One September morning Snoopy never came up for his breakfast. We searched the house for him and found him snuggled on a blanket in the basement, shivering. He could barely walk and didn't want to eat. We think he fell down the stairs. For about a week, we were force feeding him and he could barely move. We thought it was likely the end for him, but he is a miracle dog and got better. His mobility has returned to his old age normal, but we put up the baby gate and Snoopy is no longer allowed to use the stairs. Before his fall, when he would go up the stairs, he would pant like he had just run a marathon. It is now extra work to carry him up and down stairs so he can use the restroom, and we also have to lock him in our room at night, so he doesn't use the stairs.
The moment all parents of young kids dream of and dread finally arrived for us this year as Derek entered kindergarten and so all our kids are in school for a full day. They are attending school in-person full time with masks required as we still fight through the COVID19 pandemic. Here they are on their first day of school before we ran to meet the bus.
Derek, our pirate kindergartner:
Lydia, our smiley 3rd grader:
And Karina, our bright 5th grader:
Armed with the masks that they have to keep on when they are indoors unless they are eating or drinking. Derek did remove the eye patch before he got on the bus, but the pirate belt stayed on all day.
A crowded bus stop for the first day of school.
Like many other places around the country, we have a bus and/or bus driver shortage here and the bus has consistently been anywhere from 20-45 minutes late at the end of the day after school. After a few afternoons of waiting at the bus stop without knowing when the bus would come, Tanja is now picking the kids up at school and driving them home at the end of the day (and they are usually getting home 30 minutes faster than the neighbors on the bus). If the bus timeliness improves, the kids can switch back. The bus is luckily on time in the mornings.
Derek was pretty excited to ride the bus and go to kindergarten. Here he is after coming home from his first day of kindergarten. It was a success!
We had our neighborhood block party. One of the highlights was the balloon art and the kids loved the creative balloon things they brought home like this bow and arrow, dragonfly, sword, and poodle.
Over Columbus Day weekend, we took advantage of not having soccer games and went to Calvert Cliffs State Park along the Chesapeake Bay to look for fossils and shark teeth. Supposedly, people have found megalodon teeth there, but we only found a few small shark teeth fossils. Oh well - the kids had fun hiking through the woods to get there and then playing at the beach for a while. It was a 1.8 mile hike each way from the parking lot to the beach, so we will stick with Purse State Park next time we want to search for shark teeth, where we have had much better success before.
Karina joined the Safety Patrol at school and has the responsibility to sit with the preschoolers and pre-kindergartners in the morning outside the school while they are showing up to make sure none of the kids run in front of cars and things. Tanja fondly remembers her time in Safety Patrol at her elementary school, so it's great that Karina can follow in her footsteps.
One day after school, Derek and Lydia were playing with our kinetic sand and Derek built a pirate ship (the paper in the middle is a pirate sail and flag stuck to a toothpick mast). He was so proud of his creation that he wanted a picture of it.
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