First of all, we're still on the hunt for our cat, Mojave. He "escaped" the confines of our nice, cozy house last weekend while Avery & I were at the fair, and hasn't been home since. He's been out plenty of times before, but always came back after a few hours. Not this time. One neighbor at the end of the block says he's seen him a few times in his yard, then he runs into the blackberry bramble (about a quarter-acre) and there's no way to follow him. On the other side of the blackberry bramble there's a pet-lover's house, and we're pretty sure he's hanging out with those 9 cats (or at least near their food). We talked to those people too, and they are keeping an eye out for him, but Mojave is not the kind of cat you can "catch" -- it's really going to be up to him to come home to us, and his sister Sierra (they're litter mates, and almost 9 years old, so it's strange to me that he would abandon us so willy-nilly).
As part of our Mojave "chasing," Avery and I went blackberry picking on Sunday. We went down to call Mojave with some cat food, left it out for him, and picked berries for about 40 minutes while waiting for him to come out (he didn't, but we did see him run into the bushes as we walked up).
It's just the beginning of the season, but there were certainly enough to fill our buckets quickly. Devon promised to make a dessert out of whatever we brought home, so we had big incentive to pick, pick, pick.
Lots more berries to come! 
It's so thick in there we probably can't get to 95% of the berries, but boy if we could. . . . 
Avery was a little too picky. She inspected each of the ~25 berries she picked, and discarded about half of them as not being good enough. But she didn't seem to mind throwing them back (it was half-killing me). 
We were a little worried when we got them washed & laid out that we didn't have enough for a yummy dessert 
But Devon measured them out, and found we'd managed to gather 9 cups -- he only needed 8 cups for his blackberry cobbler. Phew!
I didn't even get a picture of the cobbler until it was almost gone. Since the season was early they were a little more tart than we expected -- nothing a little ice cream didn't help! 
The other thing we did this weekend (and by we I mean me, Avery, Devon, even nana Noma), was clean out the girls clothes -- present & past. Avery's dresser, Jordan's dresser, the closet, the mudroom, and even the 14 tote boxes that were stowed upstairs in the duck barn, waiting for the final determination on #3 -- boy or girl. I sure hope the ultrasound technicians are right with this boy thing, because the girl clothes are going out the door!! Avery with 8 of the boxes (I was already done with 6 of them by then!)
In the process (see all the empties stacked up to the side)
Here are the fall/winter clothes (6 boxes), ready to go to the consignment stores
In case anyone is worried that we won't have enough boy clothes, this is what I sorted out from Avery & Jordan's old stash, plus some that were given to me by my cousin (who has 6 boys) even before Avery was born. That's a tote for 0-3 months, a tote for 3-6 months, and a tote for 6 months-2 years, plus a half box of shoes, and 2 boxes of socks. I was SHOCKED to see we have so much. I guess part of it is because we didn't know before Avery & Jordan were born that they were girls, so we have alot of gender neutral whites, yellows, greens, and even blues that the girls wore too. Now I know I can focus on storing up on cloth diapers rather than boy clothes.
With berry stains on her shirt & a testament to the weather confusion we're having (it really seems like summer is over, fall is here, and winter is on our doorstep -- and it wasn't even September at that point!), Avery wanted to pose for a picture. 
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