School time!

After Brennan's long summer vacation (which started Friday around 2 pm when I picked him up from pre-K and ended Monday at 7:50 am), it was time to start kindergarten!  Despite already attending Grattan as a pre-schooler, and talking up his transition to the big K for weeks, when the day arrived -

he was not feeling 100% positive about it.

Which I get - because when you're in school, you don't get to spend a random Wednesday goofing off at all the awesome playgrounds in San Francisco - 

- or have as much time to fly to the moon with your little sister -

- or build a really awesome track with a double-decker bridge and still have time to play trains on it.

To be honest, I'm having a little trouble coming to grips with the fact that we can't just blow off school and go to the zoo (or whatever) if the mood strikes.  Years of having random weekdays off has conditioned me that doing "fun" stuff on the weekend is for suckers.  I also prefer to vacation between holidays, and get to the gym/breakfast/on the road around the time many people are just waking up, so letting The Man set my schedule adjusting to the school district's calendar is something I'm working on.

But if otters can do little human things with their hands, surely we can learn new habits.

So we're trying, with after-school jaunts to the merry-go-round-

-and the movies!

We took Enzo to see "Planes", because as much as I didn't want to see "Cars" in the air, I didn't want to be asked when were going to see "the movie of Planes" for the 80th time even more.

Brennan's learning new things, too, as I discovered at Back-to-School Night - like lower case letters and self-portraiture.  (also, check out his answer for "I am really good at ____)

While Brennan's at kindergarten, Lucie and I are catching up on a little girls' time, like enjoying a leisurely morning pastry-

Lunching and perfecting our quesadilla dissection technique-

Channeling Tiger Daniel at the Zoo-

Or just doing the bubble blowing dance on the sidewalk.

Of course, Lucie has her school activities, too:

so Roux & I occasionally get to catch up with some good hiking and stick-fetching time.

Daddy needed a new passport before our upcoming trip to Mexico, so we set up our home studio in front of the one white wall that remains in our place.  (it's behind a bedroom door, so a fairly unlikely spot to hang artwork, draw on the wall with crayons, or drag brightly painted toys across)  Once the kids caught wind of the photo session, they also wanted to participate: