The short take...

We're enjoying a crazy summer (already), before Kate starts Kindergarten (ALREADY!!?) this fall. Our kids are so much fun, and we are SO blessed!

If you want to browse our pictures, you can do so at our new Google Picasa album).

October 04, 2008

Well, summer has ended here, though it did so with such speed, we're really not sure what happened! But October is here, and as all the trees are beginning to show us, it's fall. It sure makes getting up in the morning tough though, as the sun keeps rising later and later!

Well, we're all keeping quite busy, between work, preschool, church and other extra-curricular activities, but we're doing just great. Kate has, even just in the past week or so, really started enjoying preschool to the point where she almost doesn't complain when we drop her off in the mornings! We always knew that she was doing great during the day, but she sure knew how to break our hearts when we put her down in the morning. Now when we put her down, she looks for some of her friends, and starts playing with toys. Her teachers have been great- and it's fun when, more than once a week, she gets to bring home some crafts that they've done that day- usually having something to do with handprints or fingerprints, which make them all the more special!

She's learned other things from preschool, too...things that make life interesting like grabbing something away or not letting us take something she wants...we're getting the first of the selfish side of childhood for the first time, but she knows that we win and usually gets over any fit she tries to throw pretty quickly. It's been an interesting process, though. She can really communicate anything she wants to, now. She's known "no" (shaking her head) for a while now, but she recently picked up "yes" (a little nodding, but usually it's spoken ya-ya). She points to and says "ma-ma" or "da-da" correctly now, though she thinks it's great fun to say the other name than you're trying to get her to say at the time. (say ma-ma, kate...DA DA!) But she'll also repeat almost any sound you ask her to imitate, and she's picking up on some key sounds (bath, thank you, etc). She's got both "food" and "sleep" down, and asks for them correctly when it's mealtime or bedtime.

Well, since we last posted on here, Kyla and Kate have been to Florida and back, visiting Kyla's dad at his house down there. Michael couldn't get the time off to come, but Kate loved the trip, and especially the beach! Daniel has continued to excel in his current program, despite obstacles and stubborn instructors. In fact, right now he's on his first of several cross-country flights! We got to talk to him tonight, it sounds like he's doing great, but he sure is working hard! He said that this flight is more what he expects flying is "supposed" to be...it was long enough he could actually relax and enjoy it! All they've had them doing 'till this point were things like emergency maneuvers, bad weather flying, formation flying (though that one has to be cool in its own right, too)...not exactly what you'd expect to be doing on every flight! So it sounded like it was good to get some "real-life" experience.

Before too many weekends pass here, we'll have to get out and look at all the leaves before they blow off the trees, but for this weekend Michele is coming up for a few days for the beginning of her fall break, so I'm sure we'll all be keeping busy doing fall-ish things! And laundry...it's still a weekend after all ;-) So it'll be a good weekend, but a busy one- Michael's even on at church this weekend. Anyway, I hope all your summers have been great and we wish you a wonderful fall!

(By the way, lots has changed around the website here under the hood, but it'll ultimately serve to make it easier to keep it updated...hopefully we'll be able to get back to the Friday afternoon updates every week. We're also using some of the new features that are coming out in the new Internet Explorer, so keep your eye out for all that when it gets released...the Short Takes at the top of this page, for instance, are now web clips so you can tell without even visiting our site generally how we're doing! There's a few side effects though, too; if you get our updates via RSS, note we've got a new address for our feed: http://www.mkgarrison.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss . Also, the older posts are now organized by month, rather than all being dumped on one big page, so it should make it nicer. But let us know if something doesn't work...it's a lot of work bringing all my antequated codes up to snuff, and I'm sure I missed something!)