Our August so far

Yes, time spent in St. Louis is usually a blur for us. Except maybe for Zach, who will ask me questions about the littlest thing months later...maybe I should have him tell me what we did! I have some notes somewhere, and all the photos, of course. So to give you a run-down, and possibly explain some of the pictures, here's what I can remember:

birthday photos at the mall * lots of eating out: Red Robin, Outback, The Melting Pot, Happy Joe's, CPK * hanging out with family, the boys especially loving the time with Angela * having dinner at Mark and Christy's, and the kids meeting new friends * Zach in the kiddie pool at Grandma Jill's * much shopping, prepping, and baking for the birthday party * an evening at Persimmon Ridge winery (and drinking more than we realized) * the big twin reveal: it's a girl AND a boy! for Katie and Josh * seeing Guardians of the Galaxy at the dine-in theatre * playing with Grandpa Ron's trains

 

Here, today

This is Zach's first day of first grade.

We are only starting to recover from the last few weeks, and our little "Scooch" is keeping us hopping now too.

Week 29: & 4 more to go

Last week...
in which the boys were only quiet and calm when they were sleeping
in which Frank traveled overnight for work
in which Charlotte became a huge fan of Club crackers
in which there was a whole lot of crabbiness, and random bouts of playing outside
in which Zach did a great job reading and writing, but also helped destroy stuff
in which Frank and I finished Season 2 of Dexter...we are completely hooked.

And only four more weeks of summer.

Week 28: The outage

Yep, the power outage was about all that happened last week (it was enough). After a five-minute storm, we were without electricity for 45 hours, and we are now in the market for a generator. It was unfortunate that we had to throw out all the food, but the fridge hasn't been this clean in years! After the initial shock of not having TV I don't think the boys really noticed. They just spent more time working on craft projects, legos, and puzzles. The really tough part was getting to sleep those two nights without AC...we had the boys camp out in the basement the second night because it was actually pretty cool down there. We went out for dinner both nights, so that was nice. The weather mid-week during the outage was nice and not terribly hot, so the boys spent time outside. On Saturday we had a block party, so everyone was commiserating about those couple of days, and also previous outages. The boys had fun running around and going in the bouncy house with their friends.

And Charlotte is pretty close to crawling. She's scooting on her back and rolling around everywhere...we are going to have to put up the gate on the basement door again. She has yet to get up on her knees but it's only a matter of time and the right toy being out of reach.

The start of "a cool design"

The start of a rainbow

The start of a castle

Mmm bop

Charlotte likes to subtly bop along to music, and it's totally adorable.

Week 27: The list

Loving that Charlotte can hold her own bottle
eating the same few meals over and over again
drinking Starbucks lattes (Beth...4 this week?!)
playing with water guns
singing Everything is Awesome
asking the boys to be quiet way too many times
wearing shirts backwards (Gabe)
looking forward to our next trip
reading 30 books this summer (Zach)
watching Dexter (Beth & Frank) and fireworks from our front yard
making banana bread twice
working on a Myrtle Beach photo book (Beth, of course)
getting used to contacts (Frank)
talking to Jen on the phone for the first time in ages
celebrating July 4th and a friend's birthday with a party at the pool
buying toys with their allowance

My baking helpers.

Mommy gets the best snuggles.

A big plum from our tree, it wasn't ripe and tasted totally sour.

Gabe chose a magnetic doodle board.

Zach chose an Angry Birds game.