The day after Labor Day means it's back-to-school time around here. It's an exciting time of year: seeing all the first day of school pictures! getting back to routine! OMG the BUSES!!!1!!!!!1! (we live near a LOT of schools...). Even if around our own actual home, it's pretty much more of the same. Meals, snacks, playdates, naps, baths, repeat. Though we soon will have some of our own routines starting back up again...storytimes and toddler activities and our own little classes. We have one year left with no school, before 2 out of the 3 get shipped off to the Big Kid World of preschool. In some ways I can't wait (preschool for 2-year olds, anybody?!?!? Just take them, PLEASE! ), but it's mostly good. We'll be hanging out right here.
(Though possibly still working on our letters and spelling, just the same.)
(Caden: "k-c-o-s spell sock!" Me: *dying inside from suppressed laughter* ".....yes.")
(Big sis is still excited to push baby bro in the swing.)
(In case you can't tell, he clearly hates it.)
My dad used to make me ice cream cones with drizzles of caramel and chocolate syrup flooding the bottom. As a HIGHLY INTELLIGENT child, I figured out where all this goodness was hiding, and decided to eat my ice cream cone from the bottom up. For some reason, from then on, I was banned to the front step right next to the hose when eating any and all ice cream cones. THIS very front step, in fact:
The tradition continues. Though they haven't quite figured out the eat-your-cone-from-the-bottom-up trick quite yet...
(Yet...)
(Working off all that ice cream on a Labor Day family walk. I mean, Tyson and I worked it off. The kids either rode or were carried. Slackers.)
(Brooklyn: "Bye-bye! Gettin' groceries!" Baby and all. And it's not even our baby doll. A sweet neighbor girl lent her to us and Brooklyn has spent approximately the past 24 hours with this baby by her side and though we've tried to drill it into her I'm not sure she understands the crucial part where she has to give the baby doll back...)
(Also at this particular grocery store, the green beans were suspended in mid-air. Apparently.)
(Ice cream again. Because it was a holiday weekend, after all.)
(Brooklyn never wanted to cooperate for ice-cream eating pictures. "Say 'ice cream'!" and she's all like yeah, I'm busy actually eating it, fool.)
And now onward to fall. The best time of the year.
And also quite possibly the most delicious.
We got a head start on that this weekend.
And the eating up the leftover caramel with apple slices was an absolutely terrible idea, just as Deb said. A terribly delicious idea.