26 October 2008

Sophie has piano lessons Wednesday afternoons. Becky packs up Helen and Gibson and picks Sophie and Abe from school. It's about a 20 minute drive to the piano teacher, Teena's, house. Her quiet neighborhood doesn't have a park and is too far from shops to do errands, so Becky brings a book to read to Abe while Helen takes a nap and Gibson plays with the car alarm and windshield wipers. Teena is fairly incredulous that our family does this every week, but it's only because Sophie is the oldest. We'll be all worn out by the time Gibson is old enough to take piano lessons- he'll have to ride his bike there.


It was our turn to host Helen's playgroup again-- 4 weeks have gone by very quickly. The girls are very sweet and the time they're here goes by quickly, too. This time we baked and frosted sugar cookies. From the left are Annie, Rachel, Ellie and Helen.


Becky caught Gibson licking frosting off some cookies left on the table.


We're enjoying amazingly warm, beautiful fall weather. We take a walk nearly every day after Abe catches the schoolbus. One of the places we walk to is the entrance of our neighborhood to check on the progress of new landscaping. The centerpiece is a double waterfall topped with a 2X life-sized elk family. Often on our walks, other people will ask if Helen and Gibson are twins. No, they're 2 years apart. The people probably aren't even looking at Helen and Gibson-- they just see blond hair and a 2X life-sized baby jogger.

After a month and a half of school, Abe's reading skills have taken off! He brought home Nan and Pap from school and read the entire book to Becky. Nan and Pap are dogs who like to nap. We're so excited to have another reader in our family!

Brandan spent most of the week in Portland at a medical conference. His hotel unexpectedly upgraded his room to a luxury suite. Then, he got food poisoning at some fancy dinner and spent Wednesday night and all of Thursday being violently ill. We felt so, so badly for him. There's not a luxury suite in the world that's nicer than your own home when you're puking your guts out. We're glad to have him back home again and he's feeling much better.