Dinosaur battle

Matthew likes "set-ups." His usual method of play is lining things up in a particular order and then staring at them. This applies to cars, airplanes, train tracks, even his blankets and stuffed animals on his bed. Recently we had the dinosaurs out. He created a set up of different dinosaur "teams," then they had an epic battle.

 Setting up the teams.

 Team one.

 Team two.

 The battle begins.

 There was lots of roaring.

 And falling on the ground.

 Deciding his next move.

 Tiger shark gets thrown into battle.

 Regrouping the teams.

 Team one took the high ground. But team two quickly took over.

 They were left like this...ominously staring at us for the rest of the day.

Back to school

It's that time again...  I can't believe the summer is officially over and the big boys are back in school. Daniel is really excited to be in first grade this year. Matthew isn't as excited about going back to preschool. He was really hoping to be in kindergarten this year, with a new teacher in a new classroom. Hopefully he'll still have fun. We love the preschool at St. Alphonsus and think it'll be really good for Matthew.

Before school started, Mr. S hosted an "open gym" for the first graders and their siblings. That place was crazy! The kids all had a great time, and it really got Daniel excited for school to start again.

Daniel and his friends created a hurdling game out of the gym mats. Daniel can really jump!

Matthew tried too. Not quite how it's supposed to turn out, but he had a ball anyhow. :)

 First day of afternoon preschool for Matthew!

 Aaron wanted his picture taken, too. (And we had plenty of time, since I locked us out of the house on the way to school and we had to wait for Daddy to come save us.)

After school on their first full day of class. :)

Last days of summer

I was looking through a few photos on the computer and saw a few that hadn't been shared of what we've been up to for the past few weeks.  Here's how our last bit of summer vacation went down.

Some friends of ours live in the Blue Ridge neighborhood and invited us to spend time down at the beach with them. It was a beautiful evening spent with lovely friends.

 Cleaning their feet.

 We signed up Daniel for a week-long swimming lesson session. He had a great time, as usual.

Barbecue down at Nana and Papa's house with the cousins!

 Five of the six local cousins with Great Grandpa Milt on his birthday.

 Riding bikes up and down the block is getting pretty boring (for Daniel, especially), so we packed the bikes up one day and took them to the cemetery to practice riding. It went really well, however we chose one of the hottest days of summer to go, and we didn't last long.

 These two spent an incredible amount of time in the pool this summer. Toward the end of the summer we ended up being a "clothing optional" operation. They loved it. :)

 For whatever reason, we never made it down to the wading pool down at greenlake until last week.  We went a few days in a row and the boys had such a great time floating and splashing around.

Daniel was very kind and gave his brothers rides.

 Nothing beats a little poolside snack. 

Aaron learned to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" this summer. This is his goofy rendition.

 So long, summer! We had a wonderful time filled with water play, friends and lots of cool treats. Can't wait for another fun summer next year!