September

 How are we half way through September.  While the spring passed very, very slowly, somewhere mid-August we picked back up to almost normal speed.  Ben is playing soccer, everyone is going to CC, Annie has dance, Mollie Grace has bi-weekly horse riding.  Next Wednesday night Ben starts youth group.

Week 2 Annie did her presentation about Cicadas.  She took this bag of 114 cicadas that she found in our front yard as a visual.

This the Statue of Liberty made from air dry clay.

Mollie Grace is in Essentials in the afternoon this year.  Week 3 she read aloud her first paper.  I'm really proud of how well she's doing in this class.  I was very worried that she would be overwhelmed.

Another mom sent me this picture of Annie from Week 3.  She's giving her presentation about the sun.  She drew a picture of a beach ball and a pea to show how small Earth is compared to the sun.

Labor Day weekend Ben's team played in a soccer tournament.  This is the only picture I've taken of the entire season.  They won the first two games, but lost in the semi-finals on Sunday.

We also camped at Monte Sano Labor Day weekend.

Sunday afternoon we took a challenging hike along the McKay Hollow Trail.

There are always a lot of pictures of Annie while we're hiking because we're always in the back.  You can see a tiny spec up the mountain above Annie's head that is John, Mollie Grace, and Ben.

Mollie Grace gathered theses flowers while we were hiking.

Monday night our up the hill neighbors hosted a neighborhood Labor Day party which was a great success with all the neighbors immediately around us attending.

Annie's forts are growing more elaborate.

Week 4 patriotic abstract art.

Thursday we went to Southaven to visit the Kings and the Ruckers.  Ben has not seen Silas since we moved, but since they are homeschooling this year it will be much easier to visit.  We made a quit loop by our old house just to check it out.  The cul-de-sac had been repaved.

Annie made a newspaper during naptime Friday.  She asks Alexa how to spell words.

A knock knock joke:  Knock.  Knock.  Who's there? Whoo.  Whoo who?  What are you so happy about?

This is a picture worthy moment because I am in the pool for the first time this summer.  A pipe broke and we thought we were going to have to take it down for the summer.  Annie was very upset because I hadn't kept my promise to get in the pool at least once.  So we rigged the pipe and will hopefully get a few more weeks out of it. (I can order a new pipe online.  It just wasn't available immediately.)

The Rest of August

So the dog and the cat together didn't start off well.  Marcie was totally freaked out by LeLe, to the point that she had an upset stomach and I had to take Marcie to the vet for medicine.  

I took this picture of Mollie Grace at the end of horse riding because she wanted a picture as part of her presentation about herself the first day of CC.

First day of CC for Mollie Grace and Annie.

Mollie Grace is in my class again this year so there will be lots of pictures of her at CC and probably not very many of Ben and Annie.

One of the moms in my class took this picture.  I included it since I'm actually in the picture.

Annie pulled her other front tooth at Ben's soccer game.  Thankfully John had a napkin in his pocket because I was not prepared.

Annie returned to in-person dance.  She is taking Ballet 1 this year.  Her teacher is still Mrs. Melissa from church.

Patriotic dress day at CC.  If you look closely Mollie Grace and I have red and blue stripes in our hair.

Ben used birthday money that he's been holding onto to buy a 3D printer.  I didn't realize that it came in many pieces and he had to assemble it.  It's still a work in progress.  It's fully assembled but we still have a couple of steps to get everything calibrated and ready to print.

Annie builds a fort pretty much every day.  I have to spend at least 5 minutes in each fort.

John celebrated his 44th birthday.

Opening an Annie-made birthday present.