september pictures and update

it seemed like september flew past! i haven't even done a post about afton's birthday (though i do have pictures, so i guess these posts are just in the wrong order)... but here's some of the memories we captured from september:



rayna and malachi being cute... i have lots of pics of these two clowns!



paul took pictures of the kids sleeping one night, they sure are sweet when they're asleep!



i shouldn't have cropped this picture, you should see all of rayna's 'most important things' that sleep on her bed with her! it's phenomonal... and a real pain when we need to wash the sheets ;)



rayna and malachi playing at the playground one day before rayna's school started



all dressed up for hispanic day at school, ironically, she's the ONLY white kid in her class... and she was one of only a small handful of kids that dressed up... admittedly, we don't have the best costume, but it's adorable and we tried :)



how do you play trucks in the house? with beans of course! chi originally dumped the last of the beans out in the living room one day, but i thought limiting them to a cookie sheet was a better idea, turned out to be a great activity that kept the kids busy for the better part of a week!



this one is from a school project afton did, an 'all about me' poster that included a lot of her favorites, instead of just putting pictures of all her favorite foods, we managed to scrape them all out of the fridge on leftover night once, and she was in alt! sweet potatoes, tomatoes, meatballs, and apple juice!

it's been a little bit of a struggle for us to get back to a regular functioning schedule with school and everything, though we hit a rhythm pretty easily... there's just too many things that weren't getting done to my satisfaction *chores* but i think we're slowly working around to a better balance, despite some of pauls schedules and my projects and afton's homework...

in quick re-cap, paul's working like a crazy man finishing up all his application stuff for his internship, there are 28 sites he's applying for, so we can say we will definately live somewhere in the US next year, but that's about all we can narrow it down to (if anyone interested in knowing more about the sites, send paul or me an email or give us a call, and we'll tell you about the possibilities in your neck of the woods ;)

i'd been teaching piano lessons, but my piano broke and is not repairable so that's kind of on hold and i'm getting ready to run a half-marathon... i'm actually really proud of myself not just for running it, but for wanting to!

afton's reading like crazy, which i love!--i have a teacher-conference next week to see just what she's up to in school. she had the ITBS (i think) testing last week to see what grade-level she's currently working at, though i don't know when we get those results. she loves riding the bus to and from school, though she doesn't get home til 4, so it's a long day for us all. she loves her teacher and science class, but isn't so excited about spelling (who can blame her?!)

rayna's really sweet and happy unless she's tired. she LOVES her school teacher too, and frequently plays school with malachi. she now knows all her letters including most o fthe lower case ones. she's happiest playing by herself on her bed (did you see the note about all the toys up there? it's totally worth the pain of sheet-changing because she loves it so much!)

malachi's 2. enough said, right? very, very 2. he alternates back and forth from devil-child to sweetheart faster than anyone else i've ever met (or so it seems). he loves 'helping' in the kitchen, as long as it's doing what he wants to do. his favorite toy is an old frying pan i gave him when i got a new one for my birthday. and his favorite place to stand is in front of the open fridge door. such a boy ;).