Where did September go?

Seriously, where did September go?  We moved in...Alan worked over 210 hours (no exaggeration)...started back to school again...filled our days with countless appointments...started A.WANA...started Tuesday morning Bible study...OCF...church...quick trip to MN.......LIFE.  Moving back to a place where you are keeping things just about the same as they were the last time you lived there, makes for a quick jump start!

I thought about breaking these things up into individual posts, but who knows when it'll all get on here if I attempt that.  Here's the abbreviated version of the major events over the last month:

We took Zoë Kate to the specialist in MN for her eye.  We learned more about her condition and we really liked the doc.

 The short version is that her birth defect is such that it cannot ever be "fixed."  The muscles and nerves aren't there.  But her case seems as good as it can be and she is showing few negative symptoms at this point.  The one symptom she does have already is that she is beginning to "ignore" her left eye, since it has limited mobility, and depend more on her right.  If ignored, she will lose the use of that eye all together.  Therefore, every day we have to patch the right side for an hour to strengthen the left.  She was not a huge fan at first, but is doing fine with it now.  I just ordered all her patches to use until her next appt and they are like fun band-aids with cute designs.

The best perk to having to drive to MN every 6 months is the shopping!  We took Zoë on her first trip to the American Girl store.  (Probably the last cheap trip, too!) We didn't buy anything this time, but she enjoyed playing with the babies for a bit.

 And we shopped for Connor's birthday present in the giant Lego store.  Then hit I.KEA for all of Zoë's new bedroom furniture since she is going to have to vacate the nursery soon.

 While we were on the road, seeing the doc and doing some shopping, Grandma Hart held down the fort back at home.  I am not sure the boys even missed us!

 Even though Grandma's stay was short, we enjoyed a mini fall festival on the base while she was here.

The kids played a couple little games like pumpkin bowling.

 And the boys braved the hay stack to stuff a scarecrow for our porch.

 Here's Mr. Scarecrow.  And my cutsie pumpkin!  Just some paint and a ribbon.

 And the latest big news was that our big man Connor lost his first tooth.

 He was eating lunch and he swallowed it!  Which wasn't a big deal cause we are not all about the tooth fairy fib anyhow.  He got a little present under his pillow and he wanted to have a "tooth party," so we did.  Complete with streamers and fun apple-peanut-butter-missing-tooth-marshmellow-smiles.

 Which were enjoyed by all!