August in review

These awesome 4th graders joined us at the Ithaca Bogel Compound for 2 weeks of Primitive Pursuits camp after Huron City.  

They would come home in the afternoon covered in mud and mosquito bites and demonstrate their new skills and home-made survival tools.  Several evenings after dinner we had music practice over at our place.  They get to start band instruments in school this year so we thought we'd get a head start.  With costumes.  

Left-over costumes the morning after.

We've been busy with lots of new experiences.  To me this look says, "You've known about mac and cheese my whole life and this is the first I've heard?!"

Prepared for full-contact art projects. 

Exploring...

and resting at the Fall Creek playground.  

 She's a corn hoarder.  

Since Huron City she's been exploring farther and farther from us.  Here's a solo trip over to Grammy's taken from our driveway. 

It was finally bike fix-'er-up time so we spent some time of the Cayuga Ski and Cycle deck while Elliott got supplies.  

 She helped.

And the next day we got a bike trailer!  She mostly loves it and we had a wonderful maiden voyage along the Stewart Park trail to the Farmers' Market Saturday.  

 Oh my goodness, we went to Idaho for Kevin and Amy's wedding!  

It was up in Sun Valley and the sun broke in between thunder showers just at the right moment for a little hike to the beautiful ceremony valley. 

There was a ton of nature to explore so a lot of this kind of move:

Isn't this Grammy sweater beautiful?

Nice setting for wonderful love, eh?

This was Fiona's public dancing debut and she was pretty unstoppable.  She even joined in for the first dance.  And the bride and her father's dance.  She danced until about 10:30, shooing us away when we tried to pick her up.  When she fell on her head for the 7th time we put her to bed in a pack-and-play in a mountain bike storage closet and she passed right out allowing us 2 more hours of partying with a silent monitor on Elliott's belt.  Perfect toddler wedding and so wonderful to see some dear Seattle friends.  

Family wedding tent selfie. 

Feeding Nancy a fistful of french fries.

And when we got home we got a HUGE bag of clothes from the twins for the fall.  Fiona piled these all on her lap and wouldn't let me put them in drawers.  She's an industrious kid and has been really into moving and sorting things lately.  

Well, we're off to Seattle next week for a week of visit, our first time back since moving to Ithaca in January.  We're really excited and relieved to be returning.  I'll be going to a conference some of the days at UW and we'll spend a couple nights out on Lopez with the folks.  Aaahhh... our other wonderful world.  

I started a second job, this one in Ithaca at Cayuga Family Medicine, a great practice right downtown (across from Shortstop!). I can walk to work twice a week, I keep running in to people I know from growing up, and I think working in these two practices is going to be a wonderful balance for my own learning and happiness.  I didn't increase hours; I just moved them and I dropped over 3 hours of commuting.  Regardless of how positive a change is it's still exhausting and I'm picturing October as the month when I can settle into a rhythm and get in the swing of things.