Today was the first day of preschool. Skyler & Spencer went in the afternoon, but we are switching to morning because there are less kids in the morning. School didn’t start until 12:30, but Skyler & Spencer had their backpacks on by 11am. They would have had them on earlier, but I didn’t buy the backpacks until this morning. It was so cute. They hardly ate lunch (1) because they were so excited and (2) cause it’s hard to sit at the table with a backpack on.

When we got to school they remembered exactly where their cubby was. They hung up their backpacks and went off to color. They barely even said good-bye to me. They just wanted to play with all the cool toys and meet all of their new friends.

When I picked them up they barely took a breath telling me everything they did at school. They played, the met some new friends, they sang songs and they got a snack. So far they love school!

I have mixed emotions. I’m so happy they get to meet new friends, play games, sing songs, oh yeah, and learn some new skills. But I’m also sad because it seems like just yesterday they were babies. My babies are all grown up. They’ll be five next month. I just can’t believe how time has flown by.

I just wanted to drop a little post to let you know how Granny is doing. Her surgery went well today. Lee said she looked better then he expected. He said she looked much better then what he remember after her last heart surgery ten years ago. Apparently they had to take veins out of both legs. They were hoping to only have to take them from one leg. I don’t know anything about heart surgery, so I’m not really sure what that means. But the doctor’s seemed pleased with their work.

Granny is recovering at St. Lukes and will be there for at least a week. Please keep her in your prayers.

We talked to Justis today. We will give him a call again on Wednesday or Thursday night to see how school is going. He has orientation on Wednesday. Apparently a ninth grader will show him around the school and introduce him to his teachers. So that should be pretty cool. Then his first actual day of school is Thursday. He rattled all of his classes off to me. He had the norms (language arts, science, social studies, math) and then, now that he is starting middle school (again…seventh grade is the first year of middle school up there), he gets to start choosing his own classes. So he chose German and wood working. I’m excited for him because he loves to whittle away at wood. And both Lee and I took German when we were in school. Justis had a taste of German and a taste of Spanish in school here last year. Apparently he preferred German.

No trumpet this year though. I’m not surprised. I think by the end of last year he was pretty sick of trumpet. He got very frustrated when he didn’t get the notes just right. And he hated to practice. He told me he could basically take it or leave it when it came to band. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if he was in band this year, but he wouldn’t be upset if he didn’t get signed up for it either.

And [dramatic drum roll here] he is in football. And he loves it. They just got their pads and practice jerseys last week. I told him to have his mom send us lots of pictures and if she can get a video camera we want to see some footage of our star athlete too. So I’ll pass those along as soon as we get some.

In other news, I took the kids swimming today. Grandma O has a friend with a pool so we try to go over there to swim a few times every year. It’s a lot more private then the public pool and the kids actually get a chance to swim there. The weather has been so crazy this year though so today was the first time we’ve been there this summer. My mom got Caleb this little boat he can float around in but, of course, I forgot it at home. So we just put a life jacket on him. And we put water wings on Skyler & Spencer. Plus when we went to Jacob Schiel’s party back in July all of the kids got pool toys. So we had two inflatable tubes and a beach ball (not sure what happened to the fourth toy?!)

Caleb loved the water. He wasn’t really ready to actually let go of a grown up but he was kicking his legs and jumping in to the pool from the side. He’s a fish.

And Skyler was just going around in her water wings like no big deal. She loved it. She was kicking her legs and moving her arms. She didn’t need any grown up to help her at all.

Spencer wasn’t quite as adventuresome, but he still had fun. He wore his water wings and floated around in one of the tubes.

Keaton, of course, had no trouble. He could used some swim lessons, but he can already do a mean dog paddle.

I forgot my camera. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I normally take my camera everywhere, but I’ve been forgetting it at home recently. I need to be better about this. But Grandma took pictures so as soon as she gets them developed I’ll scan them and put them in the Summer Fun photo album.

In one final note, Granny is having quadruple bypass surgery tomorrow. So wish her well and pray for a safe recovery. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Keeping true to form, Keaton is already excelling at school. They did their STAR reading report (the one they do every year) and this year Keaton’s grade equivalent is 7.6. That means Keaton reads at a level equal to that of a typical seventh grader after the sixth month of the school year [and Keaton is just starting the fifth grade]. He is so smart. We also got his math facts scores. He missed one each on the addition and subtraction tests, got all of the division problems correct and got a 26 out of 40 on the multiplication. So his overall score is 90%. He did awesome, but I can see we need to review the multiplication tables this year. I am so proud of him. He’s my Superstar!