The Night Before 1st Grade

About three weeks ago, I was starting to get teary-eyed about my big boys starting first grade and being in school ALL day, five days a week. 

BOYS!!  This picture captures mine so well---the silliness, the gross (picking his nose two ways), the screaming, the pushing...oh the craziness!

We had an awesome, but very full summer.  We spent our days checking out different parks with new friends from church.  We had playdates with old friends.  We spent countless hours at the pool.  We've done our annual trip to Pirate's Cove (slight disaster but we did it!).  We did a day trip to Michigan to play in the sand on the lakeshore. We went strawberry picking.  Jon & James did Father/Son camp through our church.  We spent a week in Pennsylvania as a family.  We made a quick trip to Minnesota for my brother's 40th birthday.  We did VBS.  We played in the backyard.  We roasted marshmallows.  The big boys mastered riding bikes.  We went to more parks.  We had three separate birthday parties.  We had BBQs and went to them at other's houses.  We lit sparklers.  We treated the boys to their first ice cream truck experience and their first cupcake truck experience.  We stayed up late.  We did all of this and when we weren't having fun, we squeezed in the normal day to day like the countless trips to Target, the weekly speech therapy, doctor appointments, laundry, cleaning, etc.

Waiting at the dr's office today to get annual exams and shots for Caleb & Aaron---if I wasn't already tired enough, this experience pushed me into exhaustion territory.

So, here on the night before 1st grade what I am feeling the most is tired.  Just plain tired.  We've had lots and lots of fun but the late nights, running around playing all day long and busy travel schedule have left me craving routine.  I'm no longer sad about the start of school.  We're ready for it!  The boys are excited.  They've been counting down the days for the last week (and so have I).  Last night, we dropped off their school supplies and said hi to their teachers. Afterwards, they played at the school park with their classmates for over an hour.

Tonight I took down the pool bags from our hallway hooks and we replaced them with the backpacks that were stored in the closet all summer.  School is here.  Its time for regular bedtimes, homework and packing lunches.  Its time for some routine and consistency.  Of course, it will be an adjustment and its always sad to have summer end, but its time.  Oh boy is it ever time!

Last year, we found a "Back to School" letter and rewrote some parts of it, you can read the exact letter here.  Tonight we pulled out that letter and ready it to James and Andrew again (of course changing it to say 1st grade rather than Kindergarten).  We read through the letter and had good conversations about how to treat other kids and standing up for what you know is right. 

Then I tucked Andrew into the top bunk (he gets the top for this school year).

And I tucked James into the bottom.

Its still hard to believe these two guys will be gone all day.  I am going to miss them.  

People ask if these guys are triplets all the time!

And I suspect that Aaron is going to miss them much more than he realizes, but the good news is that he still has Caleb.  I'm excited to watch the bond between these two "littles" grow over the next school year.

Starting 1st grade still seems a bit unreal to me because when I look at James and Andrew, I can still see this:

February 2008