State Fair!

I finally took the kids to the state fair this year. I always intend to but for whatever reason, it hasn't happened in previous years. We had a lot of fun!

Cute little piglets!


Watching the little piglets.














Trying out snow shoes.




The kids LOVED this fishing thing they had set up. They spent FOREVER fishing to their little hearts' content! Asher was the first to catch one.



Then Ellie (her fish is splashing her in the face!)


Evan fished and fished and fished for SO long, but his patience paid off and he finally caught one. He was SO happy!




I told the kids they could each pick one ride. Evan, of course, picked the rustiest, ricketiest looking roller coaster in the whole place. Thankfully, it was closed. *Whew!* He chose this one instead. He LOVED it! The girls who rode in front of him told me, "He had SO MUCH fun!"


Asher chose the haunted mansion.


Ellie chose the little kid roller coaster. I wasn't sure if she'd actually want to do it, but she insisted. I just knew that I was going to pay the tickets and then she'd get up there and want to come back down. She sat next to this little boy and they became buddies right away. I'm pretty sure that's the only reason she didn't get scared. She loved it!

Just for fun

The empty lot near my house that I love to use for pictures is getting ready to have something built on it. I took the kids there to get a few quick pictures before it's gone!

Labor Day tide pools

Hello poor, neglected blog. I know, I know... it's been far too long. I'm hoping to catch up with a few posts over the next few days, starting with this one! :)

 Ben had Labor Day off, so we decided we wanted to go look for some tide pools. Unfortunately, the tide was kind of high that week, so we didn't find very many actual tide pools, but we had fun anyway! We found lots of crabs, anemones, and mussels.... and we threw a lot of rocks, too.

Weekly Recap: the aquarium and one last beach day

This week was the last week before school, so we had one last big beach day with all of our friends.







I have given up trying to keep Aria out of the sand!



Miss Aria got a new big girl car seat this week. The thing is HUGE compared to her infant seat! It looks pretty comfy though, and she fell asleep in it right off the bat, so it must be.



On Saturday, we all went to the aquarium. It was fun to have Daddy with us for a change, since we usually do stuff like this during the week.









Aria started saying "mama" this week! She also pulled herself up to standing for the first time.



She also started dancing to music and it's pretty cute! Here's a short video clip. The music is not my usual choice (we were listening to a kids pandora station), but apparently Aria liked it!



That's pretty much it for this past week. Now to get started with our school year!