Crazy Last Days of Summer...

Whew! The last week or so has been a bit crazy around here, but lots of fun! We hosted two sets of friends for dinner (one of which included a scary fire in our grill), enjoyed 16 fabulous teacher friends of mine for Bunko, went on a trip to the zoo and had some fun days with Grammy Joyce, shuttled the girls around to different locations/took time off work to watch the girls each day while our babysitter was on vacation, and I was even part of an evacuation at my school that was big news. Crazy stuff, but we're surviving, relaxing this weekend, and looking forward to getting into a routine this week.


Our friends, Karianne & Justin, came over for some Hall Ranch steaks before they headed back to Japan for their 3rd year of teaching at an international school there. They brought the girls little kimonos, so of course we had to try them out. Justin even had Gabi doing the sumo wrestler walk -- pretty funny!

Can you tell who Maya looks like in this picture? ;-) (Like father, like daughter)

Smiling at big sister -- she's pretty funny!

Kisses for Maya -- sweet girls

While Joe's mom was here, we took Gabi to the zoo and she had a blast. After seeing the kangaroos hopping, she decided she needed to hop around the zoo for quite awhile and say "hop, hop, hop" as she did so. She still loved the elephants and when she saw the giraffes, she said "is tall!" She wasn't a big fan of the carousel, but maybe after a few more tries, she might like it. Grammy and the girls had a fun time while we were at work and Gabi even does the Grammy celebratory dance now as you can see in the video below. She does it a lot after she uses the potty...quite comical! It's funny what they pick up on.

Hope everyone is doing well! Thanks for checking in on us! Tara