First Days of School and Labor Day

Starting potty training leads to pictures like this. Green underwear (over his diaper) means he made an attempt!

 Alice's sneak peek day at preschool. She got to see the classroom all set up.

 Cool rug!

 Grace, Alice, and Norah playing dress-up this weekend.

 Joely's new trampoline that he bought with his own money. He can do cool tricks!

 Charlie loved jumping on it with him!

 Cute baby waiting to hike down to the waterfalls.

 Silly cousins! Jack, Grace, Norah, Alice.

 Disco Hanky do your thing!

 Grace's first day of third grade.

 Alice wanted in on it too.

 And another after her hair got fixed.

 Their summer fun time is over:(

 Can't leave out Charlie.

 Indoor tent fun!

 Stylish for orientation.

 What a big girl!

 Blackwater Falls.

 First day of preschool!

 Bucket instead of backpack. They say it makes it easier to bring home art projects.

Last Week of Summer Break

Sisters.

 Visiting the Amtrak station in Manassas.

 At the Manassas courthouse, where 50 years after the Civil War, the president and a bunch of soldiers from both sides met for peace there at the site where it all began (Battle of Bull Run).

 Charlie and three of his favorite things: water towers, trains, and green!

 Danny loved sitting out in the grass for an hour one cool evening.

 Cute baby!

 Dress-up time. Grace and Charlie are a motorcycle gang.

 Fun with glowsticks.

 Danny the Jedi.

 My, what a big head you have!

 So dang cute!

 Cute brothers!

 Grace making meatballs.

 Alice avoiding making meatballs.

Exploring in the back yard.

Paul's Trip to LA

 Fun lunch I made for the kids one day.

 Danny at the doctor.

 Fancy Alice is too cool to get her picture taken.

 Cute sisters. Alice is wearing all clothes that Grace just grew out of.

 Daddy's out of town - who's gonna fix my broken space shuttle?

 Experimenting with facepaint. Rainbow lips.

 And arms.

 Grace started me as a snow princess, but then decided to see if she could make me look sick. Not sure what the neighbors thought when we went out to the playground like this...

 Grouchy Grace.

 Cute sisters. Alice happy to have her glasses finally fixed!

 Paul with the 60-inch telescope.

 The 100-inch telescope.

 Dome for the 100-incher.

 Haze over LA.

 Paul and the telescope. Taken on his iphone by a professional LA photographer!

 View from Mt. Wilson.

 At sunset.

 Paul is so handsome!

 I feel like Alice looks so grown up.

 Cute brothers!!!

 Sweet Grace.

 I did crazy hair day on the girls one day.

 Typical Charlie all week long.

Our first fruit from our garden! We don't get much sun back there, and lot of our plants gave up long ago, so we didn't even try to make sure our garden got watered while we were gone for 3 weeks. But we came back and had this full-sized cucumber, with a few more about half that size! It was delicious. The carrots, obviously, were a bust.