Still catching up...

Now that school has started, and Britton has preschool three mornings a week, Clara and I get to hang out buy ourselves.  She's actually a lot more work when there aren't any older siblings around to entertain her. ☺

 Clara is a little artist lately, and our house shows it! Ella is always coloring and drawing, so Clara is able to get her hands on markers and pens and she has decorated walls, dressers, tables, and doors. :p

She discovered one of Ella's princess nightgowns and had to wear it.

Riding Bikes/ Walks

Over the summer we've been trying to encourage Aidan to try riding his bike without training wheels and he just wasn't interested. He would tell us that he would be ready to get rid of the training wheels when he was 10. ☺

Well, one day Ella decided that she was ready to ride her bike without the training wheels, so Cary spent some time trying to help her ride, and then Aidan wanted his off, but ultimately that day ended in tears, tantrums and frustration. Every now and then the kids would try again, but really they weren't wanting to put forth the effort and now Cary and I wanted them to be riding their bikes without training wheels for the Wheel-a-thon (a school fundraiser).

School started and we still hadn't made any progress, but at the end of August, Garrett and Grafton visited their grandma Betsy for her birthday, and within 20 minutes of playing with them, Aidan was proudly riding his bike everywhere without training wheels. Yay!

Now Ella was motivated, and I'd say that within a week, she finally had it down (part of the problem had been that her seat was just a little too high and she wasn't feeling stable enough when she would stop because her feet weren't reaching the ground)

We had started going on walks Saturday afternoon/ evenings because usually at that point our day of rest had morphed into the kids bouncing off of walls needing to get some energy out and Cary and I going crazy. ;) Now our walks were a great opportunity to let Aidan and Ella practice riding their bikes without the training wheels.

So here are a few pictures from our walks over the past few months.

 We usually end up at the reservoir since throwing rocks into the water is a favorite activity around here.

Britton's First Day of School (2014)

Preschool didn't start for a few more weeks later after the bigger kids, and Britton was asking everyday if it was his turn to go to school.

Finally the day came and he was pretty excited about that. Now it's Clara waiting for her turn to be able to go. ☺

End of Summer Picnic 2014

A few photos from our church picnic in August.

I stole the rest of these from Sharon. ;)