Tuesday Sept 2nd
James’ first day in Joy school! It was at Courtney’s house. Courtney was in Heather’s joy school too – brought back memories of doing the same thing with Heather, now it is the younger siblings going through the same program. Courtney said James reminded her of Heather – I don’t think they act very much like one another, but maybe they do have some similarities. James made a few little things that he was very proud of. They are learning about dinosaurs, and James was really excited about it. Just me and Autumn at home! I did laundry, she took a long nap – recovering from last weekend I guess.

Labor day weekend!

chasing chickens!









Aug 29-Sept 1st
Labor day weekend! We ended up going to Marc and Shannon’s, sort of a last minute trip. There was another hurricane – Gustov I think, ended up hitting New Orleans again instead of us. We had a fun weekend though, went to the park and shot off some rockets, flew some kites. Ate lots of good food (Marc cooked everything) they had a little kiddy pool outside that the kids played in. They also have chickens that Autumn and James fell in love with. They would chase them around, scoop them up, and snuggle them up like a stuffed animal. The chickens were surprisingly accommodating to the attention, they let the kids catch them when they were fast enough to run away if they wanted to. Marc and Shannon had a tent set up in the living room for the kids to “camp out” in. They had a lot of fun with that too.

Rockets and kites - James launched the rocket!








Daddy and daughter flying kites






boys with their wagon full of rockets, kites, and food.


6 girls (2 not in pict) and one boy :)

sisters...

Back to School!

Aug 25th
Heather’s first day of first grade! Her new teacher’s name is Mrs. Welch – same name as last year, different person. We rode the bikes back and forth – James and Autumn are getting heavier! A good workout. Sounds like they all had recess together, Heather got to play with her old friends although she does not know many in her new class. She said she already made a new friend though. I went over some worksheets with James on measuring things, which are longer, which are shorter etc. He did really well. Cleaned the pool – frustrating, the big plastic chlorine buckets require a jackhammer to open, but finally busted in. Cleaned out a bathtub too, knee deep in various chemicals today.

Summer's end

Aug 8-25th
We went to the museum, went swimming, Ruthann and James came over for a day, had a dinner with them and another couple from Colorado – I did not know about this until the night before (Sunday) so I was a bit unprepared, ended up just fixing spaghetti, O well. It was fun to see everyone again though. We did some babysitting, a few rainy days, went to the library, went out to eat with Doug for lunch. We went out to a fancy Italian restaurant, don’t think we will try that with kids again for a while… the next table over offered to buy Doug some wine after watching our attempt at dinner. We rode bikes to the park, tied Chaco up to James’ bike, and he pulled James the whole way. We read “Yurtle the Turtle” earlier that day, and James recited “I’m king of a house, I’m king of a mule, I’m king of a cat, etc. as he was swing up high. Little Autumn has been singing, she can hit the notes of twinkle twinkle pretty well. She is still having trouble at bedtime. One night we tucked her in, then she grabbed a teddy bear and tucked the bear in. We left the room while she was still working on the bear to go tuck James in. We caught her sneaking into James room – she saw us and immediately threw herself on the ground and pretended to be sleeping. We carried her back in and found a dozen little stuffed animals all tucked in her bed. She had tucked them all in and then left the room, just like we tuck her in and then leave. It was pretty funny. Heather working on tieing her shoes again, last year her shoes did not have shoe laces, this year they do. She is getting really good at reading. Practiced the piano a bit with her too. She started doing a version of broken chords with her left hand, a little improve that was pretty neat. The summer went so quickly! Can’t believe it is already time for school to start again.