Lest anyone be confused, we routinely mix juice flavors and primary colors here at our household. It all starts with Orange Juice, and then cranberry gets called “red juice.” You might say we don’t really drink cranberry juice, since we water it down so much — for ourselves and the kids, but that’s another post entirely.

Anyway, this quote comes from Felicia this morning. I’m not sure if she is describing her favorite color or her favorite juice. And who knows if she knows what favorite means anyway …

A few weeks ago, Jocelyn created and organized her own “Ice Cream Specials” ice cream stand in our neighborhood. She planned the menu, helped purchase supplies, spread the word via direct marketing, and then served up scoops for her friends and their families.

She also decided to give the proceeds to our local Second Harvest food bank. Between ice cream scoops and straight donations, Jocelyn’s Ice Cream Special booth raised $60 in one day of operation! We went to Second Harvest and dropped off the check today. Jocelyn also plans to re-open the shop at some future point, to try it again. She’s also considering an expanded menu and perhaps recruiting some staff, too.

We took our annual pilgrimmage to the California State Fair yesterday, enjoying a sunny — but not too hot — day with the Borg Family in Sacramento. The animals are always the highlight, and this year they provided the best pictures, too.

We arrived early in the morning this time, and the animals in the petting zoo were a little hungry. This goat as apparently starving, as he pinned Jocelyn to the fence looking for some food.

Since Felicia wouldn’t spend much time near any particular animal — Karen called it “drive-by petting” — the only way to get a good picture of her with an animal was to apply one to her arm as a tattoo.

It starts Wednesday, and Jocelyn is ready. She’s been placed with her teacher of choice, Mr. Martinez, and starting the second grade just seems like old hat around here. Except there are a few glimmers of excitement … she’s had her clothes identifed for at least a week, and they’ve been sitting on her bed since at least Monday. She’s quizzed most of her friends, and has mapped out their classroom locations for after-school hugs and updates.

We broke it to Felicia this morning, and once again, she doesn’t seem very happy about school starting for Jocelyn. But earlier today, we had a playdate with her future preschool friends and her new teacher. Miss Sharon was a big hit! So, we’ll probably be ready for preschool in three weeks. …

Update: Here it is … the official first day of Second Grade picture.

So, I also publish this community weblog called Willow Glen Extra. And I also help run the local Willow Glen PAL Soccer League. And I have a strong, athletic daughter who participated in soccer camp last week. So, I also put a picture on our local weblog.

I guess it’s three months away now, almost. I’m going to have my birthday party, and I’m going to have it be a “Fetch” Birthday Party! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just click on the blue Fetch. Daddy is going to be Ruff Ruffman. I’ll have lots of friends over. It will be great! It will be so much fun. I think we are going to have a note hunt. That is all I can say today. I am out of time. Bye, friends.

OK. We’ve talked about Felicia’s shoes before, so it’s possible we have a bit of “shoe thing” here in our family. Here’s another story anyway:

We went back-to-school shoe shopping yesterday for the girls, but we were only 50% successful. We found shoes for Jocelyn, but couldn’t find the right size in the color we wanted for Felicia. In our discussion, I actually described my preferred color (the Stride Rite TT Sportie Slip-On seen here in beige) as “pre-dirty” … always a good idea with a toddler, in my humble opinion. The clerk found the right color/size combination at another nearby store, so we bought them earlier today.

After running a few errands today — with Felicia wearing the shoes — we were riding home in the car. “My shoes dirty,” Felicia said more than once. Since I had descrived them as pre-dirty when buying them, we continued a silly conversation about the color of the shoes.

When we got home, I noticed that she had smeared mud all over the back of the seat in front of her … mud from her new shoes — which were actually dirty from a sprint through a flower bed!

We try to avoid potty humor here in the family blog, but sometimes it’s just too cute. Everyone knows that diapers and bowel movements are an important part of young childhood, and they are also a frequent topic of conversation between parents.

Felicia has begun to add her own words to the discussion as well: Almost every diaper change these days includes a conversation that starts with, “What I eat?” Apparently, after changing a few of her messier diapers, we’ve also been asking her what she’d been eating.