It has been a big year. Probably the biggest thing is kindergarten which he loves. He is getting to be a big kid but he definitely still has his little kid moments.

The parents of kindergartners, on the other hand, are already having a bit of trouble communicating effectively. I fear for what this might mean over the course of the year. As a parent you, of course, want do what you can to enhance the education of the children. You have to do it with a group of people who you have never even meet before the first day of school. Worse yet those people are only loosely committed to the project. Personal issues, personality conflicts or simple disinterest in the task at hand can easily remove many individuals from the effective team at any moment.

It will be interesting to see how the parents self organize over the year. Fortunately, the parents are just support for the teacher. Even if we fail to form a cohesive team i think the teacher will still manage to educate the kids. That is what professionals do.

Speaking of the profession of teaching, the politics teachers have to manage is rather impressive. Even for a class of 25 kindergartners it must be daunting… you have to maintain the interest and respect of 25 kids; keep about 50 parents placated and helping as much as possible; all while keep the principle happy. And to make that more complicated really none of those people get to choose if they really want work with any of the others. And all that before you even get to the job at hand.

Last Saturday I took him to Elitch Gardens. We spent a great six hours playing. You cannot go wrong with a day of sugar, video games and rides. He is big enough to ride quite a few rides there. A few of them were even entertaining for me. His favorite ride was shipwreck falls. Getting wet has some sort of unnatural attraction for him.

This morning we started with presents. After everyone was ready for school he donned his wrist, elbow and knee pads and played with his new skate board for a few minutes. He seemed to enjoy it until he crashed into some the patio furniture. Fortunately, no real damage was done to either him or the furniture.

This evening we had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory with our friends Morgan, Amy, Mason and Madeleine. The picture above is Elliot blowing out the candle the wait staff at the restaurant put in his ice cream.

“Concourse C, but I am not sure which gate yet².”, I said.

“Daddy, is it C dot com or C and some other letters?”, Elliot asked in reply.