Back to School

This morning the kids headed back to school. I can't believe how fast the summers fly by these days. They were all happy to get back to class to see the friends that they missed over the summer break. This year Hannah is in the eighth grade. Can you believe it. She has really grown up this summer and is starting to look like a teenager. Unfortunately here attitude and attention has followed close behind. For example, when I asked her to get out her clothes for school yesterday three times I didn't mean "think" about what your were going to wear. So I wasn't too happy hunting for her green shirt this morning for 30 minutes, having to wake up Emma and Jamey to figure out where it was. Luckily she was able to get it together and make it to the bus stop by 6:45 AM. Yeah, I said 6:45 AM! Emma on the other hand was as organized as ever. Bags packed, lunch made and clothes laid out in order. She even labeled all of Caleb's supplies and had them organized in the bin for us to get him ready this year. I guess that is why we refer to her as, "Mem-ma", a.k.a Mamma Emma. Pretty good for a 5th grader. Caleb may be the most excieted about school to start. He loves it, especially compared to last year, when we tought he would never want to leave the house. He is glad to have a few familar kids in his 2nd grade class and to work with his new teacher. Both were much easier to get out the door this morning. Luckily for them, their day does not start until 9:00 AM. It works out nice for Jamey. She can put Grace down after lunch and spend some time alone before Hannah gets home. She can then be with her with out too many distractions to work on school work and find out about her day before the other two get home. All in all it was a pretty uneventful summer and everyone was getting a little stir-crazy. Jamey and I are both glad to have them back in school to help get our lives into some sort of structure. Now all we have to worry about is whether homework is done, lunches are made, who's wearing what to school, cub scouts, girl scouts, orchestra, kids club, track . . .

11th Annual Hanna Open

Last weekend we all enjoyed our annual family reunion & golf outing with the Hannas. This year we fittingly renamed our outing to the Mark Nelson Hanna Jr. Memorial in honor of our grandfather who passed last November. As usual we had a great turnout with family coming from coast to coast to enjoy the fun family fellowship This was the 11th straight year of the event and the first one with rain in the forecast. We were able to tee off dry but, by the 2nd hole we pulled out the umbrellas for the majority of the round. One of the many highlites was watching Mike's club slip out of his hand on #14 par 3 ending up lodged between the branches 30+ feet in the air. The group tried for quite awhile, including Brian climbing up a good 15 feet or so, to get the iron to drop. In the end he had to ask the green's keepers to give him a hand. This may have been the tightest scoring event with 2 teams tied in first and the balance of the 6 teams within 6 strokes. Kudos to the event coordinator, Aunt Patty. Luckily the rain subsided for the second part of the day and we enjoyed a hot, sunny day at Mark and Terri's house. We played a lot of volleyball and cooled off in the pool. The day was nearly injury free until Kyle severely jammed his pinky-finger. The tip of his finger resembled the letter Z until uncle RoRo came to the rescue and relocated it. In true Hanna fashion he was back on the court and only missed 1 or 2 serves.