The greatest thing I've ever seen

I love reading Van's school work. Today I found a book called "My Book About Numbers" by Van.

It covered numbers 1 through 5. Each number had 3 pages of activities dedicated to it. On the first page for each number they had to draw something, 1 cat, 2 apples, 3 bears, etc. That was my favorite part, I love seeing his drawings. There were other activities too, circling, copying, tracing and counting numbers.

Then I noticed something on one of the other activity pages. They were practicing tally marks.

Me: "Van, did you draw one Tali?"
(For anyone who doesn't know, Tali is my mom's dog's name.)
At first he didn't want to admit it, he seemed a bit embarrased but finally
Van: "I drew one Tali rasa. I was supposed to draw a Tally like the line."
Me: "I really like your Tali"

Mom said he gets an A+.

Princess Party

Yesterday Elin and Solvej turned 5. We had a big princess party spanning 3 houses. Svea hosted princess crafts, a dance party, and presents/cake. Mom hosted a princess tea party (with curlers and orange juice for tea) and I hosted a glass slipper scavenger hunt. Peter drove the girls from house to house with a trailer hooked up to the 4-wheeler.

We have a lot of pictures but I'll have to wait until they are downloaded. In the mean time, here are Esther and I getting ready to head to the party.

And Van and I helping grandma get ready while Esther napped.

Parenting

I saw this on Facebook. I thought it summed things up nicely.

Beartown Rocks

Me and Esther rock climbing

Sandy and the grandkids

Several variations of Sandy with the grandkids. They are all cute, but it was hard to catch everyone smiling at the same time.
The silly picture is the best. It's easy to catch everyone looking silly.

Bedford, PA

This is old, but I didn't have enough pictures to describe Bedford when I outlined our trip on the blog last month. Now I have Andy's camera.
We stayed in Bedford one day after Baltimore and one day before Latrobe. We stayed in a huge fancy hotel. The building was a quarter mile long and had 2 pools.

Andy took this picture of the desert menu for me so I could pick out a desert to eat. After the kids go to bed at 9 I am stuck in the room so I had to have him deliver me a treat.
(I picked the Pecan Shoo-fly Pie).

I wish we had more time to spend here, we didn't get to try the golf course, hiking trails, the indoor pool, the yoga classes or the free afternoon tea. Next year.

More from Baltimore

I finally got all the pictures downloaded from Andy's phone. This is from our trip to Baltimore. It's a great sculpture playground that was near our hotel.

Fall walk

Walking in the fall leaves with Esther this weekend

 We spent quite a bit of time looking at bugs and footprints.

 Trying to make a footprint in the mud.

 Racing.