Soaking Up the Last of Summer

I had another birthday.  I started the day out with a bike ride with Annie.  Then, I invited my friend Kassie over to bake the a Cooks Illustrated strawberry shortcake. Derek thought it crazy that I wanted to spend the day baking my own birthday cake, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed it.  Then, later that evening we invited a bunch of people over to celebrate and eat cake.

Had to put in a plug for just how awesome London is. 

 She is so patient with these torturous kids.  The boys try to ride her all the time, and Liv has been "training" her almost every day.  She has trained her to give hugs.

I can't believe Liv is going to be starting kindergarten and leaving us every morning.  I having a much more difficult time coping with it than I anticipated.  I have this constant feeling of anxiety about the whole thing that won't seem to go away.  The boys and I are gonna miss her intricate arranging of toys.

I steamed corn from the garden for the first time the other night with dinner.  The kids were excited.

The grape vine we planted this year is thriving.  

For some reason I think my kids enthusiasm for eating is cute.  Liv enjoying pesto pasta. 

 And Camden devouring some tacos.

Carter came out of our closet the other day in his Dad's ginormous boots.  

Liv finally took the leap and learned to ride a two wheel bike.  I don't have pictures.  Her friend Kenadie was out one night riding and offered her bike without training wheels for Liv to try.  So I kind chased after the best I could on my recovering knee and before long she had it all figured out.  She wanted his to take the training wheels off her princess bike immediately.  We did and once she got pretty comfortable on that we decided it was high time she had a slightly bigger bike.  The princess bike is ridiculously small, even smaller than the boys bikes with training wheels.  We had planned to get her a bike for her birthday, but decided to do it a bit early. Derek took her one night to pick one out.  This new bike if anything is a little big, but she is getting used to it.  And, she loved riding her bike.  It seems like almost every day I sit under a tree in the shade in the front of the house while the kids ride up and down our street.  I'm more grateful now than ever that our street is not very busy.