First Days and Earthquakes

On Monday the three oldest kids went back to school.  Hooray.  Summer is great when you are on vacation but when you are home and sitting around and watching the Avatar series and making lots of messes, some mom's (Anna for example) get really anxious to send them back to school.  So anyway, Lucy started sixth grade at the middle school.  Exciting times.  Tucker started fourth grade and Anders' started third.  I don't understand how this is going so quickly.  And so, for first 2 days of school I worked like a madwoman to restore order to my home and dig myself out of the housework pit that summer vacation brought, with the hopes that I could actually focus on other things for a change.  So on Tuesday just as I was about to accomplish my goal, and I was standing folding laundry in my bedroom, the house started shaking.  Hard.  I had no idea what was happening at first but it eventually dawned on me that it was an earthquake and I didn't do anything I had been trained to do, like get in a doorway. I just kind of wandered around wondering what was going on.  Was the washer off balance?  Was there a tornado?  So meanwhile at the schools the kids were evacuated and left to sit in the hot sun for hours and since the phones were down I had no way of knowing this.  Finally a neighbor tipped me off and I went and picked up the boys who were SO EXCITED I had finally come to rescue them.  Kudos to whoever made them sit in the sun all day without water and didn't let anyone move to the shade.  Brilliant.  Anyway, the next day school was cancelled because this is Virginia and they cancel school for rain sometimes, and definitely in the case of harmless earthquakes.  So long long story short.  My house is a wreck again after one day of having the kids around and I have to start from scratch digging myself out.  Grrrrrrrrrr.  And, just so Clara doesn't get left out of the post her first day of dance was yesterday.  She is taking from Steph, a lady in the ward, who is awesome and just opened a new studio.  Clara, of course, was happy to pose for some pictures.