Back to School!

(our school room, ready for another year)

One of many reasons we homeschool is that it allows us flexibility to stay together as a family despite Kent's somewhat mobile life/work. We have various reasons to travel most of the month of September, so we started school a couple weeks early this year. Anna has moved up to 'real preschool' and kindergarten math, but likes to sit through Latin and Zoology with the boys. She has a real desk of her own and loves it!

James moved up to a larger desk,
for as you will see, he is growing like a weed!

The gapped grin, dimpled cheek and huge front teeth are eerily familiar...
He almost looks like a teenager to me in these pics, and not a third grader...
We even have the right slump!
Really, aren't we done yet Mom?

I didn't edit out my studio for you...
yes, it is a dining room chair in front of a fleece blanket on our front porch.


My sweet Joel is in Second Grade!

...and that second front tooth will soon be gone! He's pretty proud of being almost 2 inches taller than his brother was going into Second Grade. He'll catch up with him one of these days...


And our resident princess,
in the midst of trying to grow her hair out like Rapunzel,
is starting preschool!

And of course, we had to take a new silly-face picture, at right.

The kids then all insisted that our puppies get their portraits taken too... If you thought getting young children to sit still and pose was a challenge, how about 2 9-month-old puppies who think they're missing breakfast??! I had fleeting delusions of getting the dogs to take their turns sitting on the chair.
yeah, notsomuch

Then moved the chair hoping they would agree to sit with our kids petting them nicely.
dream on

Then just wanted to get them all the way in the frame...
you can see how things degraded:

So Nella, our sweet black lab mutt, who flops over for a belly rub at the sight of you, gives me her rump. That's what she thinks about portraits!

But her brother Samwise, who is usually hyper, was eating up all the attention he could get. We took lots of pictures and the kids got up, and he was still laying there like, "What? It's over already?"

(I just love the expressions! We love dogs!)

Maybe we should be called the ten-foot and eight-paws family...