September 2011, School, and House Painting

The boys play mostly where Ellie plays, so it's not too hard for her to get to their things now that she can roll easily! Thankfully when my parents were visiting my dad helped get the gate installed at the top of the stairs!

She's like King Kong or something. Destroying innocent sidewalks.

Time to go to school! Ian is excited for third grade, he can't wait to learn multiplication. When he found out he'll learn cursive, too, he was ecstatic! Caleb and Levi are both super excited for kindergarten. They got to have grandparents here for their first few days of school!

Ian, the big third grader, all ready for the first day!

In order to conserve the number of pictures on here, I put Caleb and Levi together. This is them ready to go to their first day. They go to afternoon kindergarten, and then come home the same time as Ian. They are in the same class, only because I requested afternoon school and there is only one class. So Levi will always wear stripes to school, to help everyone tell them apart, and save them from answering who they are all day long. Caleb loved that his pants had pockets, I don't think he took his hands out of the pockets until he was at school!

Our lovely house, half primed, and needing to be painted badly! John spent countless hours prepping the house, scraping, power washing, and sanding.

We were so blessed to have my parents come and help for a week with the painting! We got the majority of the painting done that week. Our house is quite tall, making it a challenge to paint. John has a really tall ladder, which we could reach most of the house from it. But then there is the chimney which is even taller - so John got a little creative getting it painted.

All finished! All it needs is a little trim work and it's all done!

Last year Ian was going to enter a lego creation in our county fair. But when I ended up in the hospital at that time, it didn't happen. So I was trying to convince him to enter something this year. I read off all the things he could do. I forget how old Levi and Caleb are getting, they both were the ones excited to enter something! In the end, Ian made chocolate chip cookies, Caleb drew a picture, and Levi painted a potato - they had a potato-head contest and this is what he wanted to do. They all got red ribbons!

Ellie got her first haircut. She had two places, in the back on the sides that were growing really long and nothing else was growing much, so I decided she needed it cut.

I don't think she even noticed I was doing it, Daddy was reading her stories. It's much better now that it's all even! For the time being, at least!

This one is for my sister, too bad I didn't bring this shirt this summer or Ellie and M would have been twins!

Ellie wanted to get in on the construction play that she sees all day long!

We canned a lot of pears (and some peaches, too). Caleb and Levi took it upon themselves to sort them out. Their teacher is doing a great job when Caleb is able to apply his knowledge at home - "some of them had two attributes - both small and smooth!" It sounds so cute coming out of the mouth of such a little guy! They actually did a pretty good job of sorting the ripe pears, too.

Where's the bunny? All Ellie needs is a red and white striped hat like Waldo!