the good, the bad, and the ugly, in no particular order

What's been happening around here? What hasn't been?

The whole family, except for Chris, has a cold. Henry and Celia both had fevers for the first day, and Henry's night time sleep got even worse than it already was. Yes, we went through sleep training, but I was trying to maintain one early morning feeding and I think to be successful we have to eliminate all feedings. Then his cold made it all even worse.

What else? The vegetable garden has big, healthy plants, but bees have not been visiting to pollinate them. I may not end up with a lot of vegetables this year.

I took some nice pictures for Celia's 3 1/2 year post. Just have to find time to write it now.

I'm slowly working on getting things ready for Celia and Henry to start school and daycare. Celia's backpack and lunch box are on their way, and I have to get a sleeping bag for Pita's rest times, lunch containers, and a kids' water bottle that won't leak.

I thought I was finally all set to go back to work on August 27th. I was wrong, of course. There's always another shoe still to drop, because (little known fact here) the administrators in my district each wear at least five shoes at any given time. Freaks. Anyway, I still can't really discuss it here on the blog because anyone can read it. In fact, I take back what I said about the shoes... Maybe some day I will be able to write about this whole mess. I would like to, but for legal purposes I'm not saying a word. So now I'm back to waiting and waiting, and hoping that it will still work out because I finally have preschool and daycare scheduled for the kids and I can't change those things.

I try to limit the time I spend stressing out about my job, and instead enjoy these last days at home with the kids. Today has been a pretty good day. Henry is getting over a cold, I got more than 4-5 hours of sleep last night, Celia has been happy and busy all day. This morning we made strawberry scones while Henry napped, and then Celia played in the sandbox while I pulled crab grass. We played, had lunch on the deck, Celia and I had a tea party with the scones during Henry's afternoon nap, and now he's still sleeping and she is playing at her water table while I type. Later this afternoon we'll hit the library and the park, and pick up a couple things I forgot at the grocery store the other day.

I've been trying out some new lunches on Celia. She gets in a rut where she only wants pasta or pb & j for lunch. This one was a winner: grilled almond butter and strawberry sandwich.

I found a deal on a double jogger on Craig's List a couple weeks ago. So nice to be able to take the kids on walks now! The only problem is that we have a lot of hills, and pushing this thing up a big hill is not easy.

On this particular day, we made a list of things to find on our walk. A scavenger hunt was great motivation for Celia.

While we walked, Henry kept his hand resting on Celia's leg. Could this possibly be any sweeter?

Now you're mostly caught up.