My kids have gotten the Minecraft bug. Started first with my oldest son. He shared the obsession with my 6 year old daughter… and then even my child who doesn’t really like to play games, joined in the fight against zombies. Yesterday they finally figured out how to do multi player, which means they can all play at the same time on various different wireless devices in the same world. Giggles could be heard as they found each other walking around in their worlds.

My dad called me last week and said he had 3 tickets to the Steelers/Ravens game if we wanted to come join him. His boss had generously given his tickets to my Dad and my parents generously offered to share them with us. I quickly called Scott who said, “Yes, we’ll make it work.” And make it work we did. Our weekend was already jam packed with commitments so the only way to make it back was to drive from Annapolis to Pittsburgh and back in one day.

This weekend was full of hayrides and pumpkins. Friday afternoon we went with some families from our 1st graders class to a pumpkin patch.  It was beautiful. Hay rides are so fun. I am a sucker for them. How can you not have fun riding around on the back of a tractor looking at sunflowers and pumpkins? My youngest child particularly enjoyed the hay ride and seeing some chickens and goats.

I love the age of 3. I really feel like the personality of your child fully starts to emerge at 3. And 3 year olds are funny. I love their sense of humor and logic and cute little mispronounciations. And they start to pretend. 3 is really fabulous in my humble opinion and I am most def going to mourn the passage of time when I no longer have a 3 year old in the house.

I love the ever changing smiles on my kiddos faces as they lose teeth and then gain new/big teeth. Over the past month or so my 7 year old lost 3 teeth… the latest one to come out was last night.  She’s starting to look older to me lately…

I haven’t had time to really update the blog lately. In fact, I have found my days to be quite full now that we are in full swing with our school and extra curricular activities. Bursting at the seams full. But, I have whipped the camera out a few times, so I decided today to download them and at least try to preserve some memories of everyday life around here.

Almost every fall, I enjoy taking the kids to the county fair. We’ve been going since my oldest was under a year old. This year my youngest was so super excited. He talked about it for months. “When are we going to go to the fair and see the animals?” We went on Friday morning for the preschool preview day. Then my parents and I returned on Saturday for the girls to perform a gymnastics demo.

Because our homeschool tutorial meets on a Mon-Thurs schedule and the board doesn’t like to start the year on a partial week, we are THE LAST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD (or so it feels like) to start back to school. But, today we finally had our turn for the morning poses on the front step.  Another school year is upon us. We had an EPIC summer. One for the record books… and I while I didn’t tackle every project on my summer to do list, we are starting the year off a little more organized than last year.

Labor Day. What does it really mean anyway? I’m not fully sure of it’s tradition or reason for existing, but I do know it means a 3 day weekend at the end of the summer and so I’ve never really questioned it. It wasn’t until the summer of 2002, that it took on a whole new meaning for me and my family. That was the year we went to my friends family cabin with 5 other couples and just hung out.

It was a typical afternoon for me… rush the kids into the van, make a quick stop at Walgreens for cough drops and pictures… a quick glance at the clock tells me we should make it to practice in time as long as we don’t hit traffic. And then… the car just stops… it almost felt like I could feel it drop, the steering wheel locked and I did my best to coast and steer it to the side of the road… or the entrance of the bus circle at the high school.