Independence Pass camping

Our last camping trip of the summer was to Independence Pass. This was sadly the last trip for our 2003 Toyota Corolla as well.  We passed one too many cars at high speed on our way home, and popped a piston or two.  We managed to chug within a few miles of home before our trusty old car gave out completely.  It was such a good car, we replaced it with one just like it, just a few years newer and a couple hundred thousand less miles.  I was sad to give up the old one, but it is nice to have a window that rolls down again, a trunk that pops, and a clicky thing to unlock the doors. Plus we got a few new CDs out of the deal that were left in the CD player, including Michael Jackson's Greatest hits and a medical book on tape :).

Skipping rocks

Exploring the grottos

This boy loves water, no matter how cold

Climbing

Exploring the grottos

Grotto

First day of school- Kindergarten and Pre-K

The last time Amelie smiled about school was before she started

Logan & Amelie are at the same school this year, a Montessori charter school in Golden. Its pretty nice having them in one location.  We can leave 15 minutes later in the morning and those 15 minutes mean we can sleep until 7am!

Logan is in Ms. Kristin's P1 class for kindergarten. Its his 3rd year in her class, so it was an easy transition back for him. On the first day of school, he brought in his half-finished counting chain booklet from last year, and picked up right where he left off. (First he tried to convince me to buy the  Montessori materials to have at home this summer, but they were hundreds of dollars so we decided to wait for school to start again.)

Amelie is in Ms. Capron's P2 class for her first year of pre-K. She's had a tough time adjusting to school. Whereas Logan is my easy-going, roll-with-it kid, Amelie seems to be the opposite.  She's also 6 months younger than Logan was when he started pre-K, so that probably doesn't help.   The first day, she just trailed Logan around the playground like a shadow, crying. For the first few weeks she wasn't eating, did not want to make any friends, sat by herself at lunch, and she developed a stutter from the anxiety of it all. For a while I thought we may have to pull her out and try again next year. I'm still not quite sure. She still cries at drop-off every morning, but they say it only lasts a couple minutes and then she's fine the rest of the day.  Plus Logan reports that she only needs one hug a day now instead of several so that's something.

Tammy

We said good bye to Tammy today. It was totally heart-wrenching since she's raised our babies for the past 5 years. We plan to go back for holidays and school vacations still, which made it a little easier. Here's a video of some of the photos she's sent me over the years of the kids' days at daycare.

This free photo slideshow created with Smilebox And a few photos from Ama's last week: Sidewalk chalking... her favorite thing to do Ama and Kaitlin The whole gang Tammy took Ama shopping to get her first day of school outfit.  All pink, of course!  Down to the socks and sparkly pink shoes. Playing kitchen The only picture I have of Ama and Tammy Their second family