September stuff

We attended a baseball game recently.  The boys' favorite part of the game was the cotton candy.  And, we even had good seats to view the game.

 Jonathan loves to goof around with the menagerie you see behind him in our garage.

Littlest man is having fun learning to do some flag football.  

Big Ol' Family Reunion

This summer my dad's side of the family gathered in my hometown to laugh and spend time together.  My dad has five siblings, four of them still living.  The family is scattered all over the midwest and western states so it was great fun to see so many of them.  Some that I hadn't seen in so many years that I had lost count.    See if you can find my dad's two brothers.  When my uncles would visit us people used to always mistake them for my dad.

Pens, Lightbulbs and Gardens

Sometimes life throws a few random lemons... I dropped a pen down the lint trap of the dryer and it got stuck in the fan.  We tried to fix it and ended up with screws everywhere, the pen stuck farther down and no working dryer.  Repair man called.  The next morning Jamie was changing a larger lightbulb in the pantry area and it shattered everywhere.  We had to pitch the toaster because there were glass shards everywhere and it was impossible to remove them and it was smelling very strangely when we I tested it.  The clean-up for a broken lightbulb in the pantry takes hours.  This was all in the craziness of last week as we prepared for a home study visit, had a kindergarten fundraiser, started our small group for church and organized a large workday for our neighbor's garden.  We are thankful for a new week and a little less chaos.

 Before all of the maladies of the week, we bought a hummingbird feeder and the boys have had the grandest time watching the feeder and waiting anxiously for visits by the little birds.

 Our neighbor... in front of her beloved yard that we were working hard to restore.

The boys loved working in our neighbor's yard and it was such a fun thing to participate with 20+ neighbors to help out.

Last Swim

We ventured to the pool for one last swimming excursion before we called the summer over.  We lasted 25 minutes.  Jake was tired and my boys were supposedly hungry... I think the swimming bug has just worn off as school has started and we are ready for jeans.  Jeans.  And long sleeve t-shirts and cool mornings seem appropriate for September.  My nifty little iphone weather thing doesn't seem to agree.

I get random tidbits of information about school...
 - He played basketball with some boys one day.  That would have been a sight as his skills are comical and I can only imagine the little five year old kiddos trying to hoist the ball into the hoop.
 - He likes to ride his bike there and then lock it up.  Maybe he feels grown up doing that?
 - He informed me that he doesn't want to eat lunch there.  Ever.
 - They are counting down the days to the 100th day of school.  We are on day 12.
 - There is a fantastic system of sending papers home that involves a folder and a number, and thus far it seems to work amazingly well.  I haven't lost or forgotten anything, yet.
 - He likes it.

Caleb does stuff with me...
 - He tells all of the kind inquirers that he is doing "preschool with Mama"
 - He seems to adore the quiet to do as he pleases but is also excited to see Jonathan.
 - He loves to cut.  Using scissors would be his preferred activity every day.  We have managed to keep the scissors from wandering to and cutting the furniture but a few shirts haven't fared so well.
 - He likes it.