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Amelie had the first day of school at the
beginning of September, but it was not to last. We had signed her up
for Journey School in
Aliso Viejo and she was excited to go. After the first day, though,
she declared the inside time to be boring, the outside time to be
fun, but everybody agreed the drive down to Aliso Viejo was
difficult. After a week when each day was a battle, we gave up, and
are more excited to home school the kids than ever before. |
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Looking for lizards with Gabriel at
Journey School. I felt bad for Gabriel because, like Amelie, he too
would prefer not to go to kindergarten, but he had to stick it out. |
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Desmond is the best car seat baby we've
ever seen. We've driven up to Lake Tahoe and to Phoenix and he never
complains. He took the drive down to Aliso Viejo without a hitch. |
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Our above-ground pool has been great for
the summer. We're working on hooking it up to a solar heater so
we can use it for the winter months as well. This image is a collage
of two images I had, one with Mia in focus and one with Amelie and
Ava and Desmond in focus. What do you think? Did I get away with it? |
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Mia is a real nature buff, and she's
always catching crickets or japanese beetles and putting them into
her bug house. Here she has a giant caterpillar. |
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Naomi got a book on face painting and is
having fun learning how to do it with the kids. She seems to have a
knack for it, though. |
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Amelie is getting older and more
interested in learning stuff, so we're getting workbooks on
handwriting and math that we're going through with her. Also, she's
started asking us to point out words when we read to her, which is a
first. |
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My dad came out for a week for a visit,
and came bearing gifts! |
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I had never seen a Where's Waldo book
before, but it was actually pretty cool. Of course Desmond is trying
to figure out how to get the entire book into his mouth. |
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Desmond's tongue is making an appearance
in quite a few photos these days. |
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There's that tongue again. Amelie had a
great time playing with Nonno. |
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The Irvine Regional Park started their
Halloween activities and we went on the first day, running into
Carmela and Tia and Zack by coincidence. |
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They have a great (for kids) haunted house
that the girls would go into over and over again. |
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I'm not sure what the girls will be for
Halloween, but I think they're leaning towards zombie princess. |
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We did a home-school field trip to Oak
Glenn, to a farm where they teach you how to build a log cabin (like
this one) and how to make apple juice and start a fire and other
pioneer-type activities. |
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They had raspberry bushes (with lots of
bees!) that you could pick. |
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Of course, you get to eat a few as you go
along. |
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The girls got to throw the apples into a
hand-cranked apple crusher that was used to juice apples. |
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Desmond continues to be the happiest baby
we've ever seen, he's just a joy to hang out with. Strangers love
him because he's always smiling at them. |
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I love this photo of Desmond and Naomi's
dad. Again, the tongue. |
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And now for the accidents of the month.
Mia was jumping on the bed and fell off, just like the monkey in the
rhyme. She landed on her elbow and was still not using her right arm
the next day, so we got her arm x-rayed, which is super-cool. It
turns out her arm was fine, and the next day she was using it like
nothing ever happened. Here's
her wrist x-rays. It's just so amazing to be able to see your bones. |
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During Amelie's brief stint at
kindergarten, one of the things they did was have the kids cut
apples with knifes. Now, she's knife crazy, with the occasional
mishap. Mostly though, she does okay. |
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Well, that's it for this month. Until next
month, stay fat and happy! |
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