Apples

One of the best things about the fall is Harvest time. We are lucky to live close to some farms where you can go out and pick your own fruit and vegetables. Last Saturday we headed out to one of these Farms for some Apples.

The hayride out to the orchard.

Mmmmmmmm.......

We love the Fall!

Kissy Kissy

JARED: "Guess what? Anna kissed Luca today at school"

KEVIN: "WHAT!!!!"

JARED: "Yea. We were sitting with my friend and Anna asked if she was my girlfriend and if we kissed."

TIFFANY: "What did you say?"

JARED: "I said no."

TIFFANY: "I don't understand why Anna kissed Luca though."

JARED: "Well my friend saw Anna sitting next to Luca and said I'll kiss Jared if you kiss Luca. So she kissed him."

KEVIN: "Great. We are homeschooling!"

TIFFANY: "Lets just have friends for now, no boyfriends and girlfriends."

ANNA: "OK"

KEVIN: "And NO kissing. Anna don't you know, boys have coodies?"

ANNA: "They are OK"

KEVIN: "Well no kissing OK?

ANNA/JARED: "OK"

The Last Half of Summer

This was the summer of Strep for our family. Annna got strep throat early in the June. No problem...10 days later with some penicillin and she was all better. Out in California Blake and Sara's Jacob was acting really grumpy and clingy and just not well. Within a week my throat felt awful. I've had strep many times and new right away what was wrong so we left Tahoe a day early and headed down the mountain to the ER for some more of that miracle drug penicillin. We called Blake and Sara, who were back in Hawaii, and let them know what we thought might be wrong with Jacob and they got him on the same antibiotic. Audrey, a few days later, ended up with strep as well. No problem just hand over the prescription and we will be fine. We spent about a week of our vacation in quarantine, but after about a day on penicillin we were all feeling much better. I guess I should mention that Sonnet came down with strep a few days after we left. Poor newly wed. A few days after we got home Anna started showing signs of strep again so we went to the doctor and got her another round of antibiotics, however this time through she started to complain about being itchy. With in 3 hours on day 7 of the antibiotic her legs went from white to blotch/fiery red. She was allergic to penicillin. I took about 10 days to two weeks before everything got out of her system and she wasn't itchy anymore. Let me just say that it was brutal. Anna felt like she was being eaten alive and there was nothing that helped except a luke warm oatmeal bath. She was miserable except when she was in the tub. Needless to say she spent most of the time in one.

This is a blurry picture, but you can make out a line along the pinky finger that shows most of her hand bright red. That would be hives. You can't tell, but her hand is also swollen.

Long story short: no more penicillin for Anna.

On a fun note: Kevin and I were able to go to an Orioles game with some friends. They get tickets from their work and invited us to go along. The seats were in the fourth row just behind the home dug out. We were so close I was worried we might get taken out by a foul ball. We did not use zoom for this next picture.

We had a lot of fun. We are spoiled now and I'm not sure we will be able to go back to the nose bleeder seats after enjoying a game so close up.

One of the last things we did before school started was go hiking with our pals the Johnsons.

We hiked to some little falls and the kids tried sliding down. Notice the face of terror on Anna.


The kids went exploring for salamanders, fish, and bugs and Audrey splashed around in a little pool of water.




It has been a fun summer, illnesses and all!

School

School started this week for Jared and Anna. Jared has entered the I'm too cool for pictures phase. We did our best to capture the moment.

Anna was really excited about Kindergarten. She had her outfit picked out for days. I can't believe how fast they are growing up.