300

According to blogger, today's post makes 300 posts. I've been watching this number approach for sometime, but it was only recently that I realized that we've been keeping this blog for almost three years (since Andrew was younger than Evelyn is now). Now, I'm perfectly aware that there are *many* blogs out there that acquire more hits on a regular basis, but I'm okay with that. My goal here is not to post narcissistic musings out there for public consumption--this blog has been first and foremost an effort to record our family's life for our own records. Secondarily, this blog has been to keep family and friends up to date on our lives. I feel pretty satisfied with our modest offering on both counts. I've certainly been more motivated to post regular updates about our family when I know that we have readers--much more motivated than I would be if I were recording in a journal for no one but myself and Dan to peruse. Besides, I enjoy reading my friends' blogs and I hope (perhaps arrogantly) that some of our readers enjoy reading this!

This week was the first week of classes, and we both (Dan particularly) came through more or less unscathed, although Dan did receive a mild blow to his ego when a student reported to another professor in his hearing that a friend of his (the student's) had transferred out of Eves' class because "he was an idiot." (I know I'm not exactly disinterested here, but I'd like to suggest that the "idiocy" was not on Dan's part . . .). But students, as we know, can be notoriously fickle, and Dan got over that pretty quickly.

Aside from that, we've managed to fill our days pretty well. Our back yard is full of fruit just now--I regularly pick a couple handfuls of raspberries from the bushes in back while the kids are playing. The raspberries rarely make it into the house, since my kids (Evelyn especially) are big fans. And I have to admit, I don't even *like* raspberries, but these aren't bad. The peaches are coming on (although absurdly small, since they don't get much water and they weren't pruned before the season started), we have beautiful blackberries, and a second batch of plums (a different kind this time--Poppy tells me they're Italian prunes) is starting to ripen. I haven't quite figured out what to do with all of it. We eat some, but most of it is staring blankly at me from the countertops in our kitchen.

Andrew is getting ready to start preschool. We jumped on the preschool wagon a little late, since the move disrupted us, and so we were only able to get Andrew on the waitlist of a school-district run preschool just around the corner from us. Instead, we were prepared to send him to a preschool some distance away (also run by the school district). We even went and met his prospective teacher on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we got a call saying that a spot had opened up in the nearby preschool--and since both curriculums are roughly equal, we gladly switched to the closer one. On Friday, we went to an open house for Andrew's new teacher: she seems great, and I'm excited for Andrew to start his twice weekly experience. I don't know if he'll learn much that he doesn't already know about academic topics (he's pretty good on his numbers, letters, shapes, colors, etc.), but I'm hoping he'll learn a lot about working with other kids.

Evelyn has discovered ice cream this summer. This is her, when she sees me holding a dream bar that I haven't given to her.

And this is Evelyn, in her version of baby Nirvana, when the dream bar is mostly consumed.


Andrew continues as squirrely as ever. You can tell in this picture that he's looking a little unkempt--his hair was in dire need of some attention.

Bubby gave us some money to take Andrew to Arthur, in St. George, who was Dan's childhood hairdresser. On Saturday, we duly proceeded south, only to find--to our dismay--that Arthur was out on vacation. We still enjoyed our trip--I did a little shopping at the outlet mall (which Dan patiently endured), then we went to Costco and finally got our membership (after talking about it for nearly a year). They must have had a special on samples that morning, because we were nearly able to feed our kids lunch on the quantity. After our "pre-lunch" we got a real lunch at In-N-Out, which was a big hit with all concerned.

I finally bit the bullet and got a basic haircutting kit. We meant to cut his hair last night, but didn't have enough time for the requisite 16 hour charging, so we cut his hair this morning. He was pretty patient, but since this was my first time (and I did most of it with the scissors, since he has an aversion to the buzzer), it took *forever*. I still don't like looking at it too closely, because I see spots I missed, but I think overall it's an improvement on the unkempt mop that he was wearing around earlier.



We've been doing lots of clothing changes this week--one of the downsides of the new sand and water table we got is that both my kids tend to get very wet when using it. One particular day, I sent Andrew inside with instructions to strip and get new--dry--clothes on. He came tearing out with nothing but his underwear on (on his head no less) and cackling madly. He thought he was just hilarious. Here is the G-rated version: you can see the gleeful glint in his eyes.

One of my favorite things, though, is seeing my kids play together. They both like to help me sweep and mop the floor (luckily Andrew has a toy broom *and* mop, so no one has to go without something). And I've been letting Andrew "swiffer" his own room (I touch up afterwards, of course), but it makes him feel important.

This morning, while Dan and I were cooking in the kitchen, the kids were playing together in Andrew's room. I came in to find this--Andrew said they were having a slumber party, but "Evelyn was staying up late." Funny kids. We sure love them.