Hard Work!

Of course while Grandpa was here, Riley and Jake wanted to do their favorite things; work, outside, tree house, hammer, and build. All the better because the got to do it with Grandpa! Our little California boys have less feelers than the big California boy, Grandpa came in for some warmer accessories before they had been out long. Dan and I enjoyed watching them work together (from the comfort of the warm house), it had been much too long! Maybe it has been so warm this year to be nice to Grandpa! :)
Our temperatures have gone down a bit, my new wireless weather station said it was 28 deg. F. when I went to bed last night. It seems to get colder when Dan is off gallivanting, right now he is on the beach on an island in the Caribbean. It looks lovely there. Hope your New Years celebrations are fun. The kids and I went out and rented a bunch of movies and got some snacks. The boys can't wait to dive into the licorice, Mama got crazy and said yes to their petitions! Happy New Year!!!

Real Life!

Ok lets see if this works! On my page it does not show a picture, but if you click on them they will take you to a video. One of Fern and her new skill, and another of Jake and his too cute new song! :) I hope this works! The videos are a bit dark, sorry. We'll try a video of Riley tomorrow! Love ya all!!

Merry Christmas!!

Here is our Christmas morning for anyone perusing my blog today! :) The first picture is last night after the stage was set. I think it was a record, we were all done and in bed by a little after 10pm. The second picture is our 3 silly babes on the trampoline Grandpa M. gave them, even Fern tried jumping! :) The third is Fern and her Mama, Dan made us all yummy blueberry muffins for breakfast and Fern thought it was great. She gave the camera her best grin. Number four is sweet Fern trying out her rocking horse. It was my rocking horse when I was little. We had it repaired, then Dan and I painted it. She got much more rambunctious riding it as the day went on. A little out of order, but here are the guys opening their stockings, Jake got a Jacob's Ladder in his and as I asked him later in the day if he liked his Jacob's Ladder, he replied, "my ladder" he just thinks we are calling it Jake's ladder, not that it is it's name. :) We didn't get any of the pictures up with Grandpa M. in them but I promise he is here! :) We are enjoying him, and feel so blessed he was able to come. I might try hiding his airplane ticket so he can not leave in the morning! There will be a few cute photos including him up in a couple days! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and that you have felt the love of our Savior during your Christmas Celebration! We are so blessed with His love! Merry Christmas!!

My Baby.

How could she have gotten SO BIG?? It seem like just yesterday I was lamenting over being on bed rest with Fern still safely in my belly. Or even laying in bed relaxing through the contractions. Now, gosh we have had a successful nursing relationship for 14 months! And today, sice we could put it off no longer Fern moved into the bigger carseat and facing forward! As I drove over to the CSA farm I kept looking in my rear view mirror, and there she was LOOKING at me. I just can't believe it has passed so quickly. Where did the baby go? She is amazing lately, when the phone rings she jumps up to go running over to it, she has a hand motion she does for things that are "owie", and knows what is owie before touching it. She has also recently discovered that Daddy is good for hugging and holding, it is too cute! Although she will still scream bloody murder if he tries to hold her at bed time or in the middle of the night. :) She is so sweet, we are so thankful to have two boys but oh is it sweet to have a girl! :)

Cookies with Dad!

Here are a few pictures of Fern eating a (Vegan) oreo cookie while sitting on Daddy in the kitchen (see our new stove). She was so proud of herself! She imedetly pulled it apart and licked the iceing! :) It was fun! Good thing the boys don't know what we let Fern do after they went to after they go to bed! Our own little cookie monster!

He loves me... He loves me not...

So I finally got Dan to rake the leaves, and I think he is not quite so enamored with our yard anymore. The only reason it even got done is that it has been so warm, in the 50's most days. The back yard now looks fantastic! Now I have asked for the front too! :)
Jake was "helping" dad, and so was Riley, so much so that he is not even in the back yard! :) Jake is in love with his Super Man snow boots, he has worn on other shoes all week! :) He is a cutie!!

Little Miss!

Fern was looking too cute the other day as we were heading out, so I dutifully pulled out my camera. Well Fern was not so cooperative! I kept standing her up, she kept sliding down, I kept pulling her thumb out, she protested! So you get a cute photo of Fern, even if it was not my intended pose! :)
Our counter tops got installed yesterday! Dan has been working all day to get the sink and the dishwasher installed. They are both giving him trouble! But hopefully we will have running water later tonight, for now I have ordered pizza for dinner! :) Our propane is all plumed in, now we are waiting for the building inspector to come inspect, then next week we should have the range all hooked up. So hopefully next week you all will see pictures of my before and after kitchen right here on the blog! :) I can not tell you how heavenly a real put together kitchen will be!!!
We must have won the lottery! Dan does not have another flying trip until the 29th! So he will be home for Christmas!! We also get to have Daddy here too, he comes in on the 22nd! Dan will be spending New Years in the Caribbean! Oh la la! I will probably, hopefully spend it in bed, asleep!! :) So boring, aren't I! Love ya all!

Christmas Tree!

Well we finally got out and got a tree, we went and cut down our own. The older gentleman who owned the tree farm asked if we had came all the way from Calif. to get the tree, He He. It was fun to have the boys see how they grow, that they do not just appear! :)

Then we got it up the same night, are you impressed? Don't be too much, I only pulled out a couple decorations, it was just too much this year to unpack Christmas stuff while trying to unpack our regular stuff! :)
You might be wondering what happened to Riley's face in between getting a tree and trimming the tree! Well after we got the tree, we ran over to the hanger, as Riley went running to see the airplane, he biffed it hard and landed on his face, which would have been just a bruise except he had his sunglasses on. They gashed the bridge of his nose, and it left a bruise up around the top of hi eye! A little blood and a few tears, and all was fine! :) Boys!!

Happy St. Nickolastag!

So tonight was our fun with friends, we had a fun celebration, Dan told everyone a bit about St. Nickolas then we built ginger bread houses! Here are a couple pictures with most of the participants, but not all! Here is Dan and the boys and the Carter Family. Then in the next is part of the Chapman family, we went to SVC with Kimball, and Kandi back just a couple years ago! :) We all had a great time, the kids had too much candy and stayed up way past bedtime! But the excitement was that St. Nickolas visited while we were busy building! He left everyone a beautiful California Orange in their shoe, and a glass pickle ornament for each family! :) Happy St. Nickolastag!

These shoes were made for running! So what do you think Aunt Mary, did you get your moneys worth out of these? These were the cool new thing back when Jake was born, and Aunt Mary splurged and bought them for Riley for Christmas, 2003. Riley LOVED his red shoes from Aunt Mary and was o-so-sad to out grow them. But then Jake grew into them, he has worn them for a good long while! And he loves them and protests (loudly) when ever Riley says they were his first. :) They have been an awesome pair of shoes, they are now a bit hole-y, and will soon have to be retired. But I don't think there will ever be another pair as great! Thanks Aunt Mary!!
Here is our beautiful produce today! We joined a CSA, and Saturday is our day to head out to the farm to pick up our share. This is the second week of the 5 week period, last week we still had produce grown outside, but this week with the bit of snow we had we are mostly getting their green house crop. We have our share with the Gazy Brother's Farm in Oxford, but you can find a CSA and support a family farm right where you are on Local Harvest. In this box we had radishes, arugala, tomatoes, basil, potatoes, apples, squash, & broccoli. We had the broccoli tonight, soo yummy! :)

Mary & Ryan's Baby Registry!

Here they are the 2 very excited parents to be! Mary and I thought it would be a good idea to have her registry here on my blog, because along with the regular store registries there are a few "loose" items they would like. If you choose to purchase one of these said "loose" items just email me (Aunt Danna, Dannashooked1 @ yahoo.com ) and I will take it off the registry, that way they do not get too many of any one cute item! If you need their address I have it, just email me! Even though this will fall down the list of entries as I put new pictures up, I will have a link to go strait to it under the "LINKS" section!

Pottery Barn Kids Registry

Baby Style Registry

Short sleeve onesie, size 3-6 months

Love Bug onesie, either size

Monkey onesie, either size

Bohemian Baby Food gift certificate

Ladybug play suit Size 0-3mo.

Camo tights size 6-12 mo. in purple

Too cute shoes in size 12-18mo.

B!

Riley and I were working on the letter B last week and I sent him on a B scavenger hunt around the house, he had to find 3 things. He thought it might be too hard, but he was so proud of himself when he had done it! He asked if I would take his picture with his "B things"! :) He found Fern's bear, the little boat which is also a bead, and the blue, basket, bowl! a 3 B word object! Fun Fun!

Happy December!

Well Dec. has come and we do not have snow yet, to the boys dismay! They had their hopes up yesterday, we got up super early and took Grandma J. to the airport in Hartford to go home. :( As we got close to the airport we had a few flurries, by the time we got to the airport it was snowing, we said our good byes then got on our way. It started snowing even harder! The car behind us started slipping and sliding as I prayed he would not come into me. Thankfully we were driving a rental car as the brakes had gone out on the van. Yes another problem with the van, anyone know a good cliff? Anyway back to the snow, it was sticking and falling steadily, then miraculously as we came into down town Hartford it just stopped. The boys decided that it would soon be snowing at our house, but alas it was sunny (but VERY cold) all day. There is a chance on Friday, we will wait and see!

Ok this picture is of my budding baby! She was being a bit cranky, so I had picked her up, rhetorically as I always do I said "Fern, you have to tell me what you need", that's when it happened! She did the sign for food, she has been doing the sign for milk for a while but mostly just as I am about to nurse her, this was the first time she used the sign and used it to tell me what she needed!! So here she is eating her ASKED FOR food! Later that night Grandma and I were working with her to blow kisses, and then as I was putting her in her jammies she started blowing me kisses. So sweet! I can't believe she is so big! We did sign language with Jake a bit, but he quit as soon as he started talking, we'll see what Fern does!

Dan is hob-nobing with friends and family in California. He got to go to mutual last night to see his Deacons, tonight the Deacons are coming to see his airplane. Daddy is also coming up to see the airplane and to go out to dinner, maybe Mary and Ryan will join in on the fun, and then I will be the only one not there. :( Dan will be coming home Friday, then Sat. evening we will be having a couple of families over to celebrate St. Nicholas Tag. Sorry my German spelling is amazingly worse than my English spelling hu! :) Love ya all!

Cheese-y!

So here are 2 of my cheesest kidd-o's, that why I don't need to eat cheese, there is enough between all these silly people living in my house!
Sorry this is a bit fuzzy, these 2 move too fast, I guess I should put my camera on high shutter speed to try to catch them! Anyway, Fern figured out how to take her shirt off last night, and Jake thought it was a good idea. (if you've been around our house much you know Jake is our nudist, it's hard to keep clothing on him!) Fern was laughing so hard! She is really into laughing, today in Relief Society the teacher told a joke and everyone laughed, so then (after everyone had stopped) Fern started laughing tons! It was so cute!!


Here is Fern's super duper cheese-y grin! See after seeing this today, you don't even need any dairy today! SAVE THE MAMA COWS!!

Christmas Photo?

I was trying to get a photo of the kids for our Christmas card. You can guess how that went. But I seriously thought about using this one, I really did! Why have some pretty picture every year, lets have some character!! I thought it would be especially funny with a "silent night" quote! :) But boring ole Dan shot it down and suggested we try when he gets home. What a party pooper! Oh well you all get to see it here anyway! :) So MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Mamma's angel!

I just love sleeping pictures and the other day I realized I had not taken any of Fern lately, so as she was looking so sweet and angelic, I ran for my camera!
This was our Thanksgiving day, Tuesday.






MOM! What are you doing!

Isn't she the cutest!!! She is still in the pack-n-play, we had some problems with finding the hardware to the crib! :) Isn't moving fun!!!

On a very exciting, Thanksgiving note, Daddy called and said he is coming for Christmas!!! We are all very excited!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We started our celebrating early, Today we took a little family outing up to Plymouth, Mass. It is only about 2.5 hours away from our new house. We had a great time, we saw of course Plymouth Rock, where the pilgrims first stepped on to our continent, we got to go on the Mayflower II, a replica of the first Mayflower, and consequently we also saw the Atlantic Ocean (I had never seen it!), Plus we visited 2 new states, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Ohhh that was a bad run on sentence. Oh well it is my blog! :) The boys enjoyed the Mayflower, we had been reading a book about the First Thanksgiving, so it went well with that. I thought it was great to see Plymouth Rock, and the Atlantic Ocean, I guess I can say we moved from sea to shining sea now.
We will be having our Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday. Dan leaves on Wednesday to fly to Florida, and they said no to his request to fly home for Thursday. It now also looks like Dan will be in Bora Bora for Christmas. They are talking about flying the spouses there too, but I said no, how can we spend Christmas without our kids. You all probably think I am nuts turning down a trip to Tahiti, but I just won't go for Christmas. So we'll see what happens.
Dan got his first taste of Riley crying over Calif. friends and family last night. It did not make him too happy, good thing I wasn't there I usually end up in tears too, Riley just breaks my heart. Dan had sent me to bed early as I am fighting off some kind of bug, it has made my chest heavy, and yesterday I spent the day in vertigo! :) Walking around outside in the cold today didn't help, hopefully I will shake it soon!
On Thursday evening we had our first friend over to see our house, Shane Sherman was in Boston on business and of course Abby got him directions right down! Of course he ended up driving the one evening we had this huge storm, the one that killed people in North Carolina! But we had a great time visiting with him. Shane and Abby and their kids Sheldon and Liliann were our neighbors in Costa Mesa back when we all just had one babe!
Hope you all enjoy the new pictures!

* I have been trying to post this since Sat. Blogger does not like my photos, so they will come! :)

Happy Bithday to you, Happy Birthday to you! They dug in before I could snap a picture, but you get the idea!

Today!

I thought you all might just need to see that Fern added a new accessory. Yes she is Mary's niece! Today along with her purse she is wearing a blue beaded necklace! She is looking particularly girly in her too cute skirt and tights. She just cracks me up! And I thought you might like a smile too! Love ya!

Today's Adventures!

Today Fern actually got a good nap, so while she was sleeping the boys and I headed outside. Why not we have the PERFECT back yard, and it was in the mid 60's today. The only bummer was the neighbor burning something in his back yard and the smoke blowing right into our adventure. But we were able to look past it and had a good time.
First we put on a temporary roof on the tree house, I have grand plans I'll perfect over the winter and then execute next Spring. But the boys have been dying for a roof, so now the neighbors have no doubt where we came from, I used a rain poncho from Disneyland. I always knew it would come in handy again! :)
Our next great find, is what I think is actually our very own spring! Yes water bubbling up from the ground, in our yard! I told Dan we are going to have to get all the leaves and branches that the previous owner piled there, out of there and see if we can have our own little creek! Pretty cool hu!
Then this next picture is of our Winnie-the-Pooh tree. Riley and I have decided that it looks as if Pooh could just climb up that tree looking for some hunny! But we do have a black squirrel and a grey squirrel living in it. So in honor of our tree Riley and I are reading the original pooh book. Riley and I are really enjoying it!
And this last photo is Fern's new obsession... purses! What a girl! She found this old purse of mine in one of the boxes and she has been putting things in it and putting it over her head, this evening she also got her arm though too. She was trying to get my camera lens cover so that is why the photo is a bit funky, she was just not cooperating!
We are all doing fine, the boys have been melancholy for their Dad, and Riley has been in tears over California. He was sad about Grandpa M., Aunt Mary & Ryan, Robbie, Makayle, & Leslie. He has asked me to get on the computer and get us tickets on Jet Blue to California. It has been very hard on me, and having to console Riley has made it even more hard. It seems that tellaporters should have been invented already, what ever happened to Wonka-vision? All though I would not like to be an inch high. Oh well. We watched this great new virsion of Little House on the Prairie that my Dad sent us, I guess we should be glad that we will see our families again, it is not good-bye just see ya later, plus we can talk on the phone and email. Do you think I am talking myself into the idea that it is fine? Naaaaaa, but I can pretend, at least for Riley!
Tomorrow Dan gets home, not till after dinner, but he will sleep here. I am planning on keeping the kids up so we can have Jake's Birthday. I found a health food store in New Haven (about 13 miles from our house) that makes goodies with out milk and eggs, so I ordered a chocolate cake, and picked it up this evening. They put Happy Birthday Jake on it, I can't wait to eat it!!! MMMMMMM! Maybe we will have a few happy Jake pictures Monday. :)

Dan is on the phone right now and it looks like he will be home later than planned, so maybe no pictures until Tuesday. We'll see.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKE!!!

Well you all will just have to remember what Jake looked like yesterday and then add a day of age to it. Jake was not interested in having his birthday picture taken, he would not smile, he turned from the camera, he was very clear! So no picture of my cutie. He told be today as I was lamenting on how big he was, that he is still a baby. So I said ok baby! :) Jake and the gang got to go play at a friends house today, and I got a bit more unpacking done in the kitchen. I am finding it really hard to organize in the kitchen, I can usually visualize it all but my visualizer seem to be busted! Oh well, I am working through it. I just want it done, I want ALL of it done. Does anyone want to take pity on me and come finish my painting? We really don't have a lot to finish, Dan's Mom & Dad did ALOT of it, it is just a little tough to do with 3 kids including a nursling, add in the pilot and your looking at a lot of Mama not painting! :) I know it will get done, I guess I'll just have to wait until my Mama comes to rescue me. :)

Fern!

The other evening Dan and the boys ran to Home Depot, so Fern and I were just hanging out, then Fern got quiet. So I went to look for her and found her on the kitchen floor totally gone. She didn't even stir when I put her PJ's on. :)



Here is Fern playing with her wheelie bug. She is wearing her new winter clothes, these are from a great clearance sale last spring at Gymboree! She looks so big in her 12-18 mo. clothes! I got a little sad putting her older clothes away, maybe I can hand-me-down some to my new niece in the spring, right Mary? :)

We are all doing pretty good, Dan is off to Florida this evening, he'll be there until Sunday. We will celebrate Jake's belated 3rd birthday then. Then Monday Dan is off again until Wed. Riley has been a bit teary over it. I fought with the pool for a while in the pouring rain, and then was angry. So we are just a barrel of emotions here, not to mention the other two babes, and all. Oh well I guess that is life. Our ward here is very nice, they were all so excited for us to be here, I guess there are not too many new move-in's. No callings yet, but I am sure they are coming! I went this week to the Naugatuck School District building (which is by the way the most beautiful old house with all the original wood work) and signed the opt out form, so we are at least legal now. We had made the decision to home school a while ago, but signing the paper made it seem more real I guess.

I hope you enjoy all these new photos, I should be able to stay up to date more now! Love ya all!

Our Frog, Pumpkin, & Astronaut!

Belated Birthday Scone for Fern!