Eight years old

We are now 4/5ths of the way through birthday season, which begins July 28th and ends October 17th. The days sometimes seem like years, but the years are flying by like days. It's hard to believe Joey is already eight. It's a big milestone around here—he'll be baptized next month.

Looking back through my photos to find a few for this post I found myself smiling again and again, and having a hard time picking my favorite shots. Joey is a big personality in a skinny (but strong) little body. Here are some current highlights:

• He's definitely a redhead!
• One of his superpowers is making friends.
• He thinks he'd like to be a chemist when he grows up.
  
• He loves pepperoni pizza, roasted potatoes & carrots and most treats.
• He's usually the first kid awake.
• This week's note from his piano teacher said "Joey was AWESOME today!"
• He is a great brother!
• He's a great help around the house. A few jobs right now include feeding Jamaica, setting and clearing the table, vacuuming the basement and reading to the girls.
• He's a good student and a teacher's pet.
• When he's happy, everyone's happy. (Unfortunately, the reverse is true too).
• He still lets us call him Boo.
• We love him, and we're proud of him!

It will all be worth it

Photo Scrooge is in danger of being renamed "Remodeling Scrooge." He is not dealing well with the chaos, as you may have read here, here and here. But now that the demolition is done, we will be seeing some progress—the new walls are in, the cabinets have been ordered, the plumbing will be done tomorrow, the electrical on Monday, and the insulation on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll get the drywall started on Wednesday. Anyone want to help me pick out countertops and flooring?

Back in business

After two and a half painful weeks without my computer, I am happy to report the latest addition to our family is a new iMac. It is  a thing of beauty. And function—I don't even think of it as a luxury anymore. I've been working on not drooling on the super-cool aluminum keyboard.

So, now that I've balanced my checkbook, downloaded my photos and caught up reading e-mail & blogs, I'm going to try to post the highlights of the past few weeks, backdating a few just to break things up. We've been so busy that even if I hadn't been without a computer, I'm not sure I would have had time to record it, but there's some good stuff that needs to make it into the year-end book. 

Kindergarten!

Ellie had a few extra days of summer vacation, since the kindergarten teachers had individual student assessments during the first week. Ellie's teacher is young and cute. After Ellie's assessment I asked her what she thought about her teacher and she agreed that she was very nice, then added "And I love her clothes!"