Campfire and Stone-stackers

Here follows a truly miscellaneous collection of pictures from last month!

We had a campfire (just out on the deck) for Labor Day. I love the way a fire tends to draw people to linger and talk together.

Such a pretty sky that night!

Gus leans into the picture. Ziggy leans out of it.

Homp!

We used some colored flame packets we'd been saving, and they were really fun! We will get them out again on Halloween, I think.

Gus wanted to get in on the "first day of school" pictures to document his entry into First Grade! I was happy to oblige. He's such a grown-up first-grader! As of now, he claims to still have plans to turn seven in December—even though I taught him the poem ("Now I am six, so I'm clever as clever/ So I think I'll be six forever and ever") and recite it to him often! Hmmph.

He wanted "one picture by the door, one on the hill." To symbolize his entry into the wide world, I suppose!

Tiny tiny Gus

I was greeted by this cheerful sight at breakfast one morning, a special "surprise" from Clementine and Ziggy and Gus. They'd set my place with yellow dishes, made a gnome-shaped graham cracker treat, made homemade "lemonade" (scare quotes very much needed there), drawn a tiny picture for me (I think it was of a Caw, by Clementine), and put the tiny yellow gnome at my place. A surprise fit for a queen!

Another delightful surprise

Clementine's laboriously-made Lift-the-Flap book (most of the flaps contain gnomes)

Two girls so silly that Sam and I had to sit at a separate table from them

A nice evening picnic at the playground (that abandoned brownie on the ground isn't ours! Heaven forbid)

The girls have become quite accomplished rock stackers (mostly while waiting for me when I'm late to pick them up from seminary or piano lesson). Look how many they can stack!