September 2015

Kara quickly adjusted to her morning routine and getting ready for school each day. Surprisingly, Kara wasn't late to school once and didn't give Mom too much of a hard time.. Kara has school every morning, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays she stays for a full day and has Kindergarten Enrichment in the afternoon. So far, Kara is really enjoying school. Kara is doing very well with her reading (she recently tested at a 2nd grade reading level) and with her math.  She's also having a lot of fun learning new science information.  She comes home everyday with some new little tidbit that she learned in school.

For Labor Day, Aunt Amy had a little party at her house.  The girls had a great time chasing Briley and Ruby and playing with all the adults.  The girls had a little extra fun once they got a hold of Aunt Amy's phone.  Check out the pictures.

We decided to plant a couple of trees in our backyard.  We planted an Autumn Blaze Maple and a Honeycrisp Apple.  Maybe we'll be getting some tasty apples in a couple of years!

The last weekend in the month, we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park outside of Estes Park to check out the elk.  It was fun, but we probably won't attempt it again for a couple of years.  We had planned on having a picnic dinner and then hanging out for a couple of hours and watching the elk.  However, the girls were ready to leave right after we got there (long care ride). Fortunately, there was a bull elk waiting to surprise us in the tall grass!  We got our dinner out, sat down, and there he was!  The girls loved it.  We also saw several other elk and heard a little bugling in the distance before we left.

Kid quotes:
Emily: "This is my only choice" after she sat down on the sidewalk when Dad gave her the choice of either riding her scooter or walking home from the playground (see the picture).

Link to pictures from Labor Day

Link to other pictures from September

Fall Visit from Mimi

Mimi came to visit us at the end of September (yes, we know we're getting this out late... but we figured it was better than never!).  She came to visit for ten days, but the time just flew by.  We went apple picking Ya Ya Orchard, just west of Longmont.  It was a lot of fun, but the trees were pretty small and more or less picked over (the season was very early this year due to the hot, dry summer we had here in Colorado).  We did get to pick some apples and they had some animals to feed (a couple of horses and donkeys).  Mommy shared a caramel apple with Kara, and Daddy and Kara even took a hay ride around the whole orchard!  It wasn't as much fun as Sky Top Orchard in Flat Rock, NC, however, which we highly recommend to our friends down South!

Another highlight of Mimi's visit was a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the elk.  Mommy and Daddy were a little worried that we were going to head all the way up there and then not be able to find any elk.  Well, we should not have been worried.  We drove past a large herd hanging out at a high school just south of Estes Park, before we even got into the park!  From there, we were able to find quite a few elk.  It was an exciting adventure for all of us (we included some pictures in the slideshow, but here's a link to all of our Rocky Mountain National Park pictures).

In baby news, we had our 20-week ultrasound last week.  The baby looks great!  10 toes and 10 fingers!  the big news out of the ultrasound is that Mommy and Daddy have decided not to find out the baby's gender until he/she is born.  We figured, how many times in your adult life do you actually get surprises?

Link to pictures