Seven Quick Takes (take 2)

So...we're linking up with Conversion Diary again to update you on the good, great, and mundane around here. Let's start with some great...

1. HAVE. YOU. HEARD??? Mommy is sooooo excited! Downton Abbey is coming out with a fabric line. Remember Captain Planet? "When our powers combine..." That's what this feels like. A super hero will be born out of this fabulous combination. Going to be AH-MAZE-ING.

2. We got the walker out for Felicity. She's loving it.

3. Went to the zoo again...and then again. Twice in less than a week. You are probably sick of reading that. We go alot. Anyways! This time Aunt Annette came, too! She was home from Canada for Labor Day weekend and we got to take her.

4. And while Aunt Annette was in town, so were Uncle Michael and Aunt Bridget! It was partytimeallthetime. 

Pile On Uncle Michael

  5. The garden is winding down. We're still picking some tomatoes, eggplant, and jalapenos.

Viv's getting the idea (most of the time) that we only want red tomatoes. And both girls have learned the hard way to leave the peppers alone. Hopefully we won't need to re-learn that lesson next summer.

6. We've had a couple theme weeks...first was Ice Cream Week. We made homemade ice cream and did a few little crafts. The girls loved the "sensory bin" best. Mommy filled it with small balloons, real ice cream cones, little puff balls, popsicle sticks, spoons, measuring cups, feathers. All the fun stuff for imagining their own little ice cream workshop. Kept them busy and it was something they wanted to come back to over and over again during the week.
This week was Picnic Week! We had lots of picnics (including one at the pool with Nana and Papa), talked about the letter P, did several fun crafts, played "Toss the Fake Food into the Picnic Basket", and more more more. But their favorite activity was weaving their own paper picnic blanket. Mommy let them choose a few of their favorite sheets of her scrapbook paper and then showed them how to weave the strips of paper through lines cut in the big paper.

Both girls let Mommy help a very little bit and then insisted that they could do it! "No, I can do it! Don't touch." Love that independence!

Miriam liked this so much that after the first blanket, she asked to weave another. She whispered to herself all the time, "I like weaving. Weaving is fun. I can weave." Yes, you can, little girl!

7. Last night we went to a town fair close by with some friends and were kind of in awe of the thing. It was, as Daddy said, "Real Americana." It was a peaceful little community with a whole long weekend of fun, simple activities for everyone. We ate real beef and noodles and an elephant "kneecap". The girls participated in the watermelon eating contest...

waiting for the word "go!"

...Daddy did the "ring the bell with the big hammer", the girls did a few rides (These were family owned! The Dad, Mom, Son, Daughter, and Grandpa ran the whole show!), kids walked around with balloons tied to their wrists, a quartet sang in the middle of the street.

kiddie Ferris wheel

Pretty happy this sort of fun still exists.