A little ahead of his time ...

Finn really wants to be big, too.

On Monday, the kids had a day off of school, and I was laughing to myself watching them all crowd around Elijah while he tried a new game on the ipad - all about grammar.  He figured it out pretty quickly, and the other two thought it was great.  How much do you think Finn learned about verb tense and adjectives? =)

Yesterday Finn pulled down every book in the playroom - board books and paper books.  But I didn't mind because he took each book over and climbed into the big arm chair and "read" them to himself, and then got the next one.  He was even careful with the paper pages!  It kept him busy for a long time.

Today he was so quiet in the playroom that I got nervous and went to check on him.  He was very busy doing Elijah's math workbook. 

What a funny kid!

Summer fun

Wow, we have a lot of catching up to do around here, as usual. =)  Lots of pictures of kiddos enjoying their summer!

Silly girl!

a fun end-of-school party at the playground

 

"hi, molly!"

Cooling off and chilling out, and snuggling together

our little artist

The kids love to play with water on the deck - a bunch of containers and kitchen stuff and they are set for a full day of fun!  We had a very hot day where they stayed cool by playing with water in swimsuits, followed by a very rainy day.  They wanted all the water stuff again, and had a grand time splashing around in their rain gear!

In a blanket fort with cousin Evan

Piggies and ponies and such

Molly has reached a new milestone - her hair is getting long & thick enough to start doing braids and other fun things! 

She is so excited!

Low braids are excellent for wearing under your sun hat or bike helmet.

Braids at the top keep it all neat and out of her eyes, so she can have a single piggy now!

pretty girl - no matter what we do with her hair!

Molly's special flower - she planted it in her class at Bible study

Two braids with looped ends

Headband braid (yes, she is a goon - that's my girl!)

Little bits of life

Elijah got to celebrate his birthday at school last week.  Since his birthday is over the summer, and his half birthday is over the New Year break, we just picked a day that would work.  He was so excited to take in a treat to share!  We made little dirt cakes - he helped make all of it, but particularly enjoyed adding the gummy worms. =)

Finn wearing the pumpkin hat that Bobbi made - Molly was a little older when she wore it!

 

I made a very special (*interesting*) dinner for Patrick - he found a recipe for a casserole called Flying Jacob in a magazine, and really wanted to try it.  He loved it!  The kids said that they liked it, but didn't end up eating very much, so I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'm not sure we'll make it very often, since it involves bacon, which is banned from this house.  My sister-in-law, Lorrie, very kindly cooked the bacon for me at her house and gave it back to me cold, and mostly un-stinky, so I could make the casserole.

Handsome little man

Love those baby smiles!  Finn is half-weaned from his swaddle now, but having that one arm in still seems to make a big difference, so these great (big!) swaddling blankets are still a necessity around here.

Some days, Molly's style is still pretty quirky. =)

Love those silly boys!

Pictures, pictures

More pictures ...

Finn is starting to enjoy his toys more.

Reading with cousins - Maiah is great with Finn

So is Zoie!

 

Wearing her necklace as a headband

Growing, growing, growing

Warm & cozy

Train audience

Brothers

Wonderful

This afternoon, something amazing and wonderful happened.

While doing my normal scan of the blogs/facebook for sales and deals, I saw a great clearance sale on little girls summer clothes. Yay! There were a few things that I saw that I thought would be great for Molly for next year, and the prices were fantastic.

Now, all that is great, and I was excited, but finding great deals on stuff we need does happen pretty often, and I wouldn't normally write a blog post about it.

But then, I realized that I could just GO DOWNSTAIRS to our basement, and check the bin for next year and see what we needed! Like, in the very minute that I found the deal, not like making the trek out to the storage unit and not even being able to find the right bin, and three days later when all the clearance stuff is gone figuring out that I don't even know what we need ...

So, I got some great stuff - the right stuff, in the right sizes - and realized again how much I love having a house. Hooray for our basement!

The end of the summer

Just trying to get in the last few days of fun together in before school starts ...

arts and crafts with Nana

dress up

oh, the yummy food of summer - we love sweet corn!

yes, she got it all the way down her chin

(Almost) back-to-school picnic at the pool with Elijah's school

Elijah on the really big slide - way at the top ...

and at the bottom!

All ready to visit Elijah's classroom and meet his new teacher - too excited for pictures!