Everyday September Photos

This is another random photo post. I try to take photos every day, with almost all of them being iPhone photos. I organize most of them into monthly folders called "Everyday". In the future, I hope these will offer a glimpse of what my life was like at this time.

This first photo was taken during a shopping trip to North Star Mall on Labor Day. Every time I take Eric to the mall, he wants to visit the Lego Store. He spends most of his time in the Lego Store looking at Lego sets that he is interested in. Right now he likes looking at the Lego Chima sets. In the past he has looked at the Lego Star Wars sets, and then another period of time he was into the Lego Ninjago sets.

There is something called a "digital box" in the Lego store. What happens is that you hold a boxed set in front of the screen of the "digital box". The camera scans the boxed set, then displays a 3-D cartoon rendering of the item in the box, fully built, on the screen as if the item is on the box. Eric did this for several boxed sets, even a couple that were almost too big for him to lift up. I have to admit that the concept is pretty cool.

Last week, Natalie fully participated in PE, which meant that she did a lot of running. She started hurting from doing all of that activity, so she didn't go to swim practice. I took that opportunity to take her to our local Payless shoe store, where they were having a buy one get one-half off sale. I had to drag her out of the house, but I didn't know when else I could go shopping with her, so I made her go. She needed some black flats to wear with her Honors Band uniform, then I got her another pair of shoes (Ugg boot lookalikes) that she has been asking for that she can wear in the winter during swim meets.

While we were there there, she decided to try on other pairs of shoes for fun. She tried on this high-heeled pair, saying that she didn't know how to walk in high heels. She did okay walking around in these, but it did scare me just a little that her feet looked so "grown up".  She would never have considered wearing shoes like this, even for a moment, a few years ago. It used to be sneakers all the time for her.

Eric and I also made a stop at the Disney Store at the mall on Labor Day. After looking at the Guardians of the Galaxy display for a while, he decided that he wanted a "Star Lord" costume for Halloween. The costume at the Disney Store was $50, but the one that fit him was missing a mask. I didn't really want to spend $50 on a costume for him, so I found this one on Amazon for around $20. It arrived a few days later, and he finally tried it on this weekend. I need to make some adjustments, but at least he seems to like the costume.

I made some very simple cards this weekend. I needed a couple of sympathy cards and some thank-you cards. I am SO rusty at playing with paper! This one turned out okay, but the others were pretty plain. I need to replenish my stash of cards, so I will hopefully make some and share one or two of them here.

The Noah's Ark border is still up in Natalie's room since she was a baby. Even when we replaced her crib with a bunk bed, we left the border up. We just bought Natalie a more grown-up bed. After all, she doesn't even like pink anymore, and that is what color the decorations on her bunk bed are. Patrick brought home some paint chips, and she chose this color. He painted a swatch of it on the wall today so she could see what the color looked like on the wall. The color depends on the lighting in there, but she liked this one. Patrick plans on painting Natalie's room before putting her new bed in there. I'll be sure to take more pictures when that happens.

Ah, sibling togetherness! Alex started playing FIFA Soccer on the PS3 this afternoon. Natalie plopped herself next to him on the sofa so she could do her homework. When she took her sheet of math homework out, she dropped it, and for a few minutes she couldn't find it. Alex helped her by looking under the sofa and everywhere else. I told them that it had to be under the sofa. Finally, Natalie looked again, and sure enough--it was under the sofa. Alex moved the sofa so Natalie would not have to put her hand under there. He was so helpful! This is just a picture just after he picked up the paper off the floor for her. I know it's a blurry photo, but you can still see the embarrassed expression on Natalie's face and the smile on Alex's face. I love it when they get along.

To top it off, Natalie asked Alex to help her with her Science homework. She missed a lot of Science last week when her physical therapy appointments were during Science, so she didn't get to hear the lesson, but she still had to do the homework. He was very patient with her many questions and even encouraged her to think of the answer on her own instead of him telling her. I enjoyed listening to them getting along.

That's the end of my random photo post for today. I'll have plenty more of these posts in the future.