Pete the Cat

 My favorite books to read with the boys are the Pete the Cat books...

These are simplistic books about a cat strolling through his days...
but then something happens...
like he steps into strawberries while wearing his white shoes and then turn red
Or
he wanders into a room filled with books
Or
one of his buttons pops off.

But
Does Pete worry?
"Goodness No!"

"It's all good!"

"Groovy"


 When reading with the little ones, Jude loves to shout out "Goodness No!" in his sweet little voice.
Pete is such a hippy little cat and I love that he is teaching the littles that "it's all good" and things will work out no matter what happens :-)

Tamlin has also read the Pete books at pre-school and in Kindergarten.  He brought home this awesome artwork:

Such a Cool Cat!

 Here are a few other pieces of artwork (some based on other favorite books) that Tam has brought home.

Harvest winding down?

We are hoping that the gardens are slowing down....

 But the tomatoes keep coming...and coming...and coming...

Let's see what varieties we ended up with...
Roma,  Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine Black, Brandywine Pink, Black Cherry, Red Cherry, Orange Beefsteak, JL Blues


We harvested the carrots recently.  This was another one of those: "Here, boys, plant these" thinking that most of the seeds wouldn't germinate.  Wrong.

We have rainbow carrots: orange, white, purple, red, orange.
I think many will end up in stew stock :-)

The beans were let to go to seed for next year's plantings.

Fire and sparklers

 It was a beautiful clear night, so I asked Brian to set up a fire in the pit for us.  We used some of the wood left over from summer camping excursions.

Then Brian taught the boys how to light sticks on fire and create glowing embers...
What?!
Apartently, he thinks the boys are old enough to learn a healthy respect for how cool fire is.
Sigh.

 Nothing but sticks and marshmellows were caught on fire while we sat around in the late evening watching the glow.  PS: the marshmallows were chocolate and excellent for roasting.

 Our neighbors across the street came over to play and chat around the fire.

And we had sparklers = cool.
I love being able to spend time outside with the boys and friends :-)  Since it is September now, I don't know if we'll be able to have another one of these this year :-(