First day of School and Fire on the Mountain

Monday was the first day of school for the girls.  Third grade for Evie and preschool for Izzy.  Summer has definitely gotten the best of us and both girls had gotten into the habit of late to bed and late to rise.  As a consequence on Monday morning (when I woke them up at 6:45  am) I had to carry both of them (in separate trips of course) half awake to the breakfast table.

Regardless of their difficulty getting going on Monday, they were both excited to go back to school for primarily friend reasons... Evie is facing some changes this year as she will have new teachers for math, French, English, and science.  She really wanted her form tutor (aka homeroom) to be with the German teacher (that she knows well) and was very excited when she arrived at school and this was the case.  Unfortunately a few minutes into the day it was discovered that she was erroneously placed there, and she was switched to a different form tutor.  This change caused an apparent tragedy and caused her to proclaim that her first day was "just awful"  Izzy on the other hand was thrilled with her lot in life, in the kindergarten/preschool combined class along with her best friends Anaise and Bobs.  Fortunately by the end of the second day Evie had recovered from her tragedy and was happy and interested in school again.

Although new teachers are an adjustment, perhaps the biggest change in our world this school year is the addition of a new child!  Last Friday we welcomed Anna from France into our home for the school year.  She is attending our local high school, and Patrick and I received a before our time experience on Monday registering her for classes and getting her enrolled in school. Anna's first day of school was today and she informed us that it was "horrible" because she struggled to understand what was going on.  Here is to hoping, like Genevieve, that her second (or third, or fourth) day(s) are better.  She has already endeared herself to our dogs, as her job is to walk them each morning, and both girls.  Genevieve, in an exercise for her math class today, apparently already counts our family as a unit of 5.

In other interesting news, the Catalinas were lit up like something out of a JRR Tolkien novel last night (but fortunately not tonight) due to a wildfire on the mountain. I tried my best to capture it, but without a tripod it was very hard....