the rest of august

I would say sorry for all the first day of school pictures, but I'm not sorry. I like all of these pictures. Colin is cute.

Nate is the only person I know who eats soup with a fork and knife.

Jude eats soup with his fingers. Colin just said, "Write, 'He is so cute.'"

My sister is the best sister. She gave me this book as an early birthday present. It makes my nerd heart sing. In iambic pentameter. I love everything about it.

Be prepared for picture overload from our garden. Here are our pumpkins at the end of August.

We even had two new green ones growing.

The harvest. This made like 25 quarts of beans. It took me 2 days to can them all since I can only process 5 quarts at a time.

Nate was being a turd while I was trying to take a picture of the fresh raspberry cream pie I made for dessert.

I had to take like 6 pictures to get one without his hand in it.

Kate trying on her new ballet outfit and doing a ballet move.

A photo series that I will call The Process of Getting a More-Or-Less Decent Picture of Kate's First Day of Ballet.

Mom school! I decided not to send the kids to a "real" preschool this year. The cost had gone up and I wasn't willing to pay it. And I thought it would be good for all of us to be together and to learn together and to go on more adventures together. So we try to do a little mom school every day. Once a week a neighbor and I will do something big and fun with our older girls (Kate and her friend Hazel). For my turn I took the kids to BYU's paleontology museum. (Yesterday, 9/4, Kate went with Hazel's family to the Clark Planetarium in SLC!) But it was closed for some reason. So we went to the Bean Museum instead. My friend Laura tagged along, too. Probably because her husband was still out of town and she was lonely. I hope she forgives me for posting this picture where she looks a little drunk.

I asked the kids to make warthog faces.

Laura feeding each of the kids to the hippo.

Another Mom School adventure. We went on a nature walk to learn about the Earth for letter E day.

Gray is really channeling my brothers in this picture. He looks a lot like a young Grant here.

Jude climbed the cushions. Hilarity ensued.

The neverending green bean saga. I'll have to count how many quarts I did this season once it's all over.

Also, peach pie! From our very own peach trees! They are still young trees, so we don't get many peaches, but it was nice to have enough to eat and make a treat with this year! Hopefully they won't die like our apple trees did.

And I think that's it for August. Stay tuned, September is next!