First Day of School & Cousin Camp! (week 454)

What a week to finish off Summer vacation.  First day of Kindergarten for Christopher and 3rd Grade for me, Labor Day Weekend in San Luis Obispo, and Cousin Camp with Eli, Sophi, and the Miner Kids!  

Although we pretended to be very put off, we were excited for the first day of school (on Wednesday).  Christopher is in Senora Ferrera's Kindergarten class this year with Maddy Huber.  It is not the classroom that I was in, so he gets to explore a new spot and a new teacher, but it is attached to the same Kindergarten playground that I ruled three years ago. 

My teacher is Senor Valdez, and she struck the jackpot!  She ended-up with all my buddies in the same class--Jackson, Nathan, Dylan, Dominic, and the rest of the lot.  She seems nice but tricky.  On the first day, she tricked us by saying that we could all sit by our friends.  When we chose a table full of rowdy boys, she saw who we liked and assigned our seating (on opposite sides of the room) on the second day. Both Chris and I had a great week, but his brain was exploding with all the new Spanish and Senor Ferrera not speaking English to him at all.  At least he already did Transitional Kindergarten at Burcham last year so he knows all the material.  He just has to learn it in Spanish now!

All week, Chris and I had been counting the days to Friday (the weekend after our first days at school), for the trip up to Grandma Paula's and Cousin Camp.  Because of how busy everyone was this Summer, Cousin Camp was pushed back to Labor Day weekend.  To beat traffic, we left late on Friday night and we slept most of the way up the coast.  When we finally arrived closer to midnight, mom and dad slipped us into our tents and we woke-up the next morning surround by (the cold) and our cousins.  

For the weekend, we ate pancakes every morning, built toolboxes out of wood, painted our boys (Trojans) and girls (Aquabubbles) themed tree houses, ran in the field, hiked on the dunes, swam in the ocean, launched luminaries, held church services, made ice cream, sat around the campfire, and got really dirty.  It was a fantastic time and I believe that we fully tired our grandparents.  Thank you to Grandma Paula, Grandpa Mike, Grandpa Mike Miner, and Grandma Susie Miner!