Countdown to high school starting: The week before we all go to the school’s open house and see the place for ourselves.
Two days before school, she’s testing out a fine school desk at the edge of the abandoned orchard up the hill from the apartment building.
And waiting for the bus on the first day! In the neighborhood curiously always empty of humans.
Chloe is still astounded by being in a school with 700 kids instead of a few dozen. She didn’t have too much to report yet, except that her backpack has a tragic lack of multiple keychain-like things clipped to it. Apparently that’s all the rage these days. Saturday we scooted off to visit Wonderwood Springs to play mini-golf and take in the art.
Chloe saves Dad from drowning in the giant’s coffee…
Some giant Connect-Four, but since neither of us know the rules we used the donuts to spell out “HI”.
Speaking of keychains…
Not-so-little ponies
Time to golf!
Afterwards we went back to Dad’s place. Chloe’s about to outgrow the generic kid’s mountain bike she’s been riding for a few years. A previous tenant had left behind this Schwinn:
…some assembly required… But, after a hands-on lesson in patching an inner tube and remounting it on the wheel she was ready for a test ride.
The new bike is so much faster than any bike she’s ever ridden before, it’s quite exciting. The blur in this photo is Chloe.
She’s quite pleased!
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She’s just about to outgrow this bike, I may have a replacement road bike. Most people don’t understand just how much mountain bikes actually suck to ride on the road if you have to go any distance.
At the Swallowtail school, they plan all year for a class trip after graduation. This includes a lot of fundraisers and the class gets to decide where they want to head off to. Chloe’s class chose to go rafting and explore southern Oregon a bit.
On Sunday Chloe, Arnold and I journeyed into downtown for some fun. Our first stop was Fathom, a way fun interactive art experience. Normally Arnold is cranky and argumentative, but he behaved well enough (this time) to get kisses from all the beautiful people
Chloe like to make funny faces for photos. This egg is actually one of mine.
Then we took a walk. A downside of the new neighborhood is that it is 90% canyons of sterile, characterless suburban housing. There is actually nothing one can get to by bike or walking except your parking space. But we did manage to find one road that borders some remaining farm land and is quite pleasant.
Big news in April! Chloe completed and presented her 9-month project on the history of animation. All the 8th graders at the Swallowtail school tackle a big, independent project like this and Chloe knocked it out of the park!
The other big news – Lisa and Chloe moved into a new place! It’s pretty nice.
Chloe has been making posters and putting them in the building’s elevator. She also wonders why they keep getting taken down…
Chloe has been flushing ice cubes down the toilet for weeks, because it’s a thing with the kids these days that this will make it snow. Either way, it did snow!
Chloe went on a rampage as “The Buttcrack Bandit”. That is, adding butt cracks to any snowmen she could reach. See?
Meanwhile, she’s been enjoying mutating more stuffed animals.
In this photo we’ve left The Bird of Regret in a tree in the park for some unfortunate child to find…
Meanwhile, Chloe has inexplicably developed an appreciation for vintage 80’s Garfield stuffies. This lead to us making lasagna. As one does.
