Happy Memorial Day!!

This morning we got up bright and early to get Riley to his parade post!! Then we hurried over to our friends home to park and walk downtown for the parade! After the parade we went to a ward pool/picnic party we had a great time, but after all these pictures/walking/bickering children, I was not the photographer! SO here is the parade!! Waiting!!! Here is Jake, Fern, Angelica, Ezekiel, Marion, & Bro. V. waiting for the parade to start!!
Yea the color guard is here!! They had a very nice flag ceremony, they are right in front of the city hall building. It was also great to see so many uniforms!!

I thought you all should hear some of the parade with all of these pictures!! I love bands playing patriotic songs, and bagpipes!!
Here are some of the Veterans from our borough! (Yes we are not technically a town, we are a borough!!)
I thought the re-enactors were great!! I know these guy are someone specific, but guiltily I admit I don't know who!
Here are some Civil War re-enactors!
When they shot their muskets Fern jumped and Jake covered his ears! It was really neat thought!!
More Civil War Solders! As odd as this sounds it is strange to see the Civil War monuments up here with Yankee solders on them, It was just so much a part of everyday life in Virginia. You saw confederate monuments everywhere there!

Fern had a great time waving to everyone!! Here is our fire department!!
We have a very high population of Portuguese people here, so this was the Portuguese Club's contribution to the parade. On the truck there were a few men playing music and then behind the truck...
were these dancers! Their costumes were beautiful and it was fun to see them dancing traditional dances!!
We had a couple helicopters do a fly-over, the kids loved that!
This old ladder truck was beautiful, it was neat to see it driving down the road!


Here is Pack 102!!!!
And there is Riley!!! I had the whole side of the street calling his name to get him to turn towards me!!!
He finally did, but hid behind his wave!! :)
Here is Krisana, she is one of my Young Women, and she belongs to the family we walked down with!! She is in the Middle School Band!
And the end, I got a quick shot of my three cuties when we met Riley's Pack at the flag pole! It was a great patriotic parade!!

Happy Memorial Day!

The FUN Continues!!

At least on my blog!! Here are the last of our photos, I decided to jam them all into one post!!

~

The libraries around here have these cool things called "library passes" they are passes to get into many different places, museums, national parks, amusement parks, and the ZOO!! So we got to go to the zoo for free!! Here is some of our fun!! Mary and I thought this was the cutest logo we have seen for a zoo, we were looking to see if they had a sign we could take a picture in front of, but alas they did not. :(
When we first pulled up and parked we were welcomed by a peacock strolling by. After we got into the park we saw many peacocks, turkeys, guinea hens, and a few other free roaming birds! We got lucky and saw the peacocks fan their tails a couple of times!!
So then we thought we'd join in!!
Even Dan and I got in on the silly-ness!!
They had this great exhibit of prairie dogs, they had a great big mound. Then there was a tunnel we could go through and these little pop-outs we could be right at eye level with the prairie dogs! I am in one pop out taking a picture of Mary, and Dan &Fern!
Unfortunately this pop-out was too scratched up so my camera kept focusing on them instead of the cuties further out! SO the orange blot on the left is Jake, and then Mary and Novella are in the middle!

We saw quite a few animals, buffalo, wolves, rainforest animals in the rainforest hall, but these were Novella's favorite! There were two river otters who put a good show on! They were swimming all over jumping out and saying hi, wrestling under water, they were hysterical. Novella could have stayed there all day, too bad her cousins like to run!! But you will see no picture of the tigers! After one tried to spray Mary, Novella, Fern and I we moved on quite quickly!!!!!!
Here is our cousin shot! All sitting still, together, for a second!
On our way back out the girls were more awake and ready to smile, so we got more peacock shots!!
And a truly lovely shot of Mary and I!

Novella has a new love, at lest Jake was into sharing!!

~

After leaving the zoo we enjoyed our last evening together!

We painted little (wiggly) nails...
Had SUPER yummy burritos that Mary made us, she actually made a SUPER-DUPER yummy breakfast for us too...
then we finished off the night with a fun project Aunt Mary brought! Draw your own plates!!
We all had a great time although everyone on this side thought it was TOO short, I know Ryan would protest that!!
Thanks for coming to visit Aunt Mary and Novella, come back soon!!!

More, More, More!!!

Well Thursday night Mary took me out to dinner for my anniversary, we went to my favorite restaurant Carol Peck's Good News Cafe! YUMMMMM!!!! And then on Friday we spent the day touring New Haven as we went to Trader Joe's and the health food store Edge of the Woods, which I always forget and call Into the Woods. I'm not a drama geek or anything!!

After all our running about we enjoyed dinner at another favorite restaurant, Clair's Corner Copia. (Which also reminds me of drama days as I think of Mr. Scott saying,"A plethora cornucopia", I know makes no sense but he always said it!!!) It is a vegetarian restaurant right in the middle of the Yale campus, they have GREAT soup!! Here is the crew enjoying the YUMMY food!!

We forgot to get a picture on Thurs. so here we are reenacting our fancy-ness on Sunday!
Here are the 4 girly-girls ready for church!
And the two cutest of the four!!
Sharing is so hard!!!!

~

I have a couple more post of pictures to go...

More of Our Week!

...AUNT MARY & NOVELLA!

YEA!!!

We got lost of playing outside in, here are a few photos of our backyard excursions! Novella got to meet a worm, and she was pure girl! Mary would say, "Novella touch the worm" and Novella would shake her head adamantly!!
Novella loved the car, and Fern loved having Novella to tell what to do! Don't feel bad for Novella, she didn't listen to Fern!
Novella was trying to master her too cute boots and spent a good amount of the time on her bum because of it!
The car was a big hit!
Fern showing us her maple sapling!
Novella loved running through the yard as soon as we stopped trying to have her wear her boots!!
~
LOTS more pictures to come... stay tuned!!

Whew!

What a week!!!!

I am a gal who likes chronological order, so we start last Monday the 12th!

~

Our 10th anniversary week got canceled, but thanks to an amazingly wonderful gal in the ward we got one night away! So off we ran to Boston... BY OURSELVES!!!

Thanks to Dan's millions of Marriott points we got to stay at the Long Wharf Marriott in a very nice room, ours is the top floor on the right! We were right on the harbor over looking the city!
Here is the harbor, we were on the consire's floor so we got free breakfast, and the breakfast room overlooked the harbor, it was beautiful!
We took off as soon as we got there to see some sites. We had originally planned to walk the entire Freedom Trail, but we did not get there until after noon so we got to see most of it. It just means we will have to go back, right!

This was our first stop, the Paul Revere House, I love historical houses anyway, and then the added history was great!!
This is a bell that was cast in the Revere Family shop, it was in the courtyard of the house.
This is a statue of Samuel Adams in front of Faneuil Hall, Dan bought me a miniature "Boston Bean Pot" here.
This is the top of the Old South Meeting house...
...and this is the bottom! I took these pictures in the Boarders Bookstore, we bought Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings here, it takes place in Boston and he is one of our favorite authors. The kids were excited to read another of his books!
Boston Latin School, this is a school Benjamin Franklin went to for a time before dropping out and educating himself.

This is the entrance to the Public Garden, where most of Make Way For Ducklings takes place! We did see many mama and daddy ducks, and were chased by attack squirrels! After living at SVC where they really did attack it was a little unnerving to be chased, I am supposing for food! :)
Here is George Washington, there are many statues all of them good but I thought I would not boor you with too many! :)
We are strolling back through Boston Commons here, and I thought I would show you my saving grace! It was FREEZING and I was warmed by my nice cup of hot herbal tea!
This is the Granary Burial grounds, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and Benjamin Franklin's parents are buried here.

Here is the Bell in Hand Tavern, it is the oldest tavern in the United States! This is where we ate dinner. By the time we had finished dinner the sun had gone down and although it was still plenty light the temperature had dropped to unbearable and the strong wind had increased so as to make strolling more of an effort. So we headed back to the hotel!
Here is the view out our window, on the far left near the top you can see the white top of Faneuil Hall which by the way is a fall out shelter. The things you learn!
Here is another view out our window more to the left of the last picture. All in all Boston was great, it was a wonderful place to walk around. We can not wait to see the rest of the Freedom Trail, and to share it with our kids!!
The next day we went to the Boston Temple, it was nice as it has been impossible for Dan and I to go together to the temple since we moved here. Logistics and scheduling have prevented it! After our peaceful time there we headed down to Hartford to the airport to pick up....

~

To be continued!