This week...

-Fred and I got to go on a date during the day Friday.  We chose to ride on the Shelby Farms Greenline,  (What's a greenline?  Click here.) stopped at the halfway point to enjoy a delicious salad and pizza and then headed back.  In all it was about 13 miles, but hello...we got pizza in the middle.  I don't just mean any ordinary pizza.  The pizza was called Pesto Primo: homemade crust, pesto, prosciutto, heirloom tomatoes, asiago and romano cheese.  Perfection...the time with Fred, the bike ride and the lunch.

-Andrew went to preschool for the first time on Tuesday.  It is the first time in 11 years that I've had no children at home.  I don't really know how to describe it other than weird and deafeningly quiet.  I cleaned the house from top to bottom without feeling guilty, waited on an appliance repairman, had a delightful lunch of leftovers with Fred and this...

Oh, yes...in the middle of the day.  Does it not look lovely...It was!!!
-Clayton has had math homework this week.  By insisting that he does his homework has been as if I am pulling off his entire toe nails.  To say we've had a little bit of an adjustment getting back in the groove would be a huge understatement.  Below is a (one of twenty) problem that he had.  It took me, Fred and Clayton working together for about 30 minutes to figure it out.  You have to add parenthesis to make the problem true.  If you figure it out quicker than 30 minutes let me congratulate you.  You are now Clayton's official tutor/personal homework helper.  Congratulations!  (I don't know why it is sideways, nor do I have the where with all to figure it out...I'm exhausted from working on the problem.)

    -The start of school means school orientations.  Since I have three kiddos I have three different orientations.  Yeah. (Did you sense the sarcasm?!?)  I went to Jack's orientation and found this on the wall outside his classroom.  Precious boy.

Jack has had homework this week as well.  He has a list of vocabulary words for which he must know the definitions:  almanac, encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary, atlas and a few others.  Jack has no frame of reference (get it, reference?!? Ha!!) for what these things are.  He has never seen an encyclopedia or atlas.  Why do we need those??  We have phones and internet.  Gesh.  I'm sure this is a state standard.  I'm drafting a letter to the State of Tennessee Department of Education to thank them for setting standards that keep my children relevant and current with the times.  (Sense the sarcasm again?!?)  Any who...he has a quiz on them so we must study and know them (and take a trip to the library so he can see what they look like).  We've been working on these and making them part of our daily conversations.  I asked him last night what an atlas was and he looked at me with a puzzled look and said, "A planet??"  Yes, I am a success as a teacher and parent.  Good grief.
-The baby had his first day of preschool today.  He came down the stairs Tuesday, peeked around the corner and said, "Mom, I'm so excited about my first day of preschool!"  He even put on his backpack 2 hours early "just so he'd be ready".  Bless his heart.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity we were off.  Be still my heart.  Is this not the sweetest thing EVER?!?

I picked him up at 2:30 pm and he was asleep on his rest mat.  He had an awesome day.  In fact, Wednesday morning there was a bit of a melt down because he wasn't going again until Thursday.  Melting down...on the floor...