The Latest

From Bryn: Current loves include the kitty and Addison's sunglasses. Learning to talk better and better everyday. We've been potty training for what seems like 2 years, but we're slowly starting to see some progress. She surprises me with all the things she knows, like the other day I sat down to teach her a few letters, and discovered that she already knows about half the alphabet. Thanks, SuperWhy! She's also quite a little counter and can get past ten.

 From Addison: Somehow, out of the blue, he's learned to draw. No idea where. But here's some artwork that I stumbled upon after a recent quiet time. L-R: Happy, Sad, Angry, Surprised. He's also big into building things with rocks in the backyard right now. Below you'll see his tow truck.

From the neighbors: Nothing new, just still haven't cut their grass. The kids and the cat don't mind, though.

From Michelle: Just canning. And canning some more. And then finding that the counter is cleared off only to have it filled again with more to can the next morning. I shouldn't complain, but I do anyway. And don't look now, apples will be ready in a couple weeks. Also toying with the idea of joining a community band-that is if the canning ever ends.

From the local wildlife: Must be the end of September because we have a veritable plague of locusts at our house. Big crunchy ones. Addison is thrilled.

From Nate: Fearlessly leading us through the process of refinancing. That makes us old, I think. His current outlet is co-editing a book on Zion National Park. (Mine is tiddlywinks).  And also foiling any attempts by Michelle to get out of canning. For example: our tomatoes stopped turning red for awhile and were just hanging there all green and uncannable. Nate prays for them to ripen (out of earshot of the wifey for fear of unleashed wrath), lo and behold I look out a couple days later and see red. Nice. More tomato sauce. Then a couple days later he just happens to wind up next to the world's foremost gardening experts on his morning commute and spends the entire time talking gardening. And whaddaya know, there's a magical way to make green tomatoes turn red if there's an early frost. Great. (I won't put it on here just in case you're like me and don't really want to know). And in the same conversation he somehow manages to score us 243,287,987 peaches and the same number of grapes. We're friends anyway, though.