spot where the info is now residing.

Luke had his first practice spelling test a few days ago.  His comment - "It was just like high school."

I've been busy with PTO.  I love being involved at school, but the beginning of the year is crazy busy!  Here's Luke and a buddy working on our class art project for the silent auction at our upcoming fundraiser.  This beauty will definitely bring in the big bucks!  Actually the finished product was pretty cute.

Luke announced a few weeks ago he will be going to college.  He wants to be a first grade teacher.  I much prefer this to his last career plan of becoming a professional dancer.