My little bag lady

Claire likes to collect things. She collects them from various rooms and stores them in her play stroller and shopping cart. On any given day you will find any or all of these items: various dolls, blankets, necklaces, doll accessories, books, hair clips, sunglasses, purses, pajamas, shoes, play food, my cell phone, etc. Then she pushes either the stroller or the cart around the house to take the baby for a walk. Sometimes while on the walk items are discarded or new ones are picked up.

This day she was pushing the stroller and pulling the cart at the same time (all while wearing stylish Tinkerbell sunglasses). She was having trouble navigating between the table and the cabinets.

I asked her to stop and take a picture for me. She had to "wake" the baby up so that she could be in the picture too. If things are lost around the house, the best bet is to check one of the strollers or the cart.

The Park

Tonight we went to the "park by our house." Andrew likes to ride his bike over there which is great because it tires him out. He had gone last week with Danny to play tennis, so he wanted to show me how fun it was.




As it turns out, Andrew is not bad at this new found sport. He was running all over the place trying to get the ball. There wasn't a net, but that didn't matter to him. Tennis has always been on his LONG list of sports that he wants to play. We may need to get a couple of more jobs to pay for all of the gear.

While Danny and Andrew were playing tennis Claire and I played on the playground. She likes to play on this train. We drive it grandma's house or Natalie's house. I'm really thankful that we live so close to this park.

The First Soccer Game

Andrew had his first soccer game on Saturday. He was excited but also nervous. As expected, most of the kids bunched around the ball and followed it around the field. But not our Andrew!

He took his position seriously and for most of the game stayed in his position. This often meant that he was standing alone on one side of the field. That doesn't matter though - it gave him time to play with his uniform, look at the sky, smile for pictures, etc.

Here are some action shots for when he got to kick the ball.

He even got to do a throw in, they hadn't practiced many of those so the kids didn't really know what to do.

They huddled after the game and gave a cheer to the other team. They don't keep score (there aren't goalies) so who knows who won. He was really tired after the game, he doesn't usually do that much running all at once.

Beach weekend

Labor Day weekend we were fortunate to be able to use a friend's beach house for the weekend. We could not have asked for better weather. We got tons of beach time in without all of the driving. It was the perfect end to the summer.


Claire set up her beach chair on top of the boogie board. She was content to sit and eat her snacks up there.
Andrew tried several times to boogie board. He did the best when Danny pushed him out at just the right time.

We saw a lot of wildlife! Here is a picture of a sea otter, but we also saw pelicans and porpoises. It was amazing to see all of the different animals go back and forth in the water.

The sunsets were amazing!!!! It felt like we were in Hawaii.

In this picture Claire is quite intent on getting all of the sand out of her "flop" shoes.

Danny brought a big shovel to the beach and dug a huge hole for the kids to play in. We camped out at the same spot two days in a row, so it got bigger the second day. Claire was so funny climbing in and out of the hole. It was back to real life on Tuesday, but we are so thankful to have spent a great time at the coast.