::back to school dinner::

I'm big on family traditions.  We've been having a back to school dinner for 4 years now, and we love it.  Even our extended family loves it-they want to know all about it too.  We love that!

This year's theme was pretty simple and straightforward...

Work Hard

and

Be Nice

To People

When I decided on that for the theme for the year, I mostly had Bubb in mind.  Especially for the be nice to people part.  He's sometimes not very nice to people-well me...and Ava.  I hope he's nice in school.  We, of course, want all of them to work hard always, an also be nice to everybody.  I just felt like it fit.

For dinner we had roast chicken with vegetables.  I've made it once before.  I got the recipe here.  It's even called "perfect roast chicken."  This blog belongs to my cousins, their food is amazing!  We've made a few things from their site.  The roast chicken was a family favorite after one bite!

I didn't plan out my day too well, what with the pet bunny and all, so dinner was a little later than I would've liked, but it was delish, and we had ice-cream with hot fudge and sprinkles for dessert (no photos of that-we ate it too fast :]

We hope we all have a great school year.  We're super excited about school, teachers, our backpacks, our clothes, our friends, the bus, our crayons, chips in our pencil box, eating lunch at school, and everything else that goes along with it. Some things might change for us midyear (hopefully), but we're prepared for that, and I think we'll do just fine :]

::our little bunny friend::

So, it's the last day of our summer vacation.  It's early in the morning (well, like 7ish, to me, that's kinda early-especially during the summer).  Chloe comes up to my room, wakes me up very gently and tells me, with a little but of panic in her voice, that there's a bunny rabbit in her window well.  I, half asleep, said "are you sure it's a bunny!?"  Like an 8 year old doesn't know what a bunny looks like.

Anyway, I went down to her room, and saw this in her window well..

A little back story...While Matt was deer huntin' the week before, I mowed the lawn in the evening.  I was getting ready to rake up some of the extra grass (we have a mulching mower and sometimes it leaves clumps of grass on the lawn and it's a little unsightly).  My neighbor was out.  We chatted for a bit.  A lady rode up the street on a bike.  A few minutes later her husband and teenage daughter walked down with a big box, then a few minutes after that they started to walk up with a big box full of bunny rabbits.  Nor your normal sight, so my neighbor and I went over to ask about it.  They said that the mom (on the bike) saw a whole bunch of bunnies on the loose down in the field at the end of our street (like somebody didn't want their pets anymore and just dumped them in the field).  So the dad and daughter went to rescue them.  Anyway...this lone bunny must've missed the rescue box that night because he hopped into our window well a few days later.

So we took care of him all day.  We gave him a bowl of celery and a bowl of water (which he kept spilling and I kept having to refill), and the kids would go outside and drop grass down there for him to eat.  Anybody who knows us knows we don't do pets.  Anytime he'd hop too close to the window, Chloe would run away down the hall and hide around the corner.  Porter wanted to keep him.  I didn't. Port called Matt and asked if we could.  He even named him "Happy Hopper."  That's a bad sign-when you name it.  I was hoping I could get the neighbor boys (they rescued a bunny a few days earlier) to take him, but they weren't home.  I REALLY didn't want to keep this bunny.  All I could think about was cleaning up his poo.  

The day went on.  We kept feeding and watering Hopper.  Every once in a while, Port would say "we're taking good care of him, aren't we??"  It was pretty cute.

Then after Matt got home, we talked and laughed about the bunny, and I told him how much I didn't want the thing, and then I tried the neighbor boys again, and they were home!  They were SOOO excited to come get it.

I was SO relieved!  I can't even talk about it!  It's so funny too because I grew up with pets.  I even had bunnies-2 of them!  I had cats, dogs, a gerbil, and 2 bunnies (not all at the same time though).  And now, the thought of even one pet that stays outside gives me such anxiety I feel like I can't breathe.   Life is weird.