The week after Kieron started preschool, we loaded Avery on a bus for his first day of kindergarten. He’s going full-day, and although summer was fun, I think we were all ready for this next step. We lucked out and got a fabulous teacher and an awesome, rapping bus driver.

Avery enjoys school, although he says he misses his toys (and us) while he’s away. I can tell his teacher keeps him busy at school. His folder is full of projects at the end of each day, and his lunch box is almost always empty. In fact, apparently he’s missed a couple of recesses because he spent the entire lunch hour finishing his meal! The long days are really wearing him out. He even fell asleep on the bus one afternoon this week, and almost didn’t get off. I later discovered he frequently catches a catnap on the ride home!

Avery has been wiggling a loose tooth for the past month or so, and consuming lots of apples and corn-on-the-cob too! His new, adult tooth was even pushing up behind it, giving Avery “shark teeth,” which he thought was very cool. I have to say, a child with his first loose tooth is awfully cute! Avery was so proud of this right of passage, showing anyone he could, “wanna see my looth tooth!?”

Well wouldn’t you know it, the tooth finally came out an hour after Jonathan left for an overnight backpacking trip with a buddy! Avery bolted in from the back yard beaming, holding it up, “Mommy, my tooth came out!” Sweet boy that he is, he said he wanted to keep it until Daddy got back so he could show him before he gave it to the tooth fairy. So that’s what we did. The tooth fairy left him a silver half dollar.

The next day we counted all of Avery’s money (he saved $40.11), and he decided he wanted to spend some of it on a new toy for himself. We went to the toy store, and he bought a Pirates of the Caribbean Lego Set (seriously, the boy doesn’t have enough Legos yet?) Oh well, his choice.

And a few shots from Jason and Jonathan’s backpacking trip at Rachel Lake