Back to school

It is with a certain degree of skepticism that we have watched the date for start of school to move closer. Primarily because the summer has worked really well for all of us (which I think is the first one of our total of 4 summers in the US that has succeeded in this) but also because it was a very stressful and tiresome fall last year, with Kristian starting work and Luca having s very strong reaction to his dad working.

Hm. I am sure the dog does NOT mind  having a little downtime while the kids are an school

But guess what? It has been beyond all expectations. Luca rates school 10 out of 10 this year. He has gotten a very sweet teacher, he has to chose an instrument for the school orchestra (we currently do not know if t will be violin or flute - stay tuned. But bring your own earplugs........), and best of all: no homework during the first week. I, on the other hand, almost got a heart attack when I picked him up at the bus-stop, as it made it very clear how much he has grown over this summer. Out of the bus came this tall, skinny kid, with long hair, wearing cool survival bracelets, adidas sneakers, and peace signs drawn on his hands.Maybe he will actually grow into a teenager one day?

Our preteen at sleeping bear dunes

We have hardly seen Teresa. She (and Ulrik) needs to catch a school bus at 7:08. When school is out she stays for an hour doing homework and then she has field hockey practice and is not home until after 6PM. Her evenings are a quick shower and then homework until 9:30. Field hockey practice is intense and if I had a dollar for each burpee/pushup/bullseye etc etc she did every afternoon, we could probably spend Christmas on Hawaii. Her massive amount of homework is because she has Geometry AC (advanced class) and rumor has it that they tend to bury the kids in homework the first couple of weeks to make sure they belong in the class. But she just LOVES it! And we have not heard a single complaint about her being bored so far ;-)

Ulrik has been quite lucky with his schedule as well. This semester he has 2 classes of ceramics and sculpture every day where they, as part of the curriculum, will have to design their own homepage to display their works. He has continued with engineering as well, and it seems that despite him promising my sister that he will never become an engineer (we have quite a few of those in the family already) that is where his interests are.

Which brings me towards all the how to: "apply for college", "fund college", "score high on college preparedness tests" events we have to participate in this year. I have made a choice NOT to stress out about this, as I am firmly convinced that the most important thing is the kids figuring out what they want to do, then we will find a way to get there. But it is honestly a little hard to stay cool, especially when Teresa started babbling about taking a 7'th class hour as a freshman to make space for college credit classes later etc etc. Yikes.

Well. A(nother) visit at the bank awaits us. This time because they forgot to hyphenate our last name when they signed us in for debit cards and IRS has started to complain that the information they have from the bank does not comply. Sigh.