Corinne's Birthday and First Days of School

A few days before Corinne's birthday, she went swimming in our pool, took a shower to rinse off (with the other kids,) and slipped coming out to get dried off.  She hit her chin on the shower door track, and when I got home from the errand I was running, I found her on Daddy's lap with a bloody washcloth pressed to her face!  The bleeding kept stopping and starting again, so I took her to the Pasadena Urgent Care to have it looked at.  They cleaned the cut and put a little Dermabond on it, rather than stitches, then covered it with a Band-Aid (to keep her from picking at the Dermabond.)
  

Ow Chin..

She suceeded in picking off the Dermabond the next day, but the wound stayed closed.

My littlest girl turned two!  She doesn't seem two to me.  Maybe it's the hair . . .  She was showered with presents by everyone.  She got a stuffed cow, beautiful church dresses, an old-school wind-up musical television, and a doctor kit (with a toy Band-Aid - she loves Band-Aids!)
   

  

Saturday, we had some friends over for swimming and a barbecue.  It was a perfect level of party for a two-year-old's birthday!  Corinne got a giant cookie as her cake.
  

  

Cows are Corinne's favorite animal.  They say moo.

Looking at Grandma's E-Card

  

We had these two lovely visitors in our home and yard that week, too!

This fall was a big adventure for Connor and Elise.  I had promised Ryan, long ago, that the kids would try public school at some point.  I also wanted to see for myself, and have the kids see for themselves, what everybody else was doing.  Maybe it could prove to be a better fit for us, overall.  Friday afternoon, we drove over to the elementary school fence to see the class lists for Monday.  It was very exciting!  Connor and Elise lucked out and both got awesome teachers.  Elise's is very sweet and motherly, while Connor has team teachers who both do a great job.  Although they didn't get in the same classes as any of their friends, they do get to play with them at lunch, so that made things a lot easier.

 

Connor has a pretty large class.

Elise's

Although the kids weren't thrilled with the idea of going to full-time school, they were good sports about it.

   

First-Day Jitters

   
At the end of that first week of school, our good friends, the Palmers, came down to stay with us for a few days.  We went to see the Hollywood sign, and hiked around the Mount Wilson Observatory.  We consider the Palmer kids to be our kids' honorary cousins!
   

Mount Wilson Observatory (The Drinking Fountain Part)

  
The week after public school started, it was time for Joy School!  We added another boy this year, bringing our group up to five.  Evan was crazy excited.
      

First Day of Joy School!

   

Okay, now randomness.  Connor made this sign a year ago at science camp with a magnifying glass.  There was never really a good place to put it, since it's fairly big, so it finally got its picture taken, and was retired.

 

  

During much of August and September, I was on an allergy-elimination diet.  For the first three weeks, I was gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, beef/pork/chicken/shellfish-free, corn-free, nut-free, and sugar-free.  Anyway, one of my treats at the time was raspberries.  I got a huge tray of them at Trader Joe's and put them in the fridge.  The next morning, I found this on the counter.  When confronted about it, Evan told me, "It's okay, Mom.  I saved you some!"

     

Smoothies are such a great quick breakfast before school.  Unless your two-year-old enjoys pouring them out and playing smackety-smack in the puddle.
    

This was AFTER I'd cleaned some of it up.