Back in June, the summer seemed to stretch out ahead of us like the yellow brick road on the way to Oz. Like a lot of families I know, we relied on a patchwork of camps, vacation time, relatives, playdates and juggling with our fingers crossed to make sure that we could get some work done without leaving someone home alone chained to the radiator to keep them out of trouble.
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Well, we survived the summer and even though school’s not officially back in session, the back-to-school frenzy has begun. The PTO emails are appearing in my inbox, the new backpacks are labeled, the forms have been filled out, and yesterday was the first in a series of back-to-school activities, Adlani’s bus orientation.
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Adlani rode the bus to and from Summer Scene for 5 weeks this summer (I’m sure you remember the seat belt incident) but I figured that it wouldn’t hurt for him to hear the rules once again. He’s a sly little guy though…while I was chatting with my friends he sat next to his partner in crime, so while the principal was talking, so were they. My attempts to shush him had zero effect, and when I stepped it up a notch, so did he. After I climbed through to the next row and was using the ferocious-mommy-whisper tactic, Aliya’s kindergarten teacher calmly took him by the hand and led him away for a talk. When he came back to his seat he sat quietly for the rest of the presentation.
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When the kids filed out and got onto the bus, Aliya’s teacher told me that she just asked him about whether he was looking forward to going to school, if he knew his teacher’s name, etc. Then he asked her if he could go back to his seat and she said, “Yes, and maybe we can talk again sometime.” She said she didn’t think he wanted to talk to her again and that’s why he was so well-behaved. This year is obviously going to be completely different from when Aliya started kindergarten. I’ll be relying heavily on the teachers to prevail where I’ve failed. I think they’re up to the task!
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Oh yeah. That’s trouble right there:

Heading for the bus:

Back safe and sound:

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Over the weekend I read this whole book within about 24 hours and I loved it. It’s about a little girl who was taken with her parents during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup in Paris 1942. Her little brother is afraid to go so he hides in a hidden cabinet that he and his sister often play in, and she takes the key with her, not realizing that she will be sent to a detention camp. It’s a terrific book and I couldn’t put it down.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. De Rosnay’s U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand’s family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand’s family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay’s 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia’s conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah’s trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Available at Amazon.com.
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One of the reasons I wanted to have another house away from the city was because I wanted the kids to have a chance to see nature up-close and personal. Our house in Holland (MA) isn’t really in the country, but we do see different things there than we do at home.

Last night I had the outside light on and I noticed a zillion moths and other bugs swarming around the light, and this morning I found a really cool surprise on the screen – a walking stick, or stick insect. I remember learning about these in school and even though we lived in the boonies for my entire childhood, I never saw one. I think I was more excited about seeing one than the kids, but they spent some time examining it, and it survived to crawl away.

Very cool!

I am posting this because the kids are driving me crazy wanting to watch it over and over. At least this way they can watch it on their own instead of searching Youtube and accidentally finding “roller skating babes” skating around in thongs. It is cute if you haven’t seen it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PHnRIn74Ag&hl=en&fs=1&]
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As if I need something else to suck the minutes out of my day…tonight I received a photo of one of my door hardware pals as David Hasselhoff during his Baywatch days and I couldn’t resist going to the website that he used to create the photo. This site could seriously eat up a whole weekend if you get off on creating photos of your friends and family wearing mankinis, misbehaving, or appearing on magazine covers.

Once you upload your photo (or your poor unsuspecting husband’s) you can stretch it, rotate it, and even change the brightness, contrast, saturation, & hue to make your face match the body. And all this fun is FREE!

Check it out! http://www.faceinhole.com/
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