and speaking of …

Somehow I still feel like I’m catching up to myself after our trip this summer.

Which wasn’t like two months long or anything so you’d think I should be just fine and all caught up.

I still haven’t even taken the time to write a post about my second favorite stop on our trip – Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Mansfield home, where she actually penned (literally – penned) the entire set of nine novels.

And I think all I’m talking about lately is how I am off track on all courses.

I have felt some comfort in the fact that I am not alone.

Maybe it’s just the season – it catches everyone off guard I suppose.

We start school this week.  Everyone starts school at our house.

Everyone.

My baby begins kindergarten.

It may be homeschool, but it’s still such a colossal rite of passage I could weep just typing these words.

And speaking of weeping – that’s just what I did this morning.

I’ve been reading Charlotte’s Web to the kids this summer.  Well.  Re-reading it.  For probably the sixth time.  It started out as a summer read aloud book for Piper and Otto.  But the magic of E.B. White brought the big kids in for nearly every reading session.

This morning – because it was our last official lazy-morning-sleep-in day, they convinced me to lie in bed and finish the last four chapters before breakfast.

(I was pretty easy to convince.)

You guys.

That book gets me every time.  It starts when Wilbur knows Charlotte is quickly fading and she has given the best of her life to him and he wonders out loud why she would ever do such a thing for him – a pig who has never done anything for her.

And she tells him – “You’ve been my friend.  And that is a tremendous thing.”

Then I lose all control when that spider (a spider, of all creatures) dies and no one is there by her side.

I had to finish the last chapter with wet cheeks and nearly a half dozen little arms patting mine and nursing their own sets of shiny eyes.

I first read that sweet story out loud to a seven-year-old Riley in her bedroom in Virginia.

And speaking of Riley – that kid starts school this week too.

School – as in college!

Yes.  It’s a funny world that finds me with a college freshman and a kindergartener in the same year.

And, as if I have any more space for change, our little Willow turns seven next week.

It’s too much, I tell you.  Too much.