What are you Thinking?

I just love this picture of Katie I took last week. Such a sweet face. It looks like her eyes are changing - maybe brown or green!

Sweet Family

I had a great time catching up with this sweet family again for pictures. They're friends of friends of friends - don't you love that we can all be connected that way! I love this unintentional family picture - we really were just trying to get the kids together.

This little guy is so cute - and not too little for 5 weeks!

Preston is 3 now. I got to play clandestine photographer because he hates having his picture taken. I actually think we got some great shots without any posing.

Over the Rainbow

I heard that today is the final day for Reading Rainbow. After 26 years of shows, PBS says it's more important to teach kids phonics and how to read than the love of reading that Reading Rainbow taught. Hmm, sad. Guess it's up to us now to teach our kids to "take a look, it's in a book..."

Too bad to see a show disappear that had one of the catchiest jingles of all time. And now where will we go to see Giordi without his banana clip!?

Everything the Same

We've joked that we wanted to do everything the same with Katherine as we did with Eleanor. It would be great if she turned out to have some of the same skills and sweet personality as her sister, right? Of course we're not the same as we were six years ago, and she's not the same as her sister.

One thing we will do the same is try to instill in her a love of books. And there we know just where to start. Eleanor's first favorite book was Little Miss Spider by David Kirk. She loved that book from the time she was about 2 months old! In fact, it was so well loved that the pages have long since fallen out of the binding. I stuck them in page protectors in a binder for awhile. We finally took the pages and got them bound so Katherine can enjoy this book too.

I think she likes it already!

A Narrow Fellow

I went out to pick some food from the garden for dinner last night and look who I found! I completely forgot to pull the onion I was planning on. Couldn't say a word about it until Gavin got home because if Eleanor found out she'd never harvest anything for me again! Who am I kidding, I might not be digging around the garden again either. :)


I know I can't exactly sterilize the outdoors, but this guy was in my nice raised garden beds - 2 feet up! Gavin says he probably climbed up the rocks, but I prefer the theory that a passing hawk dropped him in there, which of course is so highly unlikely that it will never happen again! Right?!

First Day in the First Grade

Here we are already at the start of a new school year. Eleanor was really excited of course, since she loves everything about school. Here she is before school with that nervous-excited look.

And after school with that happy-it-wasn't-so-bad look. :) As the mom you love to see your kids conquering something new and scary. All-day school is going to be great for her this year. So many fun things to do and learn.

As for me... it's a little quiet around the house. Katie better start talking soon...

School Lunch

Eleanor's off to 1st grade today. Since this is our first time doing all day school this means the beginning of school lunch for us. We're planning to mix things up with school lunch and cold lunch. If I can manage it, I'd like to be a super-cool mom and try some of these sandwich ideas. Aren't they brilliant! Check them out here: http://www.funkylunch.com/gallery.htm



Now to plan my lunch date with Gavin... Ah, six hours between playing school bus.

Five Months

Katie is five months old now. Wow, that space of time between about 2 weeks and now has just flown by! Her new tricks are trying to wave her fingers, grabbing her toes (sometimes putting them in her mouth), and pushing up to standing whenever possible.


For comparison sake, here is a picture with her teddy bear at 5 months and at 2 months.

Blast from the Past

Anybody else have the Snoopy Sno-Cone maker as a child? Just looking at this, I can hear the sound of grating ice from my childhood. Jess, if it was at all worth the shipping, I'd send this to you in Australia for Christmas (since you'll be enjoying summer then it would be perfect). Now I have a great craving for sno-cones, I'll have to go blend some ice...

Lazy Summer Day

We're trying to fit in a few fun days before school starts next week and for the first time Eleanor will be gone all day long! Sniff, sniff... we'll be ok.
With the baby and the hot weather, we came up with a low-key relaxing fun day. First, we went to the Longmont Museum. We've lived here how long and never been before - and it's free!


Eleanor got to lay out the plans for her own city. Our house was usually close to the amusement park and swimming pool.


After the museum we picked up some lunch and headed to the Willow Farm Park. It's got a fun stream and shade! We made our own paper boats to float in the stream. Eleanor doesn't want me to mention the boys that took a shine to her. It was very entertaining to watch them show off. They pulled out all the stops ... wheelies, bike tricks, handstands, fake light-saber battles, you name it! I'm sure there will be many more years of this!

Katie did pretty well with our plans for the day. She had fun kicking around the blanket at the park. You all know the look of a self portrait, doesn't it look like she's holding out the camera?

There as a pastel art exhibit at the museum, so we brought along some watercolor supplies to do our own art at the park. Part of me must secretly wish to be able to paint. Can't, but it's still fun to dabble. Here are our masterpieces for the day.

See what I was going for...

On the way home we passed this HUGE hawk on the hay close to our house. Turned around so we could catch a picture of him. Not sure if that's a hawk or an eagle, but it was about 2 feet tall.