Last day of summer vacation! I have never seen girls so excited to start school. Becky couldn't contain her excitement and delightfully shreiked out several ear piercing screams in the kitchen tonight as she packed her lunch for tomorrow. Lol. She's starting 7th grade and can't wait to see her friends. She has reached the stage where friends are pretty much all-important.

Also, my sweet little fun-sized Heidi will turn nine tomorrow...my baby is growing up! She is excited too, but she expresses it in a different way. When Heidi is excited about something, she becomes extremely organized. For example, when she packed her lunch for tomorrow in her new lunch box, she put the food items in as if they were puzzle pieces and decided exactly where her little ice pack would go when she takes it out of the freezer in the morning. And it didn't take just one try to get this puzzle to work, but three tries!

I found a list in her room yesterday when I was looking for her school backpack. She made this list the night before she left for California to spend time with my sister and her cousins. She listed each item she would pack and drew a small square beside each item so she could check it off as she packed. On the other half of the paper, she wrote where in the house she could find each item. Here is what that part of her list looked like-spelling and all (and I may be the only one that thinks this is funny, but hey!)...

Find:
iPod-room
phone-room
DS-room
pladi (her stuffed platypus)-room
Blanket-room
Bible (wow, I was so glad to see this on her list!)-room
games-room
chargers-anywhere
deoderinte-bathroom
lotion-bathroom
tooth paste-bathroom
tooth brush-bathroom
clothes-room

And I don't know why, but on her list of items to bring, she had "decorations". I'm not sure what she was planning to decorate. Hmm..

Alyssa will start out in a new school tomorrow...Arizona Conservatory of Arts and Academics. I think it'll be good and she is so looking forward to it. Of course, I'm a little nervous, because she left her mainstream high school to attend this, and I hope it's the right decision. I think it is...just a little fear of the unknown going on here. She will be a junior...already. I could swear I just walked her to kindergarten yesterday!

Time really flies. I'm seeing that with all three girls and I've been increasingly aware that I need to be "in the moment" with them because all those little moments add up in a big way and can pass by so quickly. I don't want just the big things to be remembered, like birthdays and the beginning of school years, but the little moments...like laughing and cutting up together, talking and praying through situations, hugging on each other, and the list would go on.

Ta ta for now...or as my sister says, "Toodles!" or "Toods!"