September

Charlotte is off to church!

Turning the play room into a bedroom was really quite a big remodel.  I imagined how big it would be--how much work, how long it would take which is why I had been putting John off the idea for years (he suggested doing this a couple years ago when we first began running out of bedroom space).  Alas, even knowing how hard it would be, not physically being able to get a bed and dresser into the rooms upstairs for each kid, I knew it needed to be done.  John was willing to do the work as it would buy us a couple more years in this house, because I had been threatening to move summer of 2016 and he doesn't want to leave his shop, understandably.

We removed the gigantic hearth and the ancient, messy, and completely broken gas fireplace/stove.

John insisted on removing old boards and splicing in new ones so that our beautiful new floors wouldn't have an obviously patched look:

We also had to make way for a large armoire/closet here, so we had to rip out the built in shelving unit.  It was really hard for me to make that call because it was a nice shelving unit, and it would require additional patching of the floor.  If this didn't happen however, I knew we would have to keep hanging up the kids clothes upstairs in the one closet that is up there, and I felt there was no point in making this happen unless I could create a sufficiently practical bedroom space.  Behind the built-in shelves the previous remodelers had not bothered putting sheetrock, so we had to rip out this paneling and John had to patch with sheetrock.

And Rowan is 6 months old!

He has the best smile of any of my babies;

Arabelle really enjoys doing chores the first time in her life that she has ever done them.  Sadly after the first time she is bored of them and nothing can entice/threaten her into doing it again.

Jeffrey has been getting into earning/saving money lately.  He lost his 8th tooth and tried to negotiate for $15 from the tooth fairy.

Arabelle called this a "talking dog", strange thing is I an kind of see it:

Charlotte's creation is on the left:

Manitou Springs Cliff Dwellings

 Jeffrey manages to look incredibly alien-like, or alien-hunter-like.  But it was appropriate attire for the trip since it was 106 degrees.

 As part of the Bailey Family Reunion we visited the Manitou Springs Cliff dwellings near Colorado Springs.  The cliff dwellings really were cool and quite impressive in person. The weird thing is that:

The Anasazi did not live in the Manitou Springs area, but lived and built their cliff dwellings in the Four Corners area, several hundred miles southwest of Manitou Springs. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings were relocated to their present location in the early 1900s, as a museum, preserve, and tourist attraction. The stones were taken from a collapsed Anasazi site near Cortez in southwest Colorado, shipped by railroad to Manitou Springs, and assembled in their present form as Anasazi-style buildings closely resembling those found in the Four Corners. The project was done with the approval and participation of well-known anthropologist Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett, and Virginia McClurg, founder of the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association

Still looking alien-like.   I bet Garrett will approve.

 The rooms were so tiny, it was amazing that whole families lived in each room.  These cliff dwellings would have been like an entire village.

 And Charlotte on the rocks.

It was very hot, I spent most of the time nursing a baby, and we lost a child (Arabelle) who was returned to us in tears by a kindly museum patron, but all in all a wonderful visit.  I'm so glad we had the rest of the Baileys (not pictured, they were all there) to go with us because it is the sort of thing that we would want to do but never be motivated to do alone.

End of the Summer

 A sick, sleeping Charlotte

Corinne came over to play, and she and Arabelle realized they were both fans of the show "Chopped", so they decided to play it for themselves.  Arabelle selected the dishes that she thought most resembled "Chopped" dishes.  I picked the ingredients: strawberries, grated cheese, chocolate chips, and their choice of cheerios or marshmallow cereal.    Uncle Phil and I were judges.  In one dish Arabelle mixed chocolate chips and cheerios, it was actually quite tasty.  Arabelle's second dish was a visually pleasing ring of strawberries surrounding a pile of grated cheese.  Corrine had a tasty dish of marshmallow cereal mixed with chocolate chips, and her second dish you can see on the plate was a "cake that didn't turn out."

Charlotte being strange (and also somewhat reminding me of a picture of Stella at this age)

Rowan at 5 Months

Examining his sticker.

Rowan is the best smil-er of all my babies (he also happens to be the best cry-er, I wonder if that is related somehow).  His smile is so big that his "whole head smiles".  In fact I would say that his whole body smiles, because his legs and arms curl up too.

 It is definitely too hot for this hat, but he needed to wear it now since his head is already too big for it.  Rowan is average sized, but his head is large.

Rowan absolutely "beams".

Vintage Kids

Charlotte at 3.5 and Rowan at approx. 5 months

Trying to Recreate that Picture

 Trying to re-create the pic of me that dad sent around where I'm looking like Rowan (or vice versa):

Rowan wasn't really cooperating.

I kept trying to get him to chew on his fist like I'm doing in the picture, 

 but for once he didn't want to do that.

Instead he kept doing this other stuff:

 Here i tried again on a different day, but he was way too interested in that block thing: