I dislike coming up with titles.

Elayna took her first steps on Sept. 16th! She walked 3 steps to Grandma Paula.

Katie is really trying to understand time. She will ask if today is tomorrow, and refer to days of the week. However, I don't think she understands the concept yet.

Katie has a "school" book that she loves to play with. It is a dry erase book, with pictures, letters, numbers, matching, etc in it. She will work on it for 15-20 minutes.

I cleaned out our garage, so there is actually room for 2 cars to park INSIDE the garage. Weird concept, I know.

We have way too many flies in our house. The other day I was swatting flies away from the food, and noticed Elayna doing the same thing! She also likes to rub her hands together as though she is rubbing in lotion.

Katie saw a picture of her cousin Bella on the beach. Katie said, "I want to go to that sandbox, mom". Time for a beach trip!

When Elayna stands on her tippy toes, she can barely reach the handles on the doors. We have the lever-type handles, so it is just enough that she can pull the handle down, and it will flip back up. Another inch or two, and she will be out the door. She seems to get into a lot more stuff than Katie did. I remember being surprised that Katie never played with the toilet paper in the bathroom. Well, Elayna is more than making up for that! It must be this phase of life, because I felt like this morning all I said to Elayna was "No!". I remember doing that with Katie some days.

Katie can do somersaults now. She is so cute.

The girls were playing outside, and I came out to check on them. I saw Elayna, poised on her tippy toes, stretching as high as she could to reach the tools that were on the shelf. Did I mention she was on the seat of Katie's red tricycle? Agh! I really wanted to get a picture, but, under the circumstances, decided it would be better to get her down, and not risk the wheels on the bike suddenly shifting and throwing her onto the concrete.

My harvesting achievements for the year include:
1. picking about 7 gallons of plums, juicing them (a 4-5 hour process), and then, after having the juice in the fridge for 2 weeks, drying the juice into fruit leather.
2. drying a bushel of peaches (about 7 batches),
3. making about 12 peach/plum fruit rolls, and making 5-6 plum fruit rolls,
4. picking enough tomatoes from my garden and Irma's garden (thanks Irma!) to make about 6 quarts of spaghetti sauce that I froze,
5. peeling and coring enough apples to make a batch of dried apples, and a crockpot full of applesauce.
I feel fairly satisfied with my accomplishments!

We were having a tickling war, and suddenly, Elayna came up behind me. She was moving her fingers in a ticklish fashion and saying, "tsckl, tcskl, tkl". It was so cute! I love that she wanted to be involved.