Starting 5th and 7th grades

They all seem excited: Nina most openly so. I will be driving Nina and Pablo to school each morning at the 5th and 6th grade center, which is a block away from ECU. In the afternoons, I'll be walking over to meet them.

Emilio will be walking to school for the first time, and he will continue to do so for the next two years. He's a 7th grader now and will be starting junior high today. The junior high is just a block away from our home. His electives are: athletics (basketball, then track), Spanish (he was most excited about this one, but he will only get one semester of it), and Geography.

Here are links to previous first days:
Below is 2017:  4th and 6th graders.


Below is 2016: 3rd and 5th graders.


Below is 2015: two second graders and one fourth grader. Emilio.



Below is 2014: two first graders.


Below: In 2014, Emilio was a third grader.


Below: in 2013, we had two kindergartners and one second grader.


Below: in 2012, we had two in Pre-K and one 1st grader.


In 2011, Emilio was a kindergartner.

2018 Summer Family Film Festival Finale

School starts tomorrow.  That's 5th grade for Nina and Pablo and 7th grade for Emilio and new schools for all. Tonight, we finished screening the 8th and final film in our 2018 Summer Family Film Festival. I curated, with help from Mari.

Karate Kid (1984). June.
The Sting (1973). June.
The Adventures of Tintin (2011). June or July.
Rear Window (1954) July 1.
1776 (1972) July 22.
The Cowboys (1972) July 30.
High Noon (1952.). August 5.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017). August 13.

We saw all of these, except for the last, from beginning to end on the big screen upstairs, sitting on the couch together.  Tonight, I asked the kids what their favorite was, and they all answered unhesitatingly: Rear Window.  Emi didn't think he could consider Murder on the Orient Express, since he and I saw it first in the cinema last winter, but he thought he might throw his vote that way, if he could.

Film festivals of previous summers have included: Spartacus, Ben-Hur, North by Northwest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T., Raiders of the Lost Ark (and its several sequels), The Man Who Knew Too Much, City Lights, The Great Dictator, Modern Times, and Mutiny on the Bounty. All were successes, except for Mutiny (1935), which produced a mutiny on our own Bounty. The kids are not fans of Captain Bligh.