The sound of silence

The end of summer. Ryan, Hadley and Jack went back to school yesterday. They were so excited -- they got their backpacks and school supplies all ready the night before and laid out their school clothes for the morning. Everyone woke up right on time. Got a nice breakfast. Pictures. Then off to school. I went with them to their classrooms to see their rooms, teachers and friends. They were all soooooo excited to be back! I came home and felt a little sad to have them gone and even missed having them here. That was until nap time. I actually had 2 hours of complete silence while Morgan, Griffin and Mia all took a nap. I had forgotten how good it is to just have some quiet time each day. I really love the structure that comes with school.

Hadley -- 2nd Grade

Ryan -- 4th Grade

Jack -- 6th Grade

(I can't believe Jack is old enough to be in 6th grade already!)

Morgan will start Kindergarten next week. We had her Kindergarten testing/evaluation yesterday at her new Elementary school. And she did so well. The teacher was amazed that she knew all of her letters (upper and lower) , sounds, shapes, colors, numbers, etc. She said they would start working on reading right away with her. She will have Kindergarten in the mornings so I am hoping that will give me some time to play with Griffin and do some fun activities together -- Kindermusik, reading books, doing puzzles and playing at the park. His speech is still slow but it seems like he is not screaming 90% of the day like he was before. A speech therapist came to the house today and gave me some good ideas to help him start talking more. She said the best thing for speech development is reading books together and labeling the objects in the books. He doesn't have a very long attention span but hopefully he will enjoy our one on one time (during Mia's morning nap) and reading together.