Our weekend

On Friday (the 24th) we got out of town around 1 to head to Chris's Aunt's place in Gettysburg. It was nice to have a chance to go for a swim in their pool- after having been cold - 60s we all had to re-acclimate to warm temps again. They didn't have to ask us twice when they mentioned getting into the pool to cool off before dinner. The kids had a good time swimming and playing with the pool toys, they even jumped off the diving board but Josh wasn't as enthusiastic as he was last year when we visited.

The kids sat nicely at the dinner table then we drove out to see the new house that Chris's Aunt and Uncle are building - it's going to be spectacular when it's finished. Anyway, when we got there they realized that they forgot to bring the house key so the kids and I threw rocks into a pit that they're actually going to fill with the slate from the consturction site and later on fill in with dirt. By the time we got to go into the house it was pretty dark so we needed flash lights to get around. Dima seemed interested in looking into the heating conduits and looking at where the outlets and stuff like that will be Josh just went around goofing around with his flashlight. You can tell the place will be really nice and I'm betting that the things the kids will remember about it will be the flashlights and the rocks.

On Saturday we drove to Hagerstown for their annual Augustoberfest. We do this show with our old dance group and it's nice to see everyone again - as well as the people from the bands that do the event every year with us. Last year was really nice since people from our new group were there too - but they had other commitments this year. Chris settled the kids into our hotel room while I had a chance to get out with everyone and catch up. During the day it was over 100 degrees and we were lucky to have a trailer to cool off. The boys had a great time exploring the trailer and goofing around in the bed-area. Compared to Saturday, Sunday was cool at only 80 degrees!

Talk about fickle kids - Josh cried when he was out on the floor to do one of the dances on Saturday and all of a sudden Dima wants to dance ( a bribe of water ice might have swayed his decision to get in on it). I'm not sure what to expect this coming weekend with our new dance group - not sure if either will dance or both or maybe they'll both decide not to. I try not to push it so it'll be up to them and we'll see how it goes. Josh also had a great time in June playing an alphorn at one of our events and wouldn't even touch it at this one. When asked why he cried during the dance he had been talking about doing he couldn't say but repeated what he heard me say - that the music might have been too loud. The heat might have had something to do with it, or the fact that they had no nap and slept in different beds from their own the night before. Josh didn't really sleep during naptime today and was really bratty while we were out walking- pushing Dima while they were running around and being really sassy to me so I told him he's going in for an early bed time. They had an early bath and once he was in his bed at 7:15 he was asleep within minutes. He might still be catching up from such a busy weekend.

Tomorrow will be Dima's first day to ride the school bus. We'll see how this one goes since the bus driver has been lost while driving around in the mornings . A neighbor said that the middle school kids didn't get to school til 9:30 on Monday, hopefully the driver's getting the route down by now. We went to the school today for his first day in the classroom. They had only half of the kids there as they went over what's expected of them when they get there and gave out pencil boxes with supplies inside and had them sit down to draw "what I did during the summer". During the 10 minutes that we could stay Josh was playing with a little girl in the clasroom's play kitchen and within minutes he found a truck with a little wrecking ball on it. Ironic since I have called him Mr. Destructo since he's always taking stickers off things and ripping things apart.

I was up by 6am today since I woke and had lots on my mind so I just got out of bed to get things going. I walked for exercise and then got planning how the day would go. Until I get us all into a routine I'm going to be nervous about Dima missing his bus or something like that. I am glad that Josh doesn't start school til the 10th so I can get one schedule settled before we're all trying to get up get ready and get out in the mornings. The good thing will be that once Josh does start, I'll have some actual FREE TIME!! Only from 9:00-11:30, but it will still give me time to run errands with out having to coax anyone along or have to leave a store with a sassy, spitting kid. After having seen how the pick up line will be for Dima's school, I'm confident that getting from one school to the other won't be that big a deal. I told his teacher about needing to pick up Josh on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays and she said that the Moms who have done it in the past just get on the end of the pick up line and it all works out. I knew I wouldn't be the only one who'd ever had to deal with the schedules being so close and now I can see I've actually got more time to get to him with the way they work the pickups. Dima's teacher said things went well today and apparently they have a system that uses rubber bracelets that they had in their pencil boxes today - they're suppposed to start using them tomorrow andn I thinkwhat they do is wear them if they're well behaved and lose them if they're not. They also have a folder in their book bags to send any paperwork back and forth to the teacher. The teachers - there are two for kindergarten - seem organized and I've heard good things about his teacher.

Fortunately since they're both in am school we can just pick back up on the schedule we had two years ago when Dima went to preschool in the mornings. When we got home today they both went to our stairs and put their shoes on the bottom steps to be taken up after lunch and then they went into our playroom / family room while I got lunch ready. I had kind of forgotten that we used to do that every time we came home from school until they did it on their own. We'll still do our normal nap- after- lunch routine to give them both some down time during the day, especially since Dima will be going every day now as opposed to three days a week.

Josh had some toilet training success yesterday and then today said he doesn't want to go to school - and had a relapse - hopefully he'll have more good days with that stuff, but that's another whole story, I'll write more on that later. ...