Well.....

Wow- let's see if I even remember how to do this.....

Even though the warm weather still lingers, summer is officially over at our house. The kids are back in school, fall soccer has started, and our break from crazy schedules is over.

Aiden started first grade this year- his first ever all-day class. At first I wasn't sure that I was going to like him being gone all day. But you know what? It's not as bad as I though it was going to be. It helps that I know he really likes his school. I'm not totally thrilled at packing his lunch every morning, but oh well....Aiden is slowly adjusting to his schedule, too. He doesn't come home and complain any more that his day was "soooooooo loooooong". This is his second year at the dual language school. I'm noticing more and more of his homework coming home in Spanish. I'm thankful that I know at least a little bit, or I'm not sure how I would ever manage to help him luckily, math is pretty universal, so Chris can help with that.

Paige started her second year of preschool. We have her in class at our local rec center. the year got off to a bit of a rocky start (for me and Chris anyway) because Paige's teacher from last year chose not to return to teaching this year. *sigh* Funny enough, though, her teacher this year was Aiden's class aide at Teaching World the last year he was there. Things are a little different in Miss Anna's class. We are all getting used to it and adjusting. Paige a little better than me and Chris, I think. She is still enjoying the benefits of gymnastics, rock climbing, and swimming that the rec center has to offer.

Finn will get his own post in a few minutes, so I'm going to skip him here. Sorry, Bubba.

Fall soccer started again last week. I think it will be a little less crazy than last year. Aiden's coach is married to Paige's coach, and that means only one practice night a week and our games don't overlap on Saturdays. Woohoo!!!! Both the kids are wearing red and black this year. Aiden's team gets to introduce the goalie position this year, too- which suits him just fine. He prefers to be in the goal box. The kid has figured out that he doesn't have to run on the field as much if he's trying to defend the goal...... Aiden's team this year is the Black Widows, and Paige's is the Red Dragons. Paige;s coach is new to coaching her own team, and likened the first game to "trying to herd butterflies". It was pretty funny.

Paige also started her very first dance class last week. I finally located a dance studio in Nampa where she could do ballet. Well, I guess the credit should go to one of the other soccer moms- her daughters are on Paige's team, and she was telling me how that had been in dance class before. Right now she's in an intro class, so she does beginning ballet and an "intro to movement". We're not allowed to stay and watch, but they do have several parent observation classes throughout the year. She is so excited. And I never knew how hard it would be to find the correct ballet slippers for her....

Let's see..... I have started exercising again, too. I decided to take up jogging. Crazy, right. Yeah, well..... I needed to do something. One of my friends from nursing school is training for a marathon right now- she has made an amazing personal transformation over the last few years. So, she directed me to a beginning running program at runningplanet.com. It's a walking/jogging plan that takes you from basically nothing to jogging 2 miles in an 8 week time period. I'm about halfway through the 5th week. I'm to a point where I can jog/run for a 5 minute span of time, with decreasing increments of walking in between. Today I walked 3 min, ran 5 min. I'm pretty amazed at this point that I can keep up with myself!!! I've come to love my ipod over the last 5 weeks, too....

Well, that's a lot from the Ida'vasa peanut gallery. I'm going to do my best to start updating more regularly again. Even if it's just to copy and paste my run status from the Nike site to here.... :)