For her back-to-school shopping, Vickey took Eliana to my cousin’s daughter’s store at the Primm outlets, The Children’s Place. Amanda was kind enough to help Eliana try on all sorts of clothes and hang on to them until yesterday when we drove down to Primm as a family, sorted through the clothes to make a final determination as to what we’d get, and have Amanda purchase the clothes using her employee discount.

Thanks to the grandmas, Eliana is now set for new clothes for school. In fact, her friend, Olympia, commented recently that she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in Ellie’s class because Ellie always had such cute clothes. They sure start early, don’t they?

At any rate, when Vickey and Ellie went to the outlets a few weeks back, there were some parrots in the mall and Ellie just had to get her picture taken with them. Since then, all we’ve heard from Dominic was that he wanted to hold the parrots.

So, for our Labor Day, we made the 40 minute drive to Primm and spent most of the day. We browsed a few stores, enjoyed a pizza together, rode some of the kiddie rides and of course, took pictures with the parrots.

This time it was much more crowded in the mall. We had to wait 20 minutes or so to get our turn with the birds. After the photographer placed a parrot on Dominic’s head, the bird slid off and on the way down used its beak to bite Eliana’s leg to try to stay up and not fall on the floor. It was a bit traumatic and we’re lucky we got one good photo.

This photo is of Eliana, a couple weeks ago.

This one is the one that was taken after the bird slid off Dominic’s head and he was so dejected that he didn’t have a bird on his head or arm.

And in this one, we all have a parrot – whew!

We also enjoyed a fun evening barbeque with my cousins Steve and Lisa and their families. The weather even cooled off enough at night for us to enjoy the back yard, the trampoline and swing set. We spent a few hours together and got caught up with what was going on in everyone’s lives. We all are so busy it’s sadly difficult to make time for family. But we enjoyed the food and conversation and now we’re back at work and school.