Henry and the Nikon

Henry stole the camera from me this morning and started a new hobby. Here's his first offerings and, who knows, perhaps the boy will make a career of it.

For your eye alone










High-school Year Book Glam Shot










Toes











A portrait of the artist as a young man

Another Girl, Probably

Some big news we've been sitting on for awhile, or cooking up depending on how you look at it, is that we're expecting Baby #4 in late December! This little addition was a bit of a surprise for our family and we're still wrapping our brains around it. But we are excited for this new little one to join us.

When we told the kids about the news awhile ago ("Mommy's going to have another baby") Evalyn's first response was, "Can we name her Aurora?" We thought that was pretty cute but explained that we didn't know if the baby was a girl or boy yet. (For those without little girls obsessed by Disney Princesses, Princess Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty is E's favorite one.)

Fast forward to the 21 week ultrasound and: inconclusive. The umbilical cord was hanging down between baby's legs. Most likely it wasn't obscuring any boy parts, but it's not 100% a girl since those little parts couldn't be seen clearly either. Sigh. The one time when we were hoping so much to know the gender so we can get rid of bins and bins of clothes. Oh well. Maybe we'll get another chance in the near future. But for now we're assuming girl and I can finally start making a blanket with girly colors. If it turns out differently I'll have a lovely gift to give away! : )



(head on right, bent knees/legs with cord in between on left)

Oh, and if it's a girl Matt says we're definitely getting a dog so Henry has someone to rough and tumble around the yard with. We'll see how soon that happens...

First Day of Kindergarten

Friday was Evalyn's first day of school. Her very own first day of school since we were still traveling back from the East Coast on Wednesday when the rest of her class started! More on that later.





She picked out her new princess backpack before our big trip and was very excited to wear it to school and have it on the plane. The weather was/is still pretty warm so no new school clothes until it cools off a bit!




She really likes her teacher and two of her friends from church are in her class, plus some kids from her pre-school class. So far she is only one of two kids who get picked up halfway through the day, the rest of her class are Extended Day and have lunch, an extra recess, and story time and get out the same time as the 1st and 2nd graders. I guess alot of kids have older siblings or parents work so it's easier that way. But another friend's kindergarten class is the opposite: there are only 3 Extended Day kids and the rest go home at noon.

I'm kinda torn on what would be best for Evalyn. Part of me knows she would enjoy the extra socialization time, but she is already so tired coming home "early". Maybe we'll switch her after Christmas or something. We'll see how she does with a half day for now I think. The only thing she's mentioned so far is that she wanted to eat lunch at school with her friends.

In other kid areas, I dropped the ball on soccer sign-ups so neither Henry or Evalyn will get to do that this fall. : ( SO, instead we joined the YMCA and they are each taking a gymnastics class once a week. Henry during the day and Eva after school. And because it was only $10 a month E is also taking a 30 min ballet class once a week. Maybe it sounds like alot, but I think it will fit their active "I'm bored" personalities just right. : )

So here is a blog post. Finally. It's been a very very busy summer and I'll try to do a quick bullet point summary... in my next post. With lots of links to my sister Heather's blog who HAS been a great blogger of our family reunion and all the activities there.