Back-to-school

Hazy sunrise washed over by a low and unexpected rain before breakfast that morning...

Slip on Yo-Yo Ma's Baroque cello album in effort to calmly transition the nine year-old and twelve year-old from summer break to back-to-school...

It's mid-morning and classes are rolling out well... Patience is deep into writing a romance novella in her creative writing notebook involving two characters named “Scott” and “Macaire”... occasionally randomly and loudly “B-BAWK!!”-ing like a chicken for no known reason... also wants to know what “paisley” is...

...while I sit with Yali to discuss his writing project for the fall... “What're you feeling for this one Yali?” // he looks at me solemnly before beginning to quote Napoleon Dynamite... “Last week... Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water...”

By mid-afternoon during Patience's violin lesson... before he leaves for work Puck quickly distracts her from “Gavotte” by lifting her carelessly deposited creative writing notebook from the dinner table to begin another read-aloud... which leaves all of us laughing near tears from his phonetic pronunciation of all the spelling errors as Patience enthusiastically directs him from line to line... “That word says science!” **giggle giggle** // “Uh... no”...

Toss out a couple of celebratory happy meals to the kids that evening to congratulate them on successfully cracking into another year...