the news from here

I haven't been posting because... there's really not much to say. Here's what we've got for news:

1) We had a party! It was our first party in five years. It was nice! Parties are nice! However, they are very tiring, and we'll have to rest up for at least a few more years before doing that again.

2) Dutch starts school again on Tuesday. She's excited/scared. However, she has new (to her) shoes, and a new (to her) dress, and a new (new) backpack, so she's equipped. Also, she's been reading up a storm all summer, so she hasn't lost any ground in that academic respect.*

3) Skipper starts at her new preschool on Wednesday. She is looking forward to it, mostly. I expect she'll enjoy it - she has new (to her) shoes that have lemurs embroidered on them. I don't know how you could BE better prepared for basically any life situation if you already have shoes with lemurs on them.

4) We went to the zoo again. Skipper's been five times now, and she has surrendered to enjoying it. She seems to most enjoy the fish. She came face-to-face (separated by glass) with a gibbon, and she didn't like that.

5) Summer is... ending. How is that possible?

*She has, however, lost plenty of ground in everything else. For one thing, I am astonished at how poorly she spells, given what she reads, and how fluently she reads it. Seriously, this is a kid who announced happily that she had found a book she really enjoyed reading at the babysitter's house, and it turned out to be Anne of Avonlea, a lovely but not exactly easy-reading book that starts with this sentence: "A tall, slim girl, 'half-past sixteen,' with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends caled auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil." I'm not sure how much she understands of what she reads, but she sure reads a lot, and how is it that a kid who reads like that still doesn't know how to spell "white"?