When Sam was a kindergartner, a neighbor shared his favorite shortcut to school, a narrow path that takes you through a wooded area with some rolling hills and logs to climb over. We took the path every day that year. That first October, we admired one tree for several days on that walk–a tree with yellow leaves forming an arch over the trail. Sam suggested that we come back on the weekend to take pictures, but when the weekend came, the leaves had already fallen. We vowed to get pictures the following year. Sam started calling it “our tree”, and we make sure to walk that path every now and then in the fall to catch the leaves.

I’m out sick today and decided that we should take the trail to school. We’d had a hard morning; we were running late, I was tired, and Sam was upset about the weekend being over, but the day was made so much better when we found our tree.

We started reading a series called The Secrets of Droon a couple of weeks ago. This morning I got an alert that the next book in the series was waiting for us at the library. Sam asked to skip after school club so he could come home and read!

On the first day of 3rd grade, Sam got into his classroom line behind another boy, who said, “Finally! Another boy!” They introduced themselves and talked about their favorite video games and YouTubers. Before long, they were posing for pictures with their arms around each other. A good start to 3rd grade!

His confident face

His Silly Face

I love raspberries, but I hate dehydrated raspberries! –Sam