School Start and Mormor Visit

School started up again after Labor Day.  Karina is in 2nd grade and Lydia started kindergarten.  Derek isn't in any grade, but decided he also needed to wear a backpack the first day we went to the bus stop and he also wanted his individual picture taken.

There are over 27 kids at our bus stop, including 8 second graders (Karina's grade), and 8 kindergartners (Lydia's grade).  

The second graders of the bus stop:

I thought it would be strange to have it just be me and Derek during the day, since I have been so used to at least 2 kids at home.  It has gone really well though and Derek and I have fun. 

Here Derek was playing with butter and making a mess.  He thought it was great.

Snoopy likes to snuggle up with the kids, especially Karina and Lydia. 

Lydia and her best doggy friend Emma.  They are still nearly inseparable.

Derek has his own set of stuffed animals and his own stuffed beagle, but isn't attached to them like Lydia was and is.  This is Derek with Li-Li, Karina stuffed dog when she was little.

Both girls are in girl scouts this year: Karina is a Brownie and Lydia is a Daisy.  They are dressed up for Uniform Day at school.

Mormor came to visit for over 2 weeks.  I forgot to take pictures most days, but it was a nice visit.  Snoopy of course was thrilled to have his sucker here and was always jumping on her lap in hopes of getting the remnants of her bagel, toast, etc.

Derek loves Snoopy too, though Derek doesn't realize that he weighs more than Snoopy and needs to be more gentle.  

Mother and I potty trained Derek.  He took to it immediately and by the end of the 1st day, he was consistently only peeing in the potty.  There have only been a couple pee accidents in the weeks since then and he is definitely pee trained.  We are still working a little bit on the other part.  He is officially my youngest potty trained kid though at 2 year 7 months (Karina was 2 years 8 months). 

During the first few days of potty training, he ran around the house bottomless, without a care in the world.  Here he is building with blocks and cuddling Snoopy:

I finally got some pictures of the kids with Mormor one of the last days, not that the kids were being cooperative. 

Some pictures of playing around the house:

We also went to a farm with a pumpkin patch, corn maze, hay ride, and display of hounds/horses one day.  Once a season they showcase the hunting dogs (foxhounds) and the horses that hunt with them.  There were tons of dogs and horses.  It was really cool to see the riders dressed up on the horses and the dogs were all friendly and happy.  There were also just so many of them.

We then went on a hay ride behind a clunky old tractor.  We were the second wagon connected to the tractor and we couldn't believe how long the hayride was.  Part of the ride went straight through a river, which was incredibly unexpected.  We felt like we might wash away or tip over.  It was definitely exciting!

We finally made it to the pumpkin patch:

Then we got to pick some popcorn.  Later we picked the kernels off of the cobs and popped the popcorn in the air popper.  I had never seen popcorn kernels on the cob before. 

Finally we ventured into the corn maze, which was much easier than last year, but since we had already had so much fun at the farm, it was ok.