Shaver's Creek

We went as a family to a fall festival up at the Penn State Environmental Center (aka Shaver's Creek).  They had a lot of booths with activities for the kids.  They even had showings of various birds of prey (eagles, hawks, owls, etc.)  We had a nice time.  

Aria was excited to have her face painted.

The kids even got to grind up and make apple cider.

When it came time to drink the cider however, there weren't big fans.

In other news, Aria has begun reading books.  Each night before bed she sounds out the words, and does a great job powering through a single book.  She's clearly at the beginning of the reading process, but she's making good headway.

Aria also is acclimating well to school.  For the first few weeks she'd come home so tired, but now she seems to have energy when she comes home.  The thing is, most days, we have to wake her up so she doesn't oversleep and miss the bus.  We get her to bed around 8pm, and at around 7:30am we usually have to wake her up.  She needs even more sleep than Zade, who usually just needs around 10 hours a night.

Little Ryzen has begun waking up a lot more at night, which has been making things challenging for Tara.  Somehow she still finds a way to function during the day despite the sleep deprivation.  She's a trooper.

Dane also got a revise and resubmit (R&R) at the Strategic Management Journal on a paper he's been working. He's cautiously optimistic about it.  

Lastly, we found a tick on Mira.  She actually held still, so we were able to pull it out of her (whereas Azure was too cranky when she got one.)  Those little bugs get so fat and gross. Yuck.  Not a fan. At least we got it. I'm actually surprised that the critters here are harder on the cats, than the ones in Arizona.  (Although the cats appeared to have found a mouse in our house and made short work of it.)