Our Scrapbook: August 2008

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Last week of August

Eli with his amazing Lego creation. A multi-level house with a fishing hole, deck, airport & army parking out back.

Adrienne loves to work out. I'm just not sure she's got the technique quite right.

Eli got a hair cut for school pictures Friday. We'll have to see if the school photos turn out as good. :)

The race is on! Adrienne seemed to win an awful lot once she decided the tall slides were actually fun.

Our chef with an attitude!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Looking for Tadpoles

The kids got to go to a birthday party at the Discovery Center & had a blast yesterday.

After making snakes for a craft they got to go on a hike down to Murfree Spring & slosh around in the mud & creek in boots (provided by the DC) looking for creatures. They even had boots for adults so you know I had to put some on & join in the adventure.

There they are with the birthday boy looking at the finer points of mud. They got to wade out further into the water & look under rocks & logs to see what they could find.

They did find ram's horn snails living under rocks in the water & saw little mosquito fish too. Eli also found snail eggs. It looked like a bunch of snot on a rock. Pretty cool.

After the hike we went to the lily pond to see if we could catch tadpoles or fish. The pond caught a couple of kids who were a little too eager in their tadpole hunts. Luckily we stayed dry.

Both kids were successful in catching tadpoles, but those fish were way too fast.

See, a tadpole. A lot bigger than I remember from my childhood. It was odd to see so many tadpoles & not a single frog. Hmmm.....

The kids at the lily pond after their successful hunt.

First day of First Grade

Well, school has started again. Eli will be starting his 3rd week of school tomorrow so I thought maybe I should post a few photos from his first day.

Here he is before we left for school that morning. See that little bit of apprehension in his eyes?

He did fine & when he came home he said his first day was, and I quote, "Fabulous!"

Here he is with his first grade teacher Mrs. Fitzgerald. So far it's all review for him. I dread the 45 minutes of homework he'll be having soon so I'm enjoying this slow beginning to the year.

People & their pets!

While on vacation we got to spend some time with various pets & their owners. This was good for the kids as we are not pet people & they seem to have picked up on that somehow. Go figure.

At Jen & Joe's we had to start out slow & put the kids behind bars . They loved it! They could watch the dogs & cat with out getting licked. By the end of our visit there, the dogs were trained to obey the kids & the kids were trained to be calm with the dogs. It was a win-win especially for some treat loving dogs. The cat got her fair share of treats too. I mean who wouldn't give treats to a cat who will sit on command.

We went to visit another friend with a dog & this time it only took a few moments for Adrienne to warm up to Cody instead of days. This kids don't remember it but Cody has been around them since they were born, so he was OK with them visiting. Barbara didn't get a chance to put Cody through his paces as we were on a time schedule but Eli remembered the see-saw from a few years ago when he got to help Cody practice his agility.

This is our idea of a pet. We have a few (3-4) hummingbirds that have been visting our backyard. We put out the food & get to watch a show every day at mealtimes. No training involved for the pet or the kids. If we ever did get a pet I think it would have to go & live with Jen or Barbara first just to get it trained. (Don't worry though, no pets are in the works!)