First Day of School

 Henry started preschool last week - he's in a split 3s/4s class because of low enrollment numbers with the 4 year olds. It's the same school he went to last year (Burlingame Co-operative), but he goes three mornings a week this year instead of two.  He jumped right back into the routine of school with absolutely no transition problems or separation issues at all. I can't explain how relieved I was about that! We've gone to as many preschool playdates as we could over the summer including a back to school picnic with the teachers the week before school started. I think staying in contact with his classmates and "remembering" about school all summer long was extremely beneficial and made the transition back into school much smoother.

Tomorrow will be my second day parent helping already (only two weeks into the year) because I am trying to knock out as many parent help days as I can before the baby comes! As much as I enjoy having some free time while he's in school, I also really love helping out in his classroom. The kids are so funny and I

love seeing what Henry's up to while in school all morning.

Speaking of the baby coming, we are on final countdown. Technically I have about 2 1/2 weeks left, but I'm thinking she'll come earlier than that. We'll see! I'm already one week past the date I delivered Henry, so that's an improvement!

More Summer Fun

 In August Henry's preschool participated in the Multnomah Days Parade through Multnomah Village. Brett pulled Henry in the wagon and Henry got to toss candy out to the crowd. He loved it! And we loved watching him!

 Here's Henry up at the Rose Gardens after he had his pictures taken up there by a professional photographer. This summer we grew strawberries, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes and a bell pepper. Here's Henry with some of the harvest. I was so happy we actually got some to harvest because I wasn't sure if they would grow or not! We've actually gotten a bunch of cherry tomatoes (maybe 2 dozen) and about 8 tomatoes. Only one bell pepper; but as you can see it's a big one...hopefully it ripens (it's supposed to be an orange bell pepper!) before the cool weather arrives.Our strawberries were harvested more towards the middle of the summer and we got at least a couple to three dozen berries. Not too shabby!

The two sunbathers!

Fair Fun!

 (The video is best watched small...it gets too fuzzy if you make it full screen.)

This summer we went to two fairs: the Clackamas County Fair and the Oregon State Fair. We had a great time at both. It's hard to say what activity Henry enjoyed the most...he definitely loved seeing all the animals but he also loved the rides. The state fair had some other, different, activities that he liked as well including a trout fishing tank and a barnyard animal race at which Henry was chosen to be our section's cheer leader. I was actually pretty surprised that Henry wanted to do it; there was a fairly big crowd and Henry had to go down and stand in front of everyone and wave a flag to cheer on our animal in the race, but he loved every second of it!

Henry with a sheep...this was right before we encouraged him to let a cow lick his arm without knowing how rough a cow's tongue is...he ended up with a pretty bad rug-burn type scrape on his arm where the cow licked him.

 Getting ready for a helicopter ride!

 Pony ride at the state fair!

 Red team cheer leader! Sadly our animal (I can't even remember which one was ours now...) did not win.

 Playing the drums at the state fair - look at the serious expression as he counts out the beats.

Fishing in the trout tank. All three of them took their fishing duties quite seriously!

Testing out an ATV.


The video above shows some clips from the fairs starting with Henry riding the kid's swing ride. I wish there was a way to have captured how thrilled Henry was while riding it; he absolutely loved it! The next part is him and his friend Anna riding ponies at the state fair. Neither one of them looks like they are having that much fun, but they actually did...especially Henry whose horse was the same color as Roy Rogers' horse, Trigger. The third clip is of Henry as the flag-waving, cheer leader of the red section during the barnyard animal race. Finally the last clip isn't actually from a fair, it's from Oaks Park, but it fit in so well with the rest of the clips I had to include it. Henry, Mom, and Brett were supposed to race down the big slide, but Henry took off early and "won" the race by a landslide...and takes obvious delight in his victory.