Miscellany...

A few random thoughts for a Monday morning...

It's the middle of August and already you can tell that summer's coming to an end. Nights are getting cooler (yay!), it gets dark a little sooner, and morning comes a little later every day. At the same time, it's definitely still summer - days are warm and sunny, perfect for bike rides and playing outside. It's kind of a sweet spot in the year. We went to the farmer's market on Saturday and bought sweet corn, which I was surprised to see already. It was wonderful; the girls ate it all and we had to go back on Sunday for more so that Aaron and I could have some too. The vendor remembered us and said "I'll be back at Midtown from 3-7 on Tuesday if you need more!" I laughed, but yeah... of the six ears we bought yesterday, there's only one left. So we might need more tomorrow.

We're two weeks away from Maisie's first day of first grade. She's SO excited to head back to school and see her friends... we've only had a few play dates and birthday parties over the summer, so she really misses her buddies. I got her and Ella's school supplies bought this weekend - thanks to Amazon Prime, I was able to do it in my jammies on Sunday morning, drinking coffee. So much easier than running from store to store trying to find the right brand of watercolors.

Two days after Maisie's first day, Ella will start High 5, which is Minneapolis' public Pre-K for kids who will enter Kindergarten the following year. Priority is kids who get free or reduced-price lunch or receive special ed. services, so we had to cross our fingers for a spot. Luckily, Ella got one! It's half days, five days a week, which should be perfect. We wanted to find a program to help her get used to being in a classroom environment before she starts Kindergarten. We felt that it'd be a really hard transition for her to go from just being at home with Aaron, to being one of 30 kids in a classroom, for a seven hour day! Unfortunately it's not at Maisie's school - her school doesn't have a High 5 class - but they'll be back together the following year when Ella's in Kindergarten.

So, two more weeks of summer. The girls are heading up north with Gramma Liisa & Dylan later this week, and we've got our State Fair trip planned. Aside from that, it'll probably just be trying to pack in bike rides and Dairy Queen runs and other lazy summer activities while we can. Fall will be here soon enough, and winter close behind.