While in Manhattan over the weekend, Sheryl and I took the kids to play in Central Park on our last day. All four of them rode the carousel.

I have many more photos in an Ofoto gallery, which I’m happy to share.

Here is Rachel’s Halloween costume idea list. She came up with it while on the phone with her father last night.

Spelling test:

“Word Study” which is somewhat different from spelling, but I am not sure how:

Rachel is ready for her first day of school as a fourth grader.

Rachel was a giant help (again) today at cleaning the house. She loves to mop the kitchen and clean the bathroom sinks.

I’m working through appropriate rewards for her because this is above and beyond the expected workload for a nine year old. I don’t want to go the extra allowance route because allowance isn’t about doing work in our family. Today, I let her watch an episode of SpongeBob when she was done.

We live in a household with three other children. The converstaion went something like this Saturday night:

“Rachel, go tell Aiden to close the bathroom door and I’ll be forever indebted.”

Rachel runs upstairs and shouts into the bathroom, “Aiden! Close the door or you’ll be forever dead.”