On Friday (day 3 of first grade) Jocelyn told me that the day had been a perfect recess day. Why is that, I asked. Because she had found all of her friends on the playground. Booksin is a large school with 6 first grade classes. Jocelyn did not end up with any of her close friends in her classroom, so recess is a very important time to her.

I suggested over the weekend that she might talk with her close buddies about choosing a meeting place on the playground so that it would be easier to find each other. Well, lo and behold, she talked with her friends about it on Monday and reported Tuesday afternoon that it had worked well!

Jocelyn started First Grade today at Booksin School, joining Miss Swanson and 19 new friends in Room 4. Actually, a few of our Room 9 Kindergarten friends are in this class, but not too many. She’s keeping a good attitude, though … convinced that seeing her friends at recess will satisfy her.

Karen and I are pretty sad when we imagine good friends growing apart (family friendships, too), so we’ll remain committed to staying in touch with our core group of Kindergarten friends. By shear luck, two of our new soccer teammates are in Room 4, so it will be nice getting to know Gavin and Liam. Jocelyn did meet one more new friend today, Kennedy, who stood next to her in line before class.

When pressed to give up some details, Jocelyn did say that “it’s not very much different than Kindergarten … which is good.”

Karen and I were fine, but Felicia seemed to have a hard time leaving Jocelyn today. We’re not sure if she wanted to stay with her sister, or if she just wanted to explore more of the classroom. We’ll see how that develops.

Jocelyn is reading like crazy! It’s amazing, actually!

She spent a good portion of the summer reading long chapter books and getting excited about Pony Pals and The American Girls (mostly reading about Kaya to start). She’s currently reading The Secret Garden (yes, the original book by Frances Hodgson Burnett … and yes, she’s reading a lot of it on her own). We’re biased, but her reading skills seem way above grade level.

On the downside, reading has become her excuse for delaying chores and for spending a lot of time in her room. Now, there’s a dilemma!

It is tough to describe this one without actual audio, but I’ll give it a go. For a couple of weeks now, Felicia has been saying “Wo..wo..wo..wo..wo..wo!!” and then intentially falling down. Now she is doing the same thing before knocking her cup off the table.

Saturday we made the trek through the Santa Cruz mountains to Roaring Camp Railroad for the annual Crossbow Family Summer Picnic. After some bounce house jumping and a BBQ lunch, we all loaded onto the narrow guage railcars and headed up the mountain. Felicia has a new word, “Choo Choo.” She has been particulary enjoying the “Wave Hello to Thomas” book lately so the train ride was nicely timed.

We got a chance to get out of the train at the summit and enjoy the redwoods for a bit. Felicia loved tucking herself into the nooks and cranies of the large redwood trunks. Also, she kept pullling my hand over to have me touch the inner surfaces. Jocelyn particularly enjoyed 2 wonderful dogs, Hector and LuLu, who joined us for the train ride.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve enjoyed posting comparison photos of our two girls, so everyone can see whether they resemble each other at equivalent ages. Usually, it’s been fun finding pictures that were similar to further demonstrate their similarities or differences. Well, after at least 20 minutes of searching this time, we couldn’t find any pictures that provided much comparison, and certainly not any that captured our creative imagination. These pictures do, however, nicely contrast the playground swings in San Jose (River Glen Park, circa June 2000) and Milwaukee (University School, August 2005).

At least the pictures do prove that our digital photo-taking abilities (and swinging snapshot timing) have not improved much over time. Enjoy!

The 2005 Soccer Season began with practices this week. This year’s Willow Glen PAL Under-8 Coed team includes some returning players and some great new ones. I’m looking forward to a fun year of soccer!

We’re not sure how it will evolve, but WG PAL is hosting a “Soccer Blog” for our team (OK, it’s me acting as webmaster for PAL, but so what …). Feel free to add it to your RSS feeds!

We’re not sure how, but with all of the excitement this summer, we hadn’t managed to visit Happy Hollow, a petting zoo and kiddie ride park very close to our house. Our friend McKenna took care of our omission, inviting us to join her and her mother for a visit today. We had a nice time riding a few rides, exploring all of the “retro” playgrounds, and petting a few animals. Felicia enjoyed feeding the goats, even though they weren’t very hungry.