Transitions

     School has  started.  I now have a 10th grader, an 8th grader, a 5th grader, a third grader and a kindergartner.  Of course that is just school-aged children.  We cannot leave out Eli, my two-year-old who demands (and gets) the lion's share of attention in the family.  We are three days into the school year and already there is complaints. My kindergartner got up made it half way down the hall, turned around got back into bed and proclaimed, "Its not morning yet!"  I know how he feels. The earlier bedtime schedule has not come with out much protest and attempted negotiation.  I will not budge.  If I am to be the one to wake them in the morning, I need them in bed so that I can have "my" time.  If that even really exists. I am pretending for the time being that it does.

One of my favorite places on earth. 

     On Memorial weekend I took the family to the beach.  It wasn't a particularly warm day but it was our last opportunity of the summer to go to one of our favorite places on Lake Michigan.  Whatever is happening in the world, whatever family stresses or conflicts are on the front burner, it seems that when we go to the lake everything is okay.  The children all get along and find it relaxing and revitalizing.
     On Monday, Memorial Day, we didn't do anything extraordinary. but as the older kids were getting ready for bed, I noticed the paper lantern that they had built weeks before.  This is one those mini-hot air balloons that glow and float into the night sky then burn themselves out.  I suggested that we launch it as a first-annual tradition to begin the school year.  We brought it outside, lit the candle, waited for the air inside the tissue paper balloon to heat up sufficiently to make the vessel float and released it.  The tissue paper balloon immediately tipped sideways, caught on fire and burned to ashes in the road in front of the house.  I looked at my children, who put a lot of time in constructing this thing, thinking that they would be devastated.  They just started laughing...and laughing. It was really hilarious.

Catastrophic failure.