First Day of Preschool- Finally

Today was Austin's first day of preschool. He was a trooper and got ready, including eating breakfast, quickly, so that we could drop the girls off and then go pick up Logan to head off to the first day of preschool at Churchill High. They start a few weeks later so that the high school students, who are the teachers, have a chance to prepare their lesson plans for the year. Jason and I received the orientation from the head teacher and are excited for the year. They will have two hours full of great learning and activities with almost a one-to-one ratio of teacher (high school student) to child. It's extremely affordable too, making me even more impressed with this program. Though we were sad to see PCN close, (the preschool where the girls went, including Karissa's bilingual class), we were happy to find this little jewel where Logan can go with Austin and I don't have to be there once a month, as was the case with the co-op at PCN.

Austin's super-excited smile!

Austin playing with Rory, who's in his class at church.

When one of the teachers told Austin Rory's name, he said, "I  know!"

All in a Row

Erik likes to have order. He especially loves order with his toys and other items. He gets order by lining everything up. You can always tell where he's been by the path of lined up things.

trucks

Karissa's shoes

yard toys

more trucks

spoons

trucks...

and more trucks!

Bountiful Harvest

This year we tried our hand at square-foot gardening, or Jason did actually, I just followed his instructions. It seemed to work very well. The idea is that you have every square-foot taken up by something you plan on growing, leaving no room for the weeds. Obviously, some veggies require more room to grow, so you plan accordingly. It's also supposed to require less watering (something we don't need to do much of anyhow since we get so much rain).

 A handful of seeds never sprouted so we had some spaces and the zucchini was on steroids and about took over the cucumber and cantaloupes, but overall, I think it was a success!

The corn never turned out, but they say corn is hard to grow in small amounts. We did get broccoli, red onion, green beans, peas, radishes, zucchini, cucumber, cantaloupe (not harvested yet, but hopefully soon), zucchini, strawberries, a few kinds of peppers, basil, zucchini, and few kinds of tomatoes.



Austin loves strawberries, so he got to pick the first one.




The strawberries are next to the space where nothing came up, though we did have lots of radishes early on in this area.



The zucchini plant on steroids.

The zucchini on steroids that I had already cut a few inches from.

We had some pretty big beefsteak tomatoes as well and the flavor of the cherry tomatoes, were to die for!!

A Final Camping Trip

We planned a final camping trip for the summer with Jason's parents, who came out to visit the last couple weeks before school started. It was nice to visit with them and have them help me while I manned my four children along with an extra 3 year-old and 9-year-old, Logan and his brother Jaden, from 7:30am-6:00pm. We were lucky to be able to get away for a long weekend and use the facilities of their camper again. Unlike last year, we made it through without any stitches this year!

We went up to Petosky, MI. The beaches there are known for the Petosky stone which is the Michigan state rock (do you know your state rock?) Here is the only one we found, we think, but they are mostly found in the spring.

Playing at Petosky beach.

Austin loves wading in the lakes.

A hike in the forest.

We got to go to Mackinac Island, where we have wanted to go for a while. You have to take a ferry boat out to the island and there are no motorized vehicles allowed. We took the horse carriage tour around the island, but are hoping to make it back one day to do the bike tour.

Waiting for the ferry.

Mackinac Bridge

Carriage ride

View of Lake Huron



Add caption

 Other than riding bikes around the camp ground, the kids also enjoyed the heated pool at our KOA camp. It was the nice way to bathe them rather than fighting them in the showers. We had some good rain storms and thunder storms. Our new tent held up nicely over the night through about 4 or 5 thunder storms (thanks Abuelo and Gramms!)

Cooking in the rain.

Erik loves the rain and stood in it for almost an hour before we gave up and went in the pool.

3rd grade

1st grade

Now we're back in school and back to the grind. Good bye summer!