Party Time!!

While we were in Calif. , Mom and Mary planned a great family retirement party for Daddy! Lots of chill'en!

And goofy boys!
Is that Jake or Steve?
A great cook!

But are adult party's all that fun really?
Mom slaved away, and cracked the whip in the kitchen.
And it payed off, we had a ton of GREAT food!Thanks Mary, Ryan, and Novella for letting us invade!

You all are probably wondering why I am updating so well with all I have to do with our mess. Well I am just here pretending I don't have a house with boarded up windows, or anything else! :) So that's my story!

Fern & Novella!

Fern thought Novella was pretty neat, she often came over and wanted to hug her! Here are some cute pictures of what happens when Mary and Ryan leave Novella alone with Aunt Danna and cousin Fern! Here is our good CHEESY smile! Many times Fern would go over to Novella and get very close to her and just look at her. It was cute, but a little strange. She would hold her head too.
Novella kept looking the other way when Fern was trying to inspect!
Fern liked pretending to be a baby like Novella!
After all the hard work of taking care of her baby Fern needed to put her feet up! Fern is a very good little mommy!

We are still cleaning up glass, will it ever end?? All of our neighbors feel so bad, we even got a new plant from one today! And your prayers are working we have not killed any insurance people... yet...keep praying! :)

More Calif. Fun!

On Friday we all got up to see Grandpa off on his last day of school! After 32 years of teaching he finally had his last day! Her is Grandpa decked out in his retirement outfit, and the kids still in their jammies! After that we got dressed and spent the day at the Wild Animal Park, Grandma J. Aunt Mary, & Baby Novella joined us!
Here are my three in the giant log, how cute it that, small, medium, and large! :)
The WAP has this great new area, covered, fans, and soft chairs! Oh and fun stations for the kids! :) I just love the sign going in! :)
Fern said hello to one of the lionesses at the Lion Camp!

The park just recently retired the monorail ride through the Asia and Africa open areas, but they now have a tram instead, I think we were a bit closer to the animals, but I think we only saw Africa. But we all had fun seeing all the animals! My 3 fit in quite nicely!
Fern was in an Aunt Mary mood, and wanted to hold her hand, it was too cute!
This was Fern's favorite thing all day, helping push baby Novella, Grandma practically had to run to keep up! Novella enjoyed the day sleeping and eating! :)

Don't worry I still have a ton of pictures!! More tomorrow!!

Our "Busyness"!

Please forgive me for not telling, but it was a surprise and I did not want it uncovered!! :) Daddy was to retire on last Friday, and we just felt like we should be there to support him, so... We got crazy and flew to Calif. on Wednesday night, and then just walked right into Daddy's class room on Thursday! He was quite surprised and did not have the slightest clue we were in the state!! Here he is getting the first hugs from the boys!
And here we all are in his class room. We all had a great time, and I have alot of pictures to share, so stay tuned!

But then unfortunately we got a dreaded call late Saturday night from our local police department telling us our house had been broken into. :( It was not good. We flew in late last night, and stayed in a hotel last night near our home. We dropped the kids off at a friends (who thankfully boarded up our house) and then Dan and I came up to survey the damage. There is a long bad story but I do not wish to retell. But the good is it is not as bad as our imaginations had carried us away to. One of our front windows is broken our back slider is broken, a couple chairs, our stereo, picture frames, little stuff. The bad is my poor little Honda, the guy took a skate board to it. So we are neck deep in all that fun, so keep us in our prayers that we do not end up in jail for killing any insurance people! :) We are so very thankful for our neighbor who found the guy and called the police, and for another neighbor who has been very helpful. We have been blessed even in this trial.
Good Night!!

Connecticut History

We passed this on our way to the beach last week, and so on the way back we stopped and read it, yea I know I did not get the "continued on other side". I have no clue why I didn't, Danna brain I guess, oh yea that and Dan was kinda parked in traffic, so I felt I should hurry. Oh well! :)
The other side was about the tribe's demise, it was quite sad and like most indigenous people it was because of the colonizers.

I may not be posting for a couple days, we are quite busy! ;)

Another Adventure!!

BEACH DAY!!!!

We dipped our toes into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time today!!!

Disclaimer: Dan has before, and it was technically Long Island Sound, but hey it IS water from the Atlantic!! :)

It took Fern a while to decide to go to the water's edge. She was happy to play in the sand near our stuff for a while!
Jake was intrigued by the sea weed, it is totally different than in the Pacific Ocean! Weird!!
Fern liked digging!!
Three crazy babies!!
This was after the bucket got a crack, Riley was disappointed to get back with no water! Riley ended up going out to his waist, and he did not want to leave!! :)
Fern was very pleased with putting sand in the buckets!!

The boys started running up and down the beach, then Fern wanted to, and then she biffed it. So she then enlisted Dad's help! :)
On the beach is the old New Haven Light House, and the old carousel, too bad the carousel was closed for repairs. :(
Here's the whole light house. :)

So that was our fun day, that and Mama glued to the computer, typing out book lists and schedules for school next year! :)

Yesterday's Adventure!!

Well mom woke up yesterday and declared, lets go! Where? Everyone asked, to a museum I said!! Needless to say everyone was very excited!! So we got ready and headed to the Hartford's Children's Museum!

So here is our adventure and a whole lot of pictures!! :) Fern had a great time, usually she is just along for the ride, but not this time, she wanted to walk almost the entire time, and she was so "talkative". This is the 4 and under room, Fern and Jake loved it!
They had a sand table in there, filled with a mixture of sand and rice. See there is a good use for cheap white rice!! :) The room was painted like different habitats, ie; desert, mountains, lake, etc.
There was also a little house that Fern and Jake thought was great!
Look what I made you mom! The smiles yesterday were priceless!
They had a wildlife area, lots of reptiles, but a few birds who had been injured that they take care of. Here is a great horned owl, it was so old, and asleep, doing the classic head bobb. It was hysterical! We took this picture for Great-grandma Jenson!

Here is Fern meeting the cute little screech owl! They looked at each other quite intently!
This is one of my favorite pictures, this is this whirly feather machine run bu an upside down bike, Riley was pedaling with his arms!
Riley loved this Lego car race track!

My boys were happy LOTS of LEGO'S!
There is this gigantic concrete sperm whale, which is CT's state animal. It is hollow inside so we got to go inside, and pretend we were Jonah swallowed by the whale!
Fern was ready to go home! Jake wanted to see the animals again! They had a whole room called Turtle World! Riley did give his opinion, and I did not ask! :)

We found a Whole Foods Market across the street, so we went and it was heavenly, they had TONS of yummy produce!!! Corn on the cob, and the most delicious artichokes, we ate them last night and they were heavenly!!!! And I splurged and bought some avocado rolls (veggie sushi) and it was divine!! So now (since we bought a family pass to the museum) we will be going to Whole Foods more often!! :)

Mana From Heaven!

Here is our little garden, we are VERY blessed to have it today! Yesterday we had more CRAZY weather! We had massive thunderstorms, were on tornado watch, and had a few down pours. But thankfully, unlike the rest of the borough, we did not have golf ball size hail! Unfortunately our friends in the rest of the city lost their entire gardens. The hail destroyed alot, and damaged cars. Mom even called this morning and told me that on Good Morning America this morning they mentioned our town specifically for the severe weather! So we had plenty of thankful prayers last night!

Today we had a fun adventure at the Hartford Children's Museum, and we found a Whole Foods Market right across the street!! I will give you all the scoop later tonight or tomorrow!! :)

CHOCOLATE!!!!!

Dan made us some yummy chocolate cupcakes yesterday, and Dad got soft and let Fern and Jake lick the remnants! Riley did not even know he missed out, he was outside playing, so ssshhhh!!At least Dad remembered a bib over Fern's pretty new pale yellow church dress!!

After using his fingers Jake decided it would save the middle man if he just stuck his head in and licked the bowl! Jake keeps us laughing!! :)

A Day I Wish I Could Skip!

Ok do you see the tiny black speck in the bag? For size estimates, this is a regular sandwich size ziploc. Well that teeny tiny black speck is a tick. I found this on my side Friday morning while taking my shower, I had to pull it out. I then ended up at the Dr.'s office that afternoon where he confirmed it was a Deer Tick, which is not good if you live in Connecticut. Because here in CT. there is a city named Lyme, where Lyme disease was named after, and where it is rampant. And so here I wait to find out if I have been infected, not fun. So in 2 weeks I have to go get blood test to see, while I watch for symptoms of Lyme. It worst is that I have not been hiking in the woods, or anywhere else you are likely to pick up a tick, so I am now a bit paranoid about camping and hiking here, which are two things we love to do. So there is my pitiful story. Say your prayers for me please.

There will be fun chocolate pictures tomorrow.

WOW Riley!!

I know kind of funky, it is the first thing I have tried to scan!

Anyway, Riley brought this to me last night, he did it all on his own!!

He wrote : I heart to 2c tepl = Riley

It means: I love to see the temple, Riley

It is the name of a primary song he loves to sing. He sounded it all out with out copying! He loves to write and is always asking us to spell something, or he is copying, but this was purely from his brain!! Just amazing!!! Thought you'd all like to see it!! :)