Today was “open house” at the kiddo’s schools.

Eliana and Karys will be in the same school for this one year so big sis will have to show little sis the ropes of elementary school.

Uhhh… not that little sis will be very appreciative when big sis tries to offer direction.

Five-year-olds know it all anyway, right?

I feel a pep talk coming on before the first day of school on Wednesday.

So we took Karys to her kindergarten room first and introduced Mrs. C to the class clown.

Karys found her cubbie and desk.

And we noticed pretty quickly that Karys and her “boyfriend” will not be sitting next to each other.

Probably a good thing.

Next, we took Eliana to her 3rd-grade classroom.

We were not familiar with her teacher.

But we did find out that her husband is a local police officer and works with a friend of ours who is also a police officer.

So there is a connection.

And she seems nice enough.

Zane was quite bored.

So to pass the time, he checked out the books in each class.

Actually, I think he just didn’t know what to do without a Nintendo DS in his hand.

Lastly, Zane was introduced to his new middle school.

We met his 4 teachers for math, science, social studies and language arts.

Zane did NOT like social studies last year. It was an understandably difficult subject for him.

But his new teacher said that he didn’t like social studies when he was in school either. So he teaches the way he wished the subject had been taught in school.

Sounds like he makes it fun for the students.

Karys received a very nice handwritten postcard from her Kindergarten teacher today.

Have I mentioned how excited and thankful we are that Karys has the same teacher Eliana had?

This note is just one example of why we think so much of her.

Eliana is convinced that I doctored this photo of Maggie but I promise I didn’t.

I keep hearing rumors at church about cats in a tree at the edge of our parking lot.

I had to run by the church this afternoon for some business and remembered to check out the situation before leaving.

Sure ‘nuff.

Momma didn’t stick around long at all once she caught a whiff of us.

And then I saw these little cuties…

No, Carmi!

Karys went off for a few hours with one of her buddies this morning, Eliana spent some quality time with gran’mommy and I took Zane to pick up his Mac laptop for the upcoming school year.

Afterwards, he and I went to a local Chinese buffet that our family has come to love.

I wanted to skip the main meal and go straight to the dessert.

No. Seriously.

Because they have fried doughnuts to die for.

They’re warm. And they’re covered in sugar. And they practically melt in your mouth.

Isn’t your mouth watering just looking at the photograph below?

But Zane didn’t have any on his plate.

“Have you tried these?”, I asked.

“No.”

“Want to?”

“Uh-huh.”

I cut off a (very small) sliver and placed the it on his plate.

He quickly picked it up and popped it in his mouth.

As he chewed, his head tilted one way and then the other.

His face contorted into a look of disgust.

His tongue flailed around like he had a mouthful of chalk.

I thought he was on the verge of spitting it out.

“You don’t like it?”

“No!”, he exclaimed. “That’s the awfullest thing EVER!”

I’m so scheduling him for a mental health exam.

A long (long, long) time ago, I ran.

I never especially liked the act of running itself but I loved the way it made me look and feel.

When Carmi and I met, I was training for a biathlon and running 7-8 miles a day.

Then we married.

And… I became lazy.

13 years later, one of my brothers-in-law talked me into the Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston, SC.

So I came out of retirement and ran the Charleston 10K which is a hair over 6 miles.

Loved it so much… actually we love Charleston so much… that I ran it for 2 more years.

Then… I became lazy.

And 9 years later I’ve had a crazy idea.

I want to run a marathon. In the first quarter of 2011.

26.2 miles. Crazy, right?

Tonight I (un)officially started training with a whopping 1-mile run.

Eliana wanted to run with me. And run she did.

Around the 1/4-mile mark, she asked, “Are we about done???”

But halfway through, she reached up and grabbed my hand.

Then it felt like I was running on a cloud.

Karys is keeping me company and supervising while I mow the yard.

That’s some pretty good motivation right there…