The bus ride

 Ryan and his best buds.  And Mabel.  (Who doesn't want a picture with Mabel in it?!)

 He's a pro at this now.  I love the bus.  Me loading up my kiddos twice a day to drive Ryan to school would not equal good times.  Plus, he has lots of friends and kids from our ward that ride with him and a very sweet bus driver.  We've only had good experiences with the bus.

And I like that he still waves to me and sits in the front row.  Do you think I can convince him to do that in 6th grade?

Lucy 10 months

Look at those teeth!  6 with one on the way.  And yes, my kids teeth are huge.  Wow.

 This cutie- patootie is 10 months now.  She has abandoned her army crawl for the real thing and is all over.  Especially under the table...because she knows she can score some sweet crumbs.  She desperately wants to crawl up the stairs but thankfully can't yet, and has just recently started pulling up on things.  

Seriously, this age is one of my favorites.  As is the baby :)  

big 1st grader

 Ready to go in to Mrs. Hernandez 1st grade class.

 He was super excited about having his own desk "to put his stuff in"

 "Who's excited for their first day of 1st grade?"

Goodbye to our big kid!  We can't wait until he gets home off the bus to tell us all about it.

goodbye summer

We will miss you.  And goodbye to your rag-a-muffin ways kids, sorry.  We'll be out in public again soon.

go 'topes

We tried to get in a couple more late nights.  The kids did great, made it to the end of the 7th inning.  Is anyone else afraid of getting hit by balls like I am?

at the beach

 Lucy was such a trooper, she loved the sand and didn't eat too much of it.

 Ryan loved tubing with friends and riding the jet ski.

 Mabel's favorite part was the food of course.  But she did like riding on the fast boat.  She kept freaking me out by refusing to wear a life jacket or wings while swimming and would walk farther and farther out saying "is this too deep mom?"

 Don't judge the binky, it's how we got her to take a nap on the beach.

 Champion baby..she took a two hour nap.

Andrew was happy to just be there.  And he had a great time on the tube with Dad.  He got the most air.

slip n slide

 We have only one more week of summer here in ABQ before school starts, can you believe it???  Summer went by so fast.

 I've been campaigning for mother of the year award this summer, so I got out the slide and invited some neighbor kids over.  This was even at the risk of ripping up our fragile grass (which it totally did)

 Andrew still uses the running method to get to the end.

 Ryan was getting it this year and getting some good runs.

We're going to try to get in as much summer fun this week as we can before our Ryan becomes a 1st grader!!!

in my garden

We used chicken manure this year and look at the size of my tomatoes!  

 The cherry tomatoes have done great too, Spencer usually has a big bowl full to take to work each day.

 And of course the zucchini, a gardeners confidence booster has done great.

 We did basil this year and I even made some spaghetti sauce the other night with my tomatoes and basil.

And since we live in New Mexico, I thought I should grow some sort of hot chili pepper.  

Those were the successes....I didn't take pictures of my dead peas (they did great for a couple weeks, and then died in our hot July weather), green beans, wimpy onions, and strawberries.  But again, this is New Mexico.  ;)