Goodbye Summer

We were able to squeeze in a little more fun right before school started.  We had one last beach day on a school day.  It was a pretty hot day and we had a lot of fun:

The next day we went to a fun local event.  It's a huge multicultural festival called Happy Kid's Day. We were there for like three hours and didn't even hit half of the booths.  Natalie wanted to spend some of her tickets paying for a chance to have her picture taken with a python:

That girl has no fear when it comes to animals/bugs.

The kids all had fun on the pony rides, too:

These guys were cool:

The Sunday before school started, we drove out to the temple.  It's always good to be there.  The Oakland temple is especially important to us since that's where Joe and I were married:

(my first experiment with a filter! So dreamy, right? :)

Look at us now--4 kids and almost 10 years later:

Joe had some fun posing the kids on these bushes:

Not sure what the grounds crew would think of that...

Some other summer adventures...

The kids have been playing with the blocks a lot more lately.  Here are some of their creations from a lazy morning:

Natalie's restaurant, I think, with Cinderella taking the orders.

Nate's tower:

That's probably what I love the most about summer break--the kids having enough time for long, drawn-out pretend play together.  It's so fun to watch.

Natalie lost her first top tooth just in time for school:

And Elijah got his first tooth:

Now he has two!

Last but not least, Nate dressed up like Joe:

We miss you summer!