Goodbye Summer...Welcome Fall

Kids eating a snack at our new table.

Peek-a-boo Madsen

We love forts!

We went to a Children's Museum for Free Museum Day this year.

Building blocks

And the big kid hard at play

My friend Shawnda reading to LOTS of little kids.  We love having friends over!

Ready to play.

Ryan went to Japan again for 3 weeks last month.  Sprinklers and BBQ hot dogs were are kick-off to the 3 weeks.

He loved the water!

These awesome blueberries came from our bush out front.  It did awesome this year.  I made muffins, pancakes, a pie, fruit salad, and enjoy handfuls of yummy blueberries.

Haircut #2...never got pics of number one.  He hates it...but was polite enough to smile for the picture.

Out of order...back at the children's museum stacking tree blocks.

Our plum tree also had an incredible yield this year.  I made plum crisp, plum coffee cake, plum butter, plum cake, plum pie, plum jam, and we ate SO many plums.  Ryan was in heaven.  He loves fruit like many women love chocolate.  We now have apples...and lots of them.  We're really glad our fruit did so well because our vegetable garden was a total flop.  Our well...maybe next year.

So...that's kind of what we've been up to.  Ryan's trip to Japan was survived and we're so glad to have him home and all be a happy family. 

Madsen is growing like crazy!  At his 18 month appointment he was 71% in height, 86% in weight, and 96% in head circumference.  He's a really happy little guy and is talking more and more all the time.  I've started potty-training Madsen and he's doing so awesome.  On average he only has 1-2 times a day that he uses his diaper instead of the potty.  I trained Cassia really young as well and just thought it was a fluke, but Madsen is doing great with it at a young age also.  Madsen loves reading books (especially if they have cows, zebras, or cars in them), building blocks, playing with cars, Teddy, and especially playing with Cassia.  They are little buddies more and more.  Madsen does love to tease his sister and occasionally 'whack' her with random objects.

Cassia is enthusiastic about life, especially learning.  She has participated in my friend's preschool class a couple times and now she request assignments from me so she can do 'preschool'.  She's learning to sound out words, trace letters, count to 50, etc.  She loves to play outside on the swingset, take care of her 'kids' (dolls and stuffed animals), pretend, build blocks, and play with Madsen.

I'm at week 25 in my pregnancy.  I'm still amazed at how long 9 months pregnant seems.

Ryan and I are currently refinishing our new table (from the first pic), so it actually matches all the wood trim in our house. It's been a fun project so far (1 week) of sanding, and sanding, and sanding.  We have a long way to go, but are pretty confident that we'll finish it before the baby comes!  We also swallowed a big pill this past month and bought a....gulp...minivan...2011 Kia Sedona for you car people.  Sad day!  You know you're getting old when...  It's actually really nice though and will be so great for hauling around our so to be family of 5.