After about 5 years...

... the goatee has come off. Don't know how long it will last, but thought I'd share for everyone to see.

Birthdays

So September is our month for birthdays - Caleb, Rachel, and Sara - we all share this wonderful month. Things have been pretty hectic, so here's a condensed course of events this month.

Most of you know the month starts off with my birthday. I decided to take a couple days off of work and I wound up spending a good portion of that working on the swing set pieces for my mom's yard. My birthday evening Heather tried to surprise me (I say tried, because I had a sense it was coming) by not telling me where we were going, but to be ready by 4:30. I had already heard from most of my family by this time, but I hadn't gotten the day-early call from my good friend Jared Moore yet. This led me to believe that we were going to meet up with them and do something. As we got in the car, Heather told me where to drive and I guessed that we would be eating out at PF Chang. Well, I called it. We had a good time at dinner with Jared and Lisa (as always) and then went to a movie afterward.

Labor day weekend came and we were about ready to assemble the swing set project. We did most of the final prep work on Saturday, and then took all the pieces, hardware, and necessary tools over to assemble it on Monday.

I robbed this picture from mom's blog. A single picture doesn't do justice to all the work that was done. Thanks to Nate and dad for sticking with me through the day to get it done. By the end of Labor day we had about everything assembled. It was a big project - one that I would probably do again, but not in the near future.

Back to birthdays...
Rachel turned 8 this month and decided she wanted a party with friends. Heather will take care of that post. What I'm covering is the family day. We had the family come down to watch football and play Beatles Rockband. We took a break to sing Happy Birthday. We had leftover cupcakes from Rachel's party, but not enough candles for me, so I started lighting the Hannah Montana cupcake decorations on fire.

Rachel took her turn...

Then Sara got her first birthday cupcake. It took a little taste of the chocolate to get her started...

... then she figured it out...

... and wanted more.

Peaches - 2009

Catching up on a few posts for the last few weeks. Spetember is a hectic month for us between birthdays and other happenings...

We've had our peach tree for 2 years now and had a real crop this year for the small tree that it is. I'm guessing it gave about 3 dozen, minus the ones that we thinned a little earlier in the season. We saw these peaches on the ground after a storm came through last week and decided it was time to harvest.

The peaches were sweet and tasty. We had several fresh and Heather bottled the others this past week. Yummy!