School starts tomorrow!

How exciting it will be when we all walk to the same school tomorrow morning.

Lincoln will be in the same building as Levynn now, with him in kindergarten and her in third grade. He visited his classroom, met his teacher, sat in his assigned spot and found his locker during a meet-and-greet last Thursday evening. So it's not all new to him. And he's been talking a good game. So we think he'll respond well. We know he's certainly ready!

As for Levynn, well, she's a pro by now. She just wishes one of her three closest friends was in her class. One is going back to the private school where she started, although moving a block a or so closer to us, and the other two are in a different class. But we bet she'll be pleasantly surprised to see a few other familiar faces.

So, are you wondering what we've been doing since SUMMER VACATION, aside from Lincoln's meet-and-greet?

Well, the very next day, we went to the Cubs game. Mom got four tickets to the Trib's 18-seat suite, for her into-the-wee-hours work on the paper's Olympics preview section (begging the question: who gets those tickets for all the other games?).

Dad and the kids checked out the Museum of Contemporary Art's skyscrapers exhibition, which was all over the map. The same guy created this...

and this.

It was a little more interesting from there, like this city in a suitcase. "Hey, that's Chicago!"

There was this rendering of the World Trade Center. One Chicago Tribune was added to each stack every day, until both towers were "built" again.

And there was a city of refrigerators, among many other things.

The kids liked this the best.

Lincoln rode Levynn's old bike, to which we've added training wheels again.

We watched the Air and Water show from the same vantage point as last year, in the home of the twin redheads who are Levynn's friends.

We played in the Tribune's plaza a few times.

We hadn't been to the beach enough, apparently. We went at night this time.

Dad and the kids went to the Children's Museum with the twins.

Levynn saw her BFF - the one off to private school - a few times.

And Dad and the kids visited the Chicago History Museum today and enjoyed the new magic exhibit, complete with a working magician. (And we weren't expecting anything new so we didn't bring the camera. Maybe next time.)

And that was our summer, folks. We hope you had a good one, too.

We'll be sure to let you know about the first day of school - and Girl Scout Night at the Cubs game a few hours later - as soon as we can!