The End of Summer

The end of August just before school begins our town has a festival. There are rides and games and music and what Tim and I find most interesting - carnival FOOD! Yummy! So after much begging and pleading and whining on the kids' part we finally caved in and took them down to the festival.

They were thrilled! I marvel out how JOY -FILLED my kiddos are. They were literally skipping and jumping as we entered the grounds and got closer to the rides. Tim and I bot have a very bad tendency to try to squelch this enthusiasm for fear of drawing more attention to ourselves. There can be a lot of "SHHHHH - calm down" and "Chill out!" coming from us and that really bothers me about us. I know that we do this to try to avoid the already looking eyes from not only seeing a large family with "all those kids" (are they all yours? etc etc etc) but from thinking we must keep them all locked up in cages all year and this is the first time we've let them out to see the world.

This is the level of joy and curiosity our kids bring to any expedition we may attempt. This time I chose NOT TO squelch it! Go ahead kids - have at it! was my attitude and I'm glad. The kids had fun and we had fun watching them have fun. We both really need to let that happen more often.





So school began 2 weeks ago. This past week was the first FULL week of school for the kids. These pics are from the very first day of school. as you can see Collin is loving up his little brother as usual.
Collin was very nervous about school. He was excited and anxious to meet new friends but I could tell he was fearful too. Honestly, it was a very rough start for him. But more on that later.
September is my favorite month by far. I love this time of year. The hot sunny days and the cool nights and the harvest from gardens and orchards. The moon is orange and the stars seem to twinkle even brighter in the night's black sky. My boys' birthdays are in this month and that makes it special too. Chris will be one year old on the 9th of September and Collin will be 6 - WOW! That flew by.