The screened-in porch was finished! We were really hoping to have it finished up in September but we experienced some delays when we discovered (to our dismay) that the washing machine in the garage was pumping grey water into the yard right were we needed to put a concrete slab. Once that was taken care of it rained for nearly a week so it took a long time to get the slab down. Once that was done, everything else moved along pretty quickly. We're really happy with the final result. We've eaten nearly every dinner outside since it was completed.

We spent a lot of time working in the garden. While I was tilling I found a neat little skink that I showed to the girls. I had never seen one so big before.

We ate the last of the bell peppers, tore up all of the scraggly tomato plants, and planted about 250 strawberry plants.

I put up hoops over the greens so we can cover it with plastic once we hit a frost. We've only had one frost so far this year.

We went to a friend's birthday party at Shelby Bottoms. C and I got there an hour early so we got some hiking in.

We also hit up the Farmer's Market for pumpkins and C got to paint one.

A and I also got to go out on 1 (one) date together. It was a breakfast/brunch, which we found to be quite nice because we weren't too exhausted to talk.

We also went hiking one weekend at Edwin Warner park. The leaves are all turning so it was a beautiful autumn day to visit!

 

We've been fortunate to enjoy a very mild fall with a lot of outdoor time.

C's favorite thing this month is telling people (including us, several times a day), "Hey, listen to this sound" followed by a snort (crossed with a pig's oink). She will randomly do this to neighbors, strangers, and people at church. She's becoming the family ham with her familiar refrain of "Watch this" followed by some sort of antic (usually a facial expression).

J's favorite thing has been some American Girl books that her grandmother brought earlier this year and we pulled up from the basement. She read the entire "Samantha" series and now keeps telling me that she can't wait to read the "Molly" series. I heard her asking A, "Does [our city] have a Main Street?"

"Yes, it does. Why?"

"In all these books I'm reading, all the cities seem to have a Main Street."

I love hearing her discover the world through books.

R's favorite thing is thumping the bed with her feet during the night. She sleeps on her back and she's typically swaddled, so she can't do much with her arms. Her little legs, however, are free, so she lifts them up in the air and then wham!, slams them down on her bed. The house nearly trembles. I'm going to start calling her "Thumper." She does this all night and during naps. Several times I thought it was one of her sisters dropping books from the top bunk of their bed. Nope, it's just R, thumping those legs. Girl's going to have some serious thigh muscles.

I kept thinking I would get around to posting photos for August, but, nope, now it's October and I've got to include September as well.

Looking back at the photos from August 1, I'm amazed at how much R has changed in the past two months. Of course, she's nearly twice as old as she was then.

I spent a lot of August walking with R in the morning. She was waking up several times a night and would be alert and happy at 6am. I would take her out for a walk in the hopes of letting A get an extra hour or so of sleep before I left for work. Morning walks, even at 6am, are quite pleasant. Other folks in the neighborhood were out as well. Some people were walking to the bus to leave for work, others were walking their dogs about the same time. One of our neighbors, a little old lady named Ruth, was often out working in her front yard garden. I spoke to her briefly about the 6-7 new houses going in across the street from her. She said she had lived in the house for 60 years and had always looked across an empty pasture. It was going to take some time to get used to the new view.

Our neighborhood has an annual festival in August (which means it's often blazing hot outside). This year it rained the night before, so it was mercifully cool.

They had a water slide set up for kids so the girls got soaking wet, of course.

Our garden tends to get a little shabby over the summer as weeds grow up and take over. I spent one weekend in August clearing everything out and tilling it all up with our brand new Husqvarna. Prior to purchasing the 18" wide Husqvarna we either paid a neighbor to bring his giant $20,000 Kubota tractor with attached tiller or I would have to tackle it with a tiny little 9" Honda tiller. That little tiller was not really up to a 2500 sq ft garden (leaving out the other plots A has plans for occasionally). I am happy to say the Husqvarna is a much more formidable tool and I consider it a great investment if you plan on tilling very often.

We also made another weekend trip to Chattanooga. We hit up the aquarium as usual, but the main purpose was to join my family in celebrating my aunt and uncles 25th wedding anniversary. They happened to get married on the same day as my grandparents, who were celebrating their 62nd wedding anniversary. Wow!

Also of note, J started first grade. We home schooled her thru kindergarten, so we took the obligatory "first day of school" shot this year.

So far her school has been going quite well. We do wish we had better options that didn't require a 20 minute drive. Our local public schools rank as some of the worst in the state, and the state ranks as one of the worst in the United States. That's a pretty low bar. For that reason we've enrolled J in a hybrid system where she goes to a school 3 days a week and we teach the remaining days. It seems to work well so far.

Getting to know R's personality over August and September has been a delight. The girls ask to hold her nearly every single day, and J does a great job of entertaining her when we are busy doing other things.

Another thing we did in August was eat a lot of peaches. I work near a farmer's market so I would stop several times a week to buy a 10-pound bag of them.

What with the new baby I haven't been able to cycle to work much this summer. Hopefully I can start that up again next year, but in the mean time I bought a really nice road bike from a co-worker at a very deep discount (the best way to purchase a bike!). I took it out several mornings in August in September and even made the ride out to Percy Priest Lake, about 11.5 miles away. You can take a green-way the entire way, which means you don't have to interact with traffic at all. It's a very, very pleasant way to start the day.

We also celebrated Yom Teruah (Rosh Hashana) by going hiking. I bought a shofar, too, which we blew several times to celebrate the day.

Lest I forget to mention, our oldest also celebrated her sixth birthday in September! We took her to Chuck E. Cheese (at her request) and somewhere A has a photo sitting with her fingers plugged in her ears. Everyone looks completely zonked in one photo we took.

Abbey also got mustard greens, kale, spinach, and many other fall garden plants into the ground. I am working on putting hoops up over it all so we can extend the growing season a bit.

We made a fall trip to Cheekwood, too.

We celebrated the feast of booths (Sukkot) by putting a tent up in the backyard. Unfortunately, it rained the entire week, so it didn't really get a ton of usage. However, not all was lost: they enjoyed having a nice air mattress to jump on.

Fall is coming quickly and summer is fading (despite the fact it's still been very warm). We have been having some work on the house done to make room for R. A screen porch has been in progress; hopefully it'll be done before it gets cold. We are very excited to sit outside and drink hot coffee or tea without having to battle the hordes of mosquitoes!

Over all, the past two months have been very enjoyable and I feel as if we are adjusting well to having three girls in the house. We are wonderfully blessed in so many ways.

July in our region is hot. As in, stay-inside-try-to-avoid-the-humidity hot. I've been taking R and Wilbur for walks nearly every morning and even at 5:30 or 6am I get back to the house sweaty and gross. Still, this summer has been relatively mild compared to previous ones. Mild enough that I've been able to continue running during my lunch hour (nearly the hottest time of the day).

The girls had a blast in July.

Their cousins from Texas came to visit! We had a blast visiting various places in Nashville.

Of course, the girls were sad when they had to go back home.

Poppy came to visit, too. We took him to the Farmer's Market for a bike race and fountains and I think the activity was too much for him.

We also pulled the first honey off of our hives! We got nearly five gallons off of two supers.

The garden is producing tomatoes, corn, and beans, but not much of any of these things due to our lack of ability to get out there and weed it all. A is planning a nice winter garden, though, so perhaps we'll make up for it then!

The house we first moved into when landing in Nashville has a field behind it that fills up with daffodils. Every year we've gone out to take photos. Here are some animations from those visits.

 

Google Photos has an interesting feature that stitches your photos together into animations, collages, and movies. I am going to post a few of my favorites. This one, from a family photo session in Texas, really cracked me up.