Our Great Photographer...

Riley snaped these pictures of Fern and I this morning before church to show off our new matchy-matchy cherrie outfits! Grandma J. made these for us for Valentine's Day, we were quite spiffy!!With glasses...and without! :)
I know I am standing a bit weirdly but Fern is really getting heavy!! I took the kids in for their well checks this last week, Riley was about 50% for both height and weight, Jake 95% and Fern 25%! What a range!! They are all growing too quickly!!

Hope you are having a great Sunday!

Dinos & Rocks!!!

We have enjoyed the last 8 months of getting to go to the Children's Meuseum in Hartford it was a great pass to buy! But tonight for the first time we used our member benifits for a great members only night! Tomorrow they officialy open their new exibit but we got to see it tonight!! Dinos, Rocks, & Fossils!! Can you believe these three are looking at the camera and smiling all at the same time!!??
Here are the "guys" as Fern calls them digging for fossils!!
Fern was NOT into the dinosaurs, but she perked up after we moved on here is her sweet astronaut grin!! :)
And then there are legos! In the basement of the museum there is few exibits sponsered by Lego, so here are the boys building cars!
Fern got in on the duplo legos and the earthquake platform. You see you build a building on the platform and then push the button and it shakes like an earthquake and you can see how well you built your building! She is a California girl!

And here is one of Fern's (and the boys) favorite activities at the museum. Sorry it is a bit dark!

And that was our adventure! The kids thought it was funny to eat dinner in the car on the way home, kids! :)

*Blogger spell check is still not working for me!!! GRRR!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well I thought I'd share a bit of our fun this morning!!Last year I gleaned a great idea from another mama, and we continued it this year! We each decorated a box (last year we used bags) with our name on it and such and then we put our Valentine to each other in it. Then this morning after breakfast and such we got to open them! This year we had a bonus, a package from Grandma J. (we opened that last night) and a package from Aunt Donna, Uncle Jody and the gang there on the farm, plus a couple gifts from Aunt Mary, Novella, and Ryan!! :)
The boy's gifts were a colaberation of talents! I sewed the canvas on the fake swead, Grandpa M. drew the awsome maps, and Dad "aged" (aka: got to play with fire) the edges and found the cool little compases! The boys are enjoying these!
My gift did not fit in my box but were quite enjoyeble!! Dan's gift is the one on the table, a "Los Tigres de Norte" CD, so we celebrated Valentine's to mariachi music! :)
Here is sweet Fern smiling o-so-sweetly in her new shirt from Novella! Now they are matchy-matchy!! :)

Love you all!!

7!!!!

Can it be!!?? My baby is 7 today!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Happy Birthday Riley!!Here is Riley 7 years ago!!
Here is Riley with his cerub cheeks at his 4th birthday party!
And Riley yesterday, we had a birthday dinner for him with Grandpa and another family. Riley is into cheetahs so we had cheetah cupcakes and a cheetah scavenger hunt. :) Tonight we got to go see Dad in New Haven and go out to dinner with him, then we had leftover cupcakes and sang happy birthday to Riley in Dad's hotel room (really cool on the Riley-o-meter)!! Now Riley is happily snoring in bed and I can not believe that I could possibly be the mother of a 7 year old!!!

The Tank Museum!

What kind of daughter would I be if didn't plan something fun for Daddy after all the dishes and play dough he's been busy with!!?? So yesterday we went to the Tank Museum!!! We were able to go with another family, who thankfully has a tank fanatic, Yea Chris!! And another mom to not chat tanks with, Yea Carrie!! And a 4 year old to run-a-muck with Jacob, Yea Christopher!!! And Riley, well he had to put up with all of us! :)Here is Christopher and Jake on top of one of the tanks they had outside, it was blue skys and sunny but quite chilly!
Here is Grandpa (stalling the tank talk long enough to smile for the picture!!) and the boys!
Inside they did not have too many tanks but the ones they did were in awsome condition and the exibits they created were VERY detailed, here is an exibit with a WWII era tank, and us!
Back outside on our way out the wind had whiped up and it was COLD!! Fern was fussing! But the boys were ready to play some more, here is RIley in the back of an old military ambulence!
And then Daddy with the kids infront of the first kind of tank he drove!

More Already!!??

You all are probably falling off your computer chair about now, another bunch of pictures from Danna!!! Crazy! But well we are finally all well and the kids are cute and Grandpa is here!After Fern came inside from playing this morning she was all muddy so we changed her clothes. First we got the pants on and then I tried to stear her to a sweater to go with her tshirt but no, the bathing suit cover-up won! So here is Fern after we got home from our shopping trip to Whole Foods!
She was too cute to stop taking pictures!
Atleast the colors match!
She is so pretty, and I am completly bias!!
Here is Fern and Grandpa last night, it started out that Grandpa was reading Fern's book to her and then it ended up being Grandpa explaining to her that her shape book was wrong because that was not a circle it was a cylinder, and that was not a rectangle it was a rectangular prisim. Math Teachers! :) It makes me wonder if this book's title is actually true!! :)
And here is Riley and Grandpa this evening right before leaving to go to Riley's Cub Scout meeting. It is Grandpa's first foray driving in Connecticut on his own, I am hoping they are there safely and get home too!
It is just too much fun having Grandpa here, he's been doing my dishes!!! :)

Fern's New Knowledge!

Well of course Fern has been too cute lately, here is the proof!This is Fern right now, passed out on the bean bag! I left her and the boys watching a show with Grandpa to make a snack, when I came back down stairs here she was. Her late night out was too much!! :)

This was Fern last night, just before we left to go get Grandpa. This is her new knowledge, and she is so proud of herself! She first did this last night before dinner, so amazing!

And again, too cute!

And then Jake thought he needed to get in on the attention! :)

Random!

Well we have had action, adventure, sickness, anger, and a whole relm of crazyness. But here are a few random pictures of the good of it! Here is my homey chilling on the couch watchen a video!
And my car WITHOUT the blue door!! Yep we finally got a setlement check from the dork who mistakenly broke into our house, so we got the door painted on the honda this week!!
HEAVEN!!!!

This cup is half full of heaven, because that is when I would finaly put it down to take a picture! :) We discovered a really neat vegatarian resturant down in New Haven right in amongst the Yale campus called Claires Corner Copia. And we discovered they have mexican hot chocolate!!! Heaven to this misplaced So. Cal. gal! Dan brought me home one the other night when they had to leave the plane down there because of freezing rain! YUMMMMMMY!!!

What did you do today??

We also had a great family outing today, I forgot my camera but did take a great picture with my phone, that I can not get OFF!! We went to the matinee of THIS and the best part, we were the only ones in the theater so they very graciously turned down the volume, Jake has sensitive ears. It was tons of fun and the movie was great!!

And the FUN does not stop there!! We are planning a late night out tonight as we head up to the airport to go pick up DADDY (Grandpa to most in the house)!!!! We are tracking him on FlightAware, he takes off in 10 min. (according to the airline, Ha Ha)!!

So there is our random-ness all in one post!

Oh and look what Cherish learned how to do!! :)

*Blogger's spell check is not working I'll fix it later, for now you all can see how poorly I spell! :)

Happy Birthday Nancy!!

Happy, happy birthday, Nancy Dear; happy days will come to you all year. If I had one wish, then it would be a happy happy birthday to you from me!

Love ya!!

Race Day!!

Well today was Riley's big Pinewood Derby for Cub Scouts!! He and I went, sat on the floor next to the track and crossed our fingers!!Here is Riley with his participation ribbon, before the race started.
Can you guess which one is Riley's?? The one with the R!! The yellow and orange dot stickers were put on for the race, the rest is his paint job.

Here is one of Riley's races, he smoked everyone!!

Here is Riley's last race, he came in 6th out of 18 cars. He was a bit disappointed as he would have gotten a trophy if he had been 5th or higher and he had set his sights on a trophy. :( And then Dan won a trophy for coming in second in the adult race, so Riley went up and accepted it for him. So that was a little hard.

Here is Riley with his car after the race (isn't he hansom!), Riley was the 1st place for the Tiger scouts. So, no trophy but he gets to race in the regional race in about a month. So we will go there, there were still a few tears but over all a good experience.

Best of all is then he and mom went and got a doughnut!!

Yea for race day!!

Christmas Card Olympics!

So I am a snail mail junky, I LOVE to get mail in my little metal box across the road. Even better when the mail man beeps his horn to tell me it is a package!! Back to this though, I love to get Christmas cards to hear from all those who I don't get to chat with often enough; it is one of the highlights of the season for me! I use to send out almost 70 cards every year, I have downsized quite a bit in the last couple years. Unfortunately I had to delete a couple cards from my list for next year, a couple older people are no longer here. :(

So every year I put up all the cards we received on the wall to enjoy them past mail time! And inevitably there are a few that I just really enjoy and look at quite a bit, and so here is the first annual Christmas Card Olympics!!! Yea!! Now no hard feelings if yours is not here, I enjoy ALL of them!! ;) This card won for best "seasonal" I just get too few cards with the true meaning! This was from my sister in law Laura's family.
This won two categories, first Danna's eyes bugging WAY out, and second making Danna feel REALLY old! This is a family I grew up with, these are the kids left at home (plus mom & dad). The boy on the far right is the baby I learned how to change a boy diaper on, and the gal in the middle was one of my Brownie Girl Scouts when I was a co-leader with her mom (she is 21!!). And the little boy next to his mom I am sure should still be a little baby!! CRAZY!!
This is the best fun card, it is from my sister in law Amanda's family. The heads are thumb prints with the antlers drawn on then googly eyes and pom pom noses glued on. Too cute!!
This one is the HOTTEST mama card! This is my friend Cathy we walked together for HS graduation and she was one of my bridesmaids, and now she has 3 little babes a husband in school and look how good she looks!! Of course her husband and kids are not eye sores ether!!
And this is the one that gave me a good giggle, it came just a bit late, on the inside it says, "And it's not even Christmas"! Ha, Ha, this one is from Grandpa Mike!

So thank you everyone for the great cards, there are so many more I could include, but I have better things to do than sit here gabbing about cards!! :)

MY TOE!

When Dan bopped me on the head and talked me into moving to New England I had 2 stipulations; I needed a new tea pot to make hot tea to keep me warm, and I needed warm slippers to keep my toes warm. I LOVE my beautiful blue tea pot, and I have worn my wool sheep slippers nearly everyday since we moved here. But sadly look what I found in my slipper the other day... MY TOE not inside but peeking out!!! What am I to do!?!?! I wish the art of darning was a skill I had, maybe I could fix it. But I am afraid they won't make it until next winter!!

I know you all are laughing or rolling your eyes, but darn it my toes can not survive without my slippers!!!! :)

Sorry we have no cute kid pictures, we have all had a bit of a cold, so we are not much fun and the chores have not been getting done so my house is a disaster area. No pictures!!! :) But we are feeling a bit better, although the kids still have a horrible barking cough. Just in time for Dan to head out, of course! :)

But stay tuned there is an up coming contest, well at least awards, or maybe I should say accolades. :) Are you curious??

Toasty!!

So this last week we had a couple days when it got all the way to 60 degrees! The first it was raining, but the second was just a bit muddy so we got to go play for a bit in the back yard! The tree house is the center of the fun!!
Fern beelined to her swing and stayed there for about 40 min!! She was so happy!
Jake ran like a crazy monkey! As you can see from that grin he had a great time!!
And Riley, if he is "exploring" he is happy!

We are all doing well here, we have been enjoying Dan's airplane being broken! :) This morning we are enjoying Saturday morning cartoons (a PBS tape Grandpa made for us)! And soon I will be enjoying green Tabasco sauce again!! I have not been able to buy it out here, I can find the red at one store but not the green! But have no fear Daddy saves the day!! He was going to bring me some when he comes out next month but since he does not check luggage it was not going to work, but then he found out you can order it online!! So My Daddy is saving me buy sending be 4 bottles!! (He almost sent the gallon jug!!!)

So that is our fun here!

Not Too Many Today!

It has been quiet around here, well not quiet but nothing too noteworthy! Yesterday we had the day of raging tempers, the kids were trying to kill each other. So it was quite appropriate that our Family Home Evening lesson scheduled was on anger. I hope it sunk in maybe a little bit!!

But here is cute Fern yesterday with her short lived pigtails!

She was insistent we take her photo in my chair!
And she was sure we all wanted to see the back too!

I hope this new year is starting out well for everyone, we are plugging along. It has been cold so Dan has been in Florida mostly, I am craving the beach!!!

What a Night!!

Well I thought that I would get Dan to set up the toddler bed for Fern before he left yesterday. I figured we'd put it out now so she could get "use to" the idea. Yea, funny mama!!

Now you see Fern has never slept more than 6 feet away from me her entire life, so it was with great surprise and quite a bit of doubt when she said she wanted to sleep in her new bed in her room across the hall from me! I did not think it would happen, but there she was at 8:15 pm after nursing in her room, asleep in her little bed. I said, oh it will not last we will be lucky if she is there until we go to bed. And then we were ready for bed.

I know it is dark but here is Fern sleeping in her bed last night! I was STILL sure it would not last!

Then I got up with Dan at 5am to see him off, surprised she was still asleep and even more surprised that Dan's commotion did not wake her. She did wake around 6:30am, and started crying when she could not find me downstairs. She then climbed in bed with me and nursed and then snoozed until 9am!!

What a night to sleep in her room, here is the window with ice on it this morning!! And her room is the warmest as it is over the boiler!
Here is Fern posing for me in her big girl bed! This is the bed Dan and my Dad built when Riley was a squirt!
All cuddly, she was so excited to have a pillow! It was so cold last night that I put jammie pants under her flannel nightgown!!

There are more icy morning pictures on my nature blog! BURRRRR!!!