Luke got a cast on his arm today; he picked red, of course.  He'll have the cast for 3 weeks.  He has been a model patient, no crying or tantrums.  Who will be the first person to sign it!?

​Luke broke his wrist yesterday, or more accurately Preston pushed Luke off a rock and Luke landed on his hand and broke his wrist.  We weren’t sure it was a break, but when he was still treating it very gingerly this morning I decided we should get it xray-ed to be sure.  He has a buckle fracture, and his little arm is in a splint.  We need to go to the ortho tomorrow for a cast.  This is not quite as dramatic as a broken leg, but it puts a bit of a damper on our fall activities.  Hopefully it will heal quickly!

​Fish Tank Mystery – Unsolved

​I loved to read mysteries when I has a kid.  The box car children were a favorite, and also the standard Nancy Drews.  They were so exciting!  I also couldn’t believe how these kids always had some mystery in their lives, like every five minutes something goes missing, or they find a secret door in a house, or something crazy like that.  I could have solved some mysteries if they ever happened in my life, but they never did.  UNTIL NOW!
We have the oddest mystery in our house.  I’ll try to include as many details as I can, and it likely will never be solved, but here goes.
To begin at the beginning, we have a very small fish tank; it’s a little less than a gallon.  It’s current occupant is a tiny yellow fish named Sun Swimmer.  Sun Swimmer has lived happily on the ledge in our kitchen for many months, but has recently been moved to the top of our toy shelf in the family room, next door to our resident hermit crabs.  The tank is plain still water with a black lid – the lid has a tiny hole in it through which the kids drop fish food.  We also have a bubbler, which is a tiny pump that gets plugged into the wall and a plastic tube that get inserted into the fish tank with a small turtle shaped pumice like stone attached to the other end of the tube.  The pump pumps air through the tube, the air goes into the turtle, and comes out as tiny bubbles (minute details, but they will be come important!). 
Yesterday was the first day that we used the bubbler, because we had just bought a new turtle pumice rock.  Sun Swimmer enjoyed the bubbles, but he’s such a tiny little guy.  I thought we should give Sun Swimmer a little break from the bubbles.  So last night around 10:20 as we were heading up to bed John detached the tube from the pump and the pump from the wall.  The turtle and one end of the tube were still in the tank.  We went to bed.
This morning John called upstairs to me and said “Carrie!  We have a mystery!  The fish is dead and there is NO water in the tank.”

I hurried downstairs thinking I would have a big wet mess to clean up, but there was no water, anywhere.  A gallon of water had disappeared.  Miraculously there was the tiniest bit of water just at the level of the stones in the bottom of the tank, but before you pull the “syphon” solution, it was well below the level of the plastic tube in the turtle, the tube had never been fully submerged, and the tube goes UP and out of the tank above the water level.  The fish was alive!  He was in a low part of the rocks with enough water to keep oxygenated.  So we filled the tank back up and the fish is doing fine.
So where did the water go?? 
I thought for a second John was pulling some practical joke, but he swears he is not.  We looked in the toy bins to see if anything was wet – on the floor, underneath the furniture, in the ceiling on the room below….. nothing.  No sign of a gallon of water.
Our next thought was maybe a tiny crack in the tank.  So after we refilled the tank I put a paper towel underneath it and put a mark on the edge where the water level was.  8 hours later it’s still at the same level.
We have an open investigation into the case of the empty fish tank, and are taking any leads we can get!

We have a few photos from the month of August to share, and a bit of an update.  August has been a busy month with a vacation to the beach, our 8th anniversary, John's Birthday, and a few other adventures in between.

This month I discovered the Pool Wildlife Sanctuary of the Wildlands Conservancy, and I have taken the kids 3 times this month.  It's a fun little park to add to our repertoire, and has some mucky ponds with tons of frogs - a little boys heaven.  Last week we went twice, because I had to bribe Preston with a second trip in order to leave from the first trip and get the little people home for a nap.  When we went  back the next day with took Preston's friend, David, with us and ran into a big group of kids from our old daycare!  It was fun to catch up with them for a few minutes.

We had a birthday party for John at the pool today!  The weather was beautiful, I got him a banana cream pie, and the kids had a blast in the pool.  Alyssa and Luke even made it through the day with no naps and no melt downs!

I know I need to share more stories about the kids!  They do and say a lot of really cute things.  But here's a quick anecdote about each before I post some photos:

Preston announced at the dinner table yesterday that his strawberry popsicle was "better than sea water."  Apparently sea water is the flavor by which he rates his food, and by that standard everything must be truly delicious.

Luke is learning to tell jokes, which include gems like: What did the light say to the seltzer water?  I'm lighting you!!!  
Alyssa and Luke also played the basement together for at least an hour the other day with NO crying.  Fingers crossed that we are turning a corner!

Alyssa has learned a few new words like: Yucky, and Get Down - Twice now we have had to fetch her out of the middle of the road on her trike.  She knows she's not supposed to be in the road, but I think she has already figured out that it's fun to go fast down the driveway.  She went to the pediatrician last week for her 18 month check up.  It was chaos and otherwise uneventful.  I took all three kids which meant that there was at least one kid in  my face at all times requesting me to blow up mickey mouse glove balloons, or asking if Alyssa was going to get a shot.  She is 22lbs - I didn't catch how tall, but still 50% for both.  She had no shots this time, but they put fluoride on her teeth.  She refused to stand on the scale, even though she was all about it last time.  She's strong and growing!

Here are some photos! And you can find the full album here  

Photos from the beach  Full Album of beach and lake HERE:

And a few from the lake in late July: