Charlie's Birthday and Anne's First Day of School

Major events and happenings:

• Sept 5 - Charlie turned 2 years old.  For his birthday, we went on a short train ride and then went up to the land for the rest of the weekend.  At the land we had cake and opened presents.  Charlie had a great birthday surrounded by his family.
• Sept 9 - Anne had her first full day of school.  She was super excited and didn't even hesitate to get on the bus in the morning.  Since that first day we have never had any trouble convincing her to go to school.  Though she doesn't like to answer questions about school, she seems to have a great time. 
• Charlie has been taking a Mini Makers program at the library.  The crafts are a bit difficult for him, but I really enjoy helping him make rockets, ecospheres, cars, boats, etc,  It is a really fun program. 
• Charlie also took part in a Music and Movement class at the library, and now a Discovering Math and Science class run by the same lady.  Charlie really gets into the songs and dancing and seems to like the math and science activities.  
• Anne and Charlie are both in swimming lessons again.  They both absolutely love the water.  It is a huge hit.
• One day a fire truck came and parked on our court.  While the firefighters went around checking peoples' smoke detectors, Anne and Charlie got the grand tour of the fire truck.  They climbed all over it and chatted with the firefighters for about 15 minutes.  Lots of photos below.
• One weekend while visiting Gramma and Grampa B we visited the zoo.  It was pretty exciting feeding animal feed and bananas to the monkeys, pigs, goats, and giraffes.  
• Another weekend visiting Gramma and Grampa B we visited the pumpkin farm we like to go to each fall.  This year they had installed a small train that people can ride around a hill.  Charlie was pretty excited about it.  The kids also enjoyed playing with trucks in the sand, feeding the cows, rolling down a hill, jumping in a bouncy castle, climbing on hay bales, and going through the corn maze.  
• Lately Anne has become more and more interested in learning to read.  She is learning sight words at school and can sound out a lot of phonetic words.  She still loves to be read to and we read to her all the time.  
• Charlie is becoming more and more interested in doing everything by himself.  Everything.  Like putting on his coat, climbing into his car seat, unlocking the front door, sweeping the floor, climbing into his crib, etc.  If he isn't allowed or isn't able to do it, he throws a temper tantrum.  
• Charlie is able to recognize one item or two items.  If there are more than two, he just keeps on counting.  When asked what colour something is, he always answers blue or orange.  When you tell him the actual colour, he claps his hands and says,  "Yay!"
• Charlie is a lean, mean, talking machine.  He talks in full, (mostly) gramatically correct sentences and can go on and on talking about everything he sees and asking questions.  "Why?" is of course one of his favourite things to ask.
• Both Anne and Charlie love reading books.  Anne could sit for hours listening to books.  And sometimes reading a book is the only way to calm Charlie down.
• I got to go visit Aunt Lo in Calgary for FOUR whole days.  I got to meet my new nephew baby Tommy.  He is pretty adorable.  He is not even three months old yet and loves to jump in his jolly jumper.  He seems like a pretty happy baby, content to look around and even hang out in his playpen for a while cooing at the world. While I was gone, Gramma G took over taking care of the kids at home and did a much better job than I do.  The kids didn't miss me at all and were more excited to see the airport than to see me.  :P
• Oct 31 - Halloween was great this year.  Anne dressed up as a witch and was very very excited to be wearing black nail polish and black lipstick.  Charlie chose a tiger costume.  At first, Charlie didn't really understand what was going on with the treats and wanted to stop and eat the first treat he got.  After a couple of houses though he figured it out and became all excited about getting more and more treats.  

Quotes from the kids:

• Anne, regarding going to a restaurant: "Let's go to Super Mario--what?  What's it called".  East Side Mario's.
• Charlie: While looking wistfully at a departing recycling truck: "I love that garbage truck."
• Charlie: "For pete's sake, put some water in this."
• Charlie: "Is Anne on timeout?"
  Mommy: "Yes Charlie."
  Charlie: "Can I bother her?   ... Poke, poke!"    

Anne wrote the alphabet and numbers

Anne and Maddie as Snow White and Elsa

Anne driving with Grandpa

Charlie driving with Grandpa

Anne and Charlie using the ramp on a big moving truck

Romping in the moving truck

Taking a freezy break from jumping on the trampoline

Passed out.  That must have been a vodka freezy.

Sometimes Sue can't decide which picture to post.

Sometimes she posts all of them.  (This is Sue.  It was a SEQUENCE.  Important to see all of them in order.)

Anne also succumbs to her vodka freezy

Riding on the train in Guelph

Cousins on carousels

Ice cream time for 5 cousins

Oh the humanity

Anne in a corn-box/tent.  An interesting combination.

Grandpa and baby Ada

Happy Ada

Charlie anxiously awaiting Gramma G's return from Calgary

Charlie in a bug net at the land.

Anne and Charlie together

Baby Ada falls asleep

Anne holds a flower for baby Ada to smell

Anne and Grampa play go fish

Baby Ada plays cards with Grampa

Me and baby Ada

Anne and Charlie on Charlie's birthday train ride

The excitement when the trains whistle blew

Grampa's tractor at the land

Anne loves to play go fish with Grampa

Baby Ada

Ada all ready for Charlie's birthday

Charlie tries to blow out the candle on his train cake

Birthday party at the land

Present opening time.  From Anne, Charlie gets a tractor that you can fix up with a screwdriver.  I'm pretty sure that you couldn't make a toy better suited to Charlie if you tried.

Charlie plays frisbee with Uncle Gus

Photo of four grandkids

Attempted photo of five grandkids for Gramma's birthday puzzle

Anne and Darwyn show off the boats they made to float down the river

Max's boat

Walking with Daddy

Another attempt at a photo will five grandkids for Gramma's birthday puzzle.

The winning photo of five grandkids for Gramma's puzzle.

The winning photo of baby Tommy, also made into a puzzle for Gramma G's birthday.  Unfortunately we haven't had the chance for all six grandkids to get together yet.

Charlie driving the fire truck

Anne driving the fire truck

Anne living the life, fire fighter style

Charlie clambering around the fire truck, sans pants

Anne ready for her first day of school.

Walking to the bus stop on the first day of school.

Waiting for the bus.  Still very exciting.

Anne returns from her first day of school.

An air vent at the doctor's office blows air up Anne and Charlie's clothes.

We needed a family photo for Anne's sharing circle at school.

Charlie proudly climbs a tree.

Feeding the llama's at the zoo.

Feeding the miniature goats.

Charlie LOVES to mow the lawn.  Right on Gramma's heels.

Charlie dressed as ladybug girl.

Charlie happily holding baby Ada.

Charlie driving the wooden train at the pumpkin farm

Anne's monster face

Anne rolls down the hill

Charlie REALLY likes this fire truck

Riding the little train

Climbing on the hay bales

Stalking through the really long corn stalk tunnel

Charlie takes a short break to chase a seagull

Charlie in the leaves.  We get a lot of leaves at our house

Anne in the leaves

Where is she hiding?

Anne made signs for the bedroom doors at Aunt Lo's house.  Aunt Lo hung them up on the doors and we took pictures.  This is Tommy's room.

This is Aunt Laura and Uncle Rob's room.  You might need a magnifying glass to find Uncle Rob's name.

Anne also drew some art for Tommy (obviously the one on the bottom).

Baby (cousin) Tommy

Baby Tommy hanging out in his playpen

Baby Tommy on Uncle Rob's shoulder.  

Baby Tommy in the jolly jumper

Baby Tommy tries out the Bumbo for the first time

Anne all ready for Halloween

Charlie in his tiger suit

A nice smile on Anne

The only non-blurry photo of both kids

Anne and Charlie raking in the loot at Steve and Patti's house