The Night Before the Morning Of

Back to school is my favorite. I have a lot of favorites, but the morning of the first day is definitely in my Top 5. Today has been a day of preparation. Superhero muffins for the kids in the morning, my mom's homemade poppyseed bread with orange glaze for the teachers (and a loaf for us as well), my Aunty Lee's spaghetti sauce for the traditional back-to-school dinner. Uniforms were hung, backpacks were packed, good luck notes for lunch boxes were written. We are READY.

The girls helped me cook. And by helped I mean fought a lot over who could dump in the various ingredients and generally made everything take 10x longer.

(Claire's face in this one; someone got to dump TWO cups of carrots in when she only got to dump ONE cup of zucchini. Injustice is everywhere.)

Oops.

The men of the house retreated to Landon's room to build Legos when certain tweenage men objected to the division of labor for the egg cracking step.

I taught a fabulous barre class somewhere in the middle. I am absolutely loving my Sunday early afternoon class. We get to do family stuff in the morning (we have children; we're up early), we always end up back at the house for lunch and then I run out for my 1:30 class. I'm home by 2:45 and the day picks up from there. I'm getting a steady group of regulars and I absolutely love walking in the door of my sweet studio.

And having excuses to order more leggings. Always with the leggings.

I used my impending loan payoff to treat myself to an item or two. These Tom's were the "two."

To move backwards in time, on Friday we came out of our bedroom to find Cora happily esconced in a tiny box that had delivered new Tom's to me the day before. We frequently joke that she's a cat because she loves to sleep more than any toddler I know and will curl up with a smile in any location and during any activity.

We cracked up, snapped a picture, and put the box out by the back door to go out to the recycle. The next morning we again found Cora like this, back in her box she'd retrieved from the back door. We're letting her keep it now.

Later on Friday we took the kids climbing. After hearing about camp all week and buying Landon his new gear, I wanted to see him in action.

He's pretty good. Not that I know anything about climbing, but he's strong and long and it seems to work out for him.

James got to play too.

I cracked up when I saw him doing this from across the room.

Landon had just been doing the exact same thing.

Claire is also good- she has the strong and long thing going for her too, but she is totally dedicated to her upcoming and new career in gymnastics.

A friend delivered a few bags of her daughter's old clothes last weekend and the girls were THRILLED to discover some leotards and dance clothes. Cora is also getting to do her first-ever outside of school activity (besides swimming which costs us nothing and which 2/3 of the children are being driven to anyway) and she chose gymnastics. Both girls have their first class this Wednesday at 4:00 and they are PUMPED.

Even later on Friday, because we're still there, we had Meet the Teacher night. I volunteered the whole time, James sat through various presentations, our children ran around with their friends and met their teacher (somehow Claire was the only one who attended her teacher's presentation on behalf of the LagLiv family and she took her task of updating us very seriously). Afterward both big kids spent the night with different friends, and I celebrated a successful event with my PTA ladies.

Tonight, after our delicious spaghetti and with everything as ready for tomorrow as it can be, we watched School of Rock with the kids. Because nothing says "school is important" like a movie about abdicating all school-related responsibilities and making a rock band. We all enjoyed it thoroughly.

Tomorrow morning we have a 5th grader, 3rd grader, and pre-K'er. The first day of Landon's last year in elementary school. The first day of Cora's last year in Montessori school (and our last year of daycare after what seems like ONE MILLION OF THEM). I'm far more sentimental about the first thing than the second. Claire's first day of third grade, which is less milestoney, but still exciting simply because NO ONE is more excited about school than she is. Still. Four years after starting Kindergarten. "I'm just SO EXCITED!", she told me a thousand times today.

Me too. I've got my first day outfit all picked out and new pens in my purse. Some things we don't have to give up just because we had to stop going to school.