The part of “Blogger” will be played by Claire today

Since John is busy with his MDAP proposal, I thought I would do a “guest blog” to keep everyone up to date on the exciting Spud developments that happened in August. It was a busy month, with John off to Ireland and then to Idaho for some field work. Benjamin and I kept busy in his absence with a variety of activities: We read



We sampled some seasonal fruits



We tried on clothes



We tried out some new toys



Meanwhile, here are some of the sights that John was taking in:







Yeah… Anyway, while John was away, Grandma and Grandpa Grimm game to visit. We had a lot of fun mostly just hanging out together.





Daddy brought some cool presents back from Ireland:



After his travels, John celebrated his birthday at the end of the month, and Grandma and Grandpa Chadwick came down for the festivities.





John requested a red velvet cake for his birthday, so after one failed attempt at making a “healthy” red velvet cake (hint: beets were involved, and it was NOT red), I resorted to a box mix, which had more red dye in it than Cyndi Lauper’s hair (in the 80’s). The results:





Then it was back to work as another semester began. Benjamin is off to a good start – he’s picking up one or two new words every day. John and I thought about updating our list of words he knows, but we can’t keep up. He’s probably got at least a 25 to 30 word vocabulary by now, which is better than some of the undergraduates in John’s classes. His favorite new word is butterfly.



Some parting cuteness, just ‘cause:





And now back to our regularly scheduled Blogger!