Celebrating little things

 September!  Cool nights, warm sunny days.  We are loving it.  Here's a couple of other things we've been enjoying recently....

A visit from Grammy and Grandpa over Labor Day weekend.  It was so fun to show them all of the new things we've done on the house since they were last here.  They brought us lots of goodies from their garden.  Nettie's salsa was just about the best salsa I've ever had.  In this picture Aidan is feeding Grandpa a chip with salsa on it.

Fall means soccer.  My once empty September calendar has quickly filled up with three separate soccer schedules.  The boys both played in a tournament over Labor Day weekend.  It was perhaps a bit more soccer than any of of us really wanted, but they were very fun games to watch.  The boys have totally different styles of play, but both are good players in their own ways.  It's such a pleasure to watch them develop.  Jakin's team won the tournament.

 Grammy and Grandpa and the kids down by the brook

Edamame!  Taking the kids each week to pick up our share at the local CSA farm is one of the highlights of my summer.  It's an almost magical place.  I love to measure the passage of time by what produce is available each week.  I love that I don't really have to do much meal "planning" at all - I just cook with what is available and in season.  One of the items our family looks forward to each year is edamame.  It started coming in last week and that was another little celebration for us. 

Playdough!  We've started up another school year and my littles like to "do school" right along with their older siblings.  While it's sometimes a challenge to keep everyone busy, it's rewarding when a day goes smoothly.

We're also celebrating pesto.  Pesto pasta is on the menu every week.  Love it.  I don't love cleaning Aidan up after he's eaten pesto pasta, but I'm glad he's eating it!

The days are getting shorter, but there's still time to make up countless games with balls in the evening before dinner.  We are blessed with a wonderful yard for kids.

 Progress in the kitchen!  Jack set the island in place just after Labor Day weekend.  His parents brought the lumber for the counter top so that's what he's been working on these last two weeks.  It's fun to see the slots for the drawers and imagine where everything is going to go.

Random pictures for August

I must not be taking very many pictures lately.  We've been doing fun stuff to close out the summer - I just haven't been taking my camera with us, I guess.  Here are a few pictures I have:

We bought a piano a few weeks ago.  "Buying a piano" has been on our list for a long time.  But, we've never seriously looked.  Buying a piano seems to assume that someone will take lessons and play it (for the record, both Jack and I had years of piano lessons.  In my dream world, I'm an accomplished pianist.  The hope to be able to sit down a play a few songs reasonably well is a little closer to reality).  Piano lessons are expensive!  When I discovered that a friend of mine would teach Annie this year, Jack and I began our search.  Even when we were drawing up plans for this house, we couldn't figure out where the piano would go.  There just isn't an obvious place.  That led Jack to consider looking for a baby grand instead of an upright.  He said that if we were going to have to place it at an angle, then we might as well get a baby grand.  To keep the story of his convincing short, I'll just say that I've learned to trust him.  And he was right!  He quickly found a baby grand that was only slightly more expensive than the upright he looked at and a few days later it was sitting in our living room.  There were some You-Tube videos on "How to move a piano" and some heavy lifting involved, but I took the kids and left until the piano was all moved in.  For me, it was quite nice to come home and Poof! there's a piano!  I think it looks lovely.  And Annie is so excited to start lessons soon.

Jack and the boys have done an Adirondacks trip for the past three years with our friends, Brian and Brandi.  This year Annie and Brandi's sister, Lainey, got to go on their own little trip.  I don't think I've posted pictures of the big kid trip and I can't post pictures of Annie's trip now either because the photos are on Jack's camera.  (That's not fully true.  They are also on Picasa, but I don't know how to get them from Picasa to the blog...)  I will say that Annie had a wonderful time.  I love this little girl who somehow manages to be a little princess and a tomboy all at once.   And I love the man I married who does these amazing trips with his kids.  I love him for lots of other reasons, too.

Annie and Lauren always have little games going.  And Lauren frequently asks Annie, "Annie, will you dress me up?"  One day they did both:  dressed up and set up a nativity scene.  I'm not sure if Annie was a shepherd or Joseph.  Lauren is Mary.  Lauren's doll, Honey, got to be Baby Jesus and Annie's doll, Mary, got to be an angel.  Very sweet.

 Annie must have been a shepherd - there's her sheep.  And see the star above the angel's head? 

All of a sudden, Aidan is 15 months old!  He walks all the time and his mobility is used to take apart our house.  His favorite spot to tear apart is my pantry.  That's usually fine.  Except for picking up the bowls and canned goods a couple times a day, there's not a lot of damage he can do.  Except for the day this week when he dumped a bag of quinoa on the floor.  sigh.  He loves to play with his siblings.  He came upon his big brother the other day while Corban was playing with a Star Wars ship.  Corban made it light up and make noise and Aidan thought that was definitely the coolest thing that happened to him that day.  He has a bunch of words.  The trick is knowing which word he's trying to say when he says, "Ba" because it could be ball, bath, bite, or any number of other words.  He sleeps through the night, which is nice.  I'm still nursing him a few times a day, but that's mostly because it's convenient for me.  I'm almost confident in his ability to negotiate steps, both going up and coming back down.  We never even set up a gate.  Also nice.  He's so snuggable and sweet. 

In these pictures he's playing peek-a-boo.  He covers up his eyes, we ask, "Where's Aidan?", he uncovers his eyes and says, "Ba!"  In this case "ba" means "boo!". 

And so we've reached the end of another summer.  We said good-bye to our favorite babysitter who headed off to college this year.   We started school last Monday.  Soccer is in full swing - nine games this weekend between the two boys.  Here we go!