He's 12 now, and school is back in session!

Mister Twister turned 12 a few days ago... his one big present is a video game (Halo Reach) that isn't even out yet, but he said he wanted it and is willing to wait for it. We did let him choose where to eat lunch on Monday (Chinese buffet, one of our favorites!), and he also asked for cake and ice cream since we were headed for the grocery store. A small fudge brownie cake, a pint of Phish Food and another of Cherry Garcia ~ our man-cub has good taste in birthday food! :D
Unfortunately, he seems to have hit the age where he doesn't want to be photographed, so I don't have any pictures from Monday. I'll get a new one up once the school pictures come in (usually in mid-October here) if not sooner.

Today was the kids' first day back to school. It seems earlier every year! Both are riding buses too, so I don't have to go start the car early this winter... love that!! School has always started just days after his birthday, at least for as long as we've lived here. (Portland schools start after Labor Day, an idea which I *love*!)
For Miss Hurricane, we had an open house Monday night at her school - met the teacher, found out who was in her class from last year (almost everyone!), a few papers that had to be filled out and turned in that night, and I got my school calendar (I love having it every year). We left the school around 7:45, and I put her folder of info on our desk to finish up later. Finally got back to looking through it around 9 that night, so I filled out the rest of the paperwork and put the folder in her backpack. I got the calendar out to look at it again - I knew there was one day soon that they'd be out of school, it's next Friday - and just glanced at the pictures, all drawn by kids in our district. I flipped through a few pages before I realized the calendar was *entirely* in Spanish! This was (and still is) fine with me; if you remember a few weeks ago, I said that I was going to relearn Spanish anyway - well, this just seemed like a sign and it gave me a giggle! I emailed her teacher and told her about it, she said she would get me an English calendar (she did today), but I'm still going to use the Spanish one for myself. I'll hang the English version in the kids' room :)
Mister Twister is in 7th grade this year. Nothing much new for him, other than teachers, this year. Oh, he did have to get a TI-34 Multi View Calculator so I think he's in pre-algebra... if so, if he needs help with homework, I'll have to call on my cousins who are still good at that! Since they're just graduating and in college, they remember much more easily than I do!!

Since the kids were both gone by 8:45 this morning, Ardeo and I talked about whether or not we needed to go out today. We thought about seeing a movie, but we only want to see Inception and wouldn't have had the time before Miss H was due home. We thought about taking a walk around our new neighbourhood, but even at that hour it was way too hot and sticky outside - just walking out the door was enough to make us both feel like we were suffocating! So, we grabbed our books and chilled on the couch for the morning:

Ardeo is reading Human Smoke, given to him by a friend last year.

I'm reading Symbols of the Soul, my second Gina Lake book. (The first one I read, Sojourn: The Soul's Evolution on Earth, is on iBooks - I read it on my iPod Touch)


It was rather quiet around here today! Around noon, we went to the smaller grocery store nearby and just grabbed a bagged Romaine salad for lunch. Ardeo is helping me with dinner tonight, and we should get started on that, since both kids are now home....

Happy hump day and many blessings to you!
~Amphitrite