Lately

Abbie posing with the American Girl dolls... We own two of them (I had Felicity growing up, and my sister gave me her Samantha recently).  The Molly doll we rented from the library (seriously! She came in a little mesh backpack with a Meet Molly book and a Molly movie. They have lots of awesome stuff to borrow.  Today I got a backpack with a microscope and some slides for the kids to look at).

Ellie had to pose with the dolls, too:

I was taking a nap on the couch a few weeks ago and woke up to this lovely sight - Olivia, face covered with sidewalk chalk, playing the recorder (more like just blasting it).  I have since hidden the recorder.

There is a free zoo here, so we checked that out a few days before school started.  It was a pretty nice zoo, as far as zoos go, especially considering it was free.  But it was also pretty crowded because.. well, it's free.   The girls were pretty excited about how close we got to the giraffes (and Ellie was pretty excited about that hat she borrowed from our friend who was with us).

But the MOST exciting thing, according to the girls that night at dinner, was the chipmunk that they saw in the monkey area.  Seriously.

Olivia at the zoo:

Garrett need a nutella s'more one night, but didn't want to do all the work of making a fire in the backyard:

Lunch at Costco one day.  I have no idea what Olivia is doing with her  face.... haha:

Sushi for our anniversary dinner date:

We are putting our fire pit to good use lately, especially as the weather cools down in the evenings.  Last night I told Garrett that a fire pit is a "must have" in the future!  This one was already here in the yard, but they are so easy to put in:

Abbie was so excited to find out that she has her very own locker this year at school. (Ellie has one too but I don't have a picture)

We had an assignment to clean part of the church building in August.  The girls were excited to vacuum:

We went for a walk after Church a few weeks ago and came across this little playground in the middle of the woods!  The girls were thrilled:

On our walk:

First day of school!  The girls were SO excited to start school, and it has been going great so far.

Walking home from the bus stop after the first day:

Olivia and I were heading out the door to run some errands, but her hair was in her face.  I quickly pinned a little flower hairpin in, to get her bangs out of her face.  She asked me to take her picture and as she posed, she said "Now the people will love me."  Hahaha.

A couple Saturdays ago we went to an awesome farm.  We picked apples and raspberries, went on a hayride, and then played for a couple hours in the play yard.  It was so much fun! And cheap!

Picking raspberries always reminds me of when we lived in NH when I was little.  We had some friends with tons of raspberry bushes and a bunch of families in the ward would always go pick them every year!  They are definitely one of my favorite fruits:

This little playhouse (in the play yard) had a train table inside:

There was also a huge teepee to play in, that huge pile of hay that the girls climbed all over, tires to climb on, goats to feed, kittens to play with, a little corn maze for the kids, and a TON more.  It was such a great day, and the weather was gorgeous.  The field on the hill is full of pumpkins, but we didn't pick any that day... we need an excuse to go back!

Abbie and I playing a game of checkers in the play yard:

Picking apples.  We picked mostly Macintosh and some yellow ones (I can't remember the name).  I picked a bag of Honeycrisp apples too, and then hid them for myself when we got home (they were more expensive, or else we would have gotten all Honeycrisp!). 

The girls found my old iPod and have been fighting over it ever since.  They sat down to dinner the other day like this, so we had to have a talk about no media at the table. They are so funny... Abbie is like a little teenager just sitting on the couch listening to music on there.  I asked her once, "what are you listening to?" and she said "Under the Sea".  Haha.  Not quite a teenager yet, thankfully.

Garrett just finished up a week of being on call.  He hates being on call, but thankfully it hasn't been too bad yet.  He had to work all weekend, which we knew would happen, so that was okay.  And thankfully the pager never went off in the middle of the night so that was really nice too.  He did get paged a few times, though:

Just chilling in the backyard on a Sunday afternoon.... Garrett's in his scrubs since he was home briefly between being at work, Abbie is pushing Ellie on the rope swing, and Olivia and I were just reading on a blanket.  We are loving the gorgeous weather here and soaking it all in before it gets too cold!