Once we got some cooler temps, we scheduled a fun photo shoot with Jackie (and her awesome assistant, Isaiah) in Forest Park.  We had such a fun evening with them!

Blake took this one.  Pretty impressive work for a boy of six.

After we had a yummy dinner at The Boat House, we watched the kids feed the ducks.

Probably better than watching the kids feed the ducks though, was watching Isaiah watch the kids feed the ducks.  I could've watched him all night.

Here are just a few of my favorites from the afternoon that Jackie took.

I love picture days!

Alexandria started Preschool in September.  She absolutely LOVES it!  We knew she would, of course because she has been dropping Blake off there for the past two years, patiently waiting for her turn to go.  She is a bit more attached to me than Blake ever was, so I didn't know if she would be teary the first day when I dropped her off.  There wasn't a single tear on the first day...until I picked her up, and then she cried because she wanted to stay at school.  Those are the kinds of tears I can deal with!

All ready for her big day.

And now for Blake's new trick.  That's an apple, and he thinks he is awesome when he does this.  His sister kinda loves watching him do it too.

In early September we finished up a few projects we'd been wanting to get done for quite some time now.

The boys threw on their "rotty clothes" and stained the swingset, always a long job.  Matt did most of the work, of course.

Alexandria supervised from afar.

She did help me with some basement organization too, but if you walked into the unfinished part of our basement right now, you would never believe that we organized just a month ago.  Total disaster area.  The weather is way too beautiful right now for us to be working inside though.   Plenty of months of cold weather and basement productivity are ahead this winter.

I finally found some art clips for the kids' rooms that I liked and got those up on the wall to display their school work and church papers.

Blake likes to check out his work and explain to Alexandria what they did at school.  It's pretty cute.

I have done A LOT of work on Alexandria's room, moving her toddler bed out of her room and other furniture and assembling her new queen sized bed and two new (craigslist new) dressers into her room.  Somehow I guess I haven't taken pictures of her finished room yet.  Making a mental note now...ok, better make a real note too because my mental notes are less than reliable these past 12 weeks.

During the first week of September Blake's school had a Grandparents' Breakfast before school (if kids didn't have living grandparents or ones that were unable to attend, they could bring any special person with them).  Papa and Ma took the day off of work to come eat breakfast with Blake, and I think it's safe to say that they all enjoyed every minute of it.  Blake got to give them a little tour of his school and show them around his classroom.  He thought it was really great!

Alexandria stayed home, but she thought she ought to be in the picture too.

I sent my camera with Mom, but Blake was pretty excited to have Papa and Ma at school with him, so he did a whole lot of acting silly for the camera.

I guess they had hundreds of people at the breakfast, a really nice turnout, which always make me feel good about people in our community wanting to be involved in the lives of their children/grandchildren.