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.)