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.