Cake, Berries, and Lots of Fun!

Just a catch up of the last couple weeks!We had fun celebrating Dan's birthday! He got to answer the phone to Happy Birthday's all day, went to Home Depot, had German food for dinner, and chocolate cake with kisses! What a fun day we had!
Our friend Kerrie and her son Christopher invited us out to a berry farm the day after and we got to pick blueberries!!! YUMMMM!
Here we are after picking for over 2 hours, Dan has Jake and Fern in the wagon with the berry buckets, Riley is caring Christopher on his back and Kerrie and I are leisurely walking behind! :)
They were running, we were not!
Here is our bag, I paid just over $11.00 for this bag. When we stoped at Big Y for some more freezer bags we checked the price and did some calculations. If we had bought this same amount at Big Y it would have cost us over $100.00!!!! I have the calculations written down, but I have lost my "brain" (notebook) so when I find them I'll share the info!
Our library has "museum passes" that you can check out for two day's at a time, so we borrowed one for a children's museum in Bristol and headed out! Here are the kids in the play structure!
Fern and Dan hosting Sport's Center, I think Dan was enjoying this more! :) You could buy the video tape of their broadcast for $6.00, but we were enjoying the "free-ness" of the day! :)
Riley was so excited to play with this, they had something like this on Aurthur one time. He was here for quite a while!
The testing begins! :)

Yesterday's Adventure!

Yes I have been neglecting my blog, Dan's been home and I have been reading. But instead of catching up I am skipping to yesterday and then will go back later this week. Can you believe it is September??? So these pictures are from last month! :)

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So yesterday I threw all caution to the wind and drove to New York by myself with the kids, in my honda. Yea, I know I am crazy! I have lived here almost 2 years and have avoided driving in New York and I can tell you it will take quite the miracle and a GPS for me to venture there again!

What was so important that I would do this? My good friend Michael got married to Dina! Michael and I have been friends since forever as our moms have been best friends since forever. We grew up together and tortured Mary together, it was great! :) After our drive, only 2 hours if you don't count the flat tire on the expressway, and getting lost; we arrived at the Swan Club on Long Island and found some seats! Look at those beautiful kids!!
It is a good thing I have been blessed with only one girl or I could not be as crazy as I am! Before the night before the wedding this was my shirt, but I decided Fern needed a new dress and so I used THIS tutorial and turned my shirt into her dress!
Here is the back (what use to be the front of my shirt)!

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Now the good stuff, that made the "adventure" worth it!

Here is Michael escorting his mom "Auntie Norma" down the isle! (My kids have lots of aunts, but only one auntie!)

And here is Dina and her Dad, she was already crying!
Riley snapped this photo of Norma and I during the "cocktail hour" before the reception!
And here we are with Michael and Dina, we got to meet Dina two years ago just before we left Calif. We instantly loved her and the kids instantly loved her all over again. Fern thought she was a princess! She did look beautiful!
When we did get to the reception part I got a couple good shots of the first dance!
And another!

We stayed for a while and enjoyed dinner and dancing (I got to dance with both Riley and Norma)! And then we started our adventure back home, this time dealing with getting lost again (why do they not believe in street signs back here!!!) and not being able to go over 50 mph because the donut tire would get squirrly! So I climbed into bed around 12:30am and am still in my pj's as I write this!

Please remember the very nice man who pulled over and changed my tire for me on the Cross Island Expressway in your prayers, he was truly a blessing to this mama wearing a long pale pink silk dress! :)

Happy September! Happy Labor Day!

:)

Look what I spied on my walk today!
Yesterday we took a trip to Hartford, both to go to Whole Foods and then across the street to the Children's Museum! :)

This is an Eastern Tree frog, none of my frog pictures came out very well. :(
Here is their Jungle Cat, they have many injured animals or confiscated illegal pets. Fern was quite surprised that this big cat was so similar to Petunia! :)
They have 3 injured owls there at the museum and I love to see them, there is this one who is always very alert. Always tracking us! Then they also have a small screech owl who is usually snoozing, and a REALLY old Great Horned owl who is mostly blind and has a constant head bob! :)
This is always one of our favorites, the stick bugs!
For some reason the kids were very interested in the rattle snakes this time. We watched them for a while and talked about them, they were surprisingly active!
Here is another attempt at a frog picture, look how he is so smooshed against the glass fast asleep! :)
Riley wanted to go to the excavation station so he and I went there, then just he and I went to the planetarium and saw a show called Oasis, it was about water in our solar system.

Fun fun! :)

Money Well Spent!

For most of you it is no surprise that I really do not buy a whole lot of things other than food, TP & toothpaste, kids clothes, and books. But in the last two days I have made a couple splurges and they are so cool I thought you NEEDED to know about them! :) I have seen sandwich cutters before, but I have always just used cookie cutters. Then I saw this in a catalog and wanted it (Jake's my dino crazed kid), but I want a lot of things in catalogs and never buy them. Yesterday though, I was in walmart (YUKKKKKK!! But moneys tight and they have silk soy milk for really cheap!) and right there in the milk isle just to tempt moms, low and behold they had the sandwich cutter!! And it was only $1.79!!! So of course today we had dino sandwiches and I do have to say there is a lot less "left-over" vs. using cookie cutters, and as you can see it worked well with Dan's bread (I was afraid it might not, so many of the bread "gadgets" out there do not work well with homemade bread)!
And then today, I needed a couple things at Staple's (for the new school year) so we made the 30 min. trip over there. I took my well loved (aka:VERY falling apart) cookbook to see how expensive it would be to have it bound together again. It was $2.00!!!!! I am so excited, I should have done this a while ago!! And I should have taken my "Feeding the Whole Family" which is also falling apart, although the new edition is calling my name, but it is hard to justify the buy when I have one (minus the 60 NEW RECIPES)!!!!! :) But at least now I will know the Apple Jack Pancakes are in the breakfast section and not possibly in the soup section! YEA!!!

On my deer fence (aka: the money pit or hunk-o-junk) Dan went ahead and ordered the new hose, climbed under the van to change it this morning only to find that the rack and pin are spewing power steering fluid faster then you can put it in. But the good news is the hose is in fact not leaking so we can take it back and get our money back minus the $3 shipping. :) You ask where does that leave us? Well we can take it to a shop and throw more money at it, but for now I am continuing to drive my trusty steed! :)

Sun & Sand!

I know we spent a whole week on the beach, but do you really think that is enough for this Calif. girl, her indoctrinated husband, and three third generation Calif. babes!?! :) No way! So off we went to New Haven's Light House Point Beach!This was right behind our blanket, the old carousel house. It was beautiful to sit on the beach listening to the waves and the faint music from the carousel. When we were leaving they were setting up for a wedding reception, how neat is that!
We parked ourselves right near the light house as there are not too many people and it was near the bathrooms (Fern is doing awesome on potty-training, but has to go pretty often)! Jake was happy to climb on the rocks, and Riley enjoyed looking for critters!
Fern was quite the daddy's girl while we were at the beach!
This side of the beach is not rocky, it's shelly! The beach is covered in shells and pieces of shells!
There were a lot of oyster shells, this one is fused onto the rocks but still opens a bit!
Here is the light house and my silly family, minus Riley! :)
The tide was quite far out so we could see tons of "green" rocks, made our pictures much more colorful! :)
Fern and Daddy cooling off! We got nearly three hours of sun (enough to turn me red) before the clouds and thunder rolled in, then the lifeguards called everyone out of the water.
These rocks and the little crabs proved to be lots of fun for my guys! For more beach pictures check out my nature blog, "Never be within doors, when you can rightly be without"! :)
Today I made this tote, from THIS tutorial out of fabric I picked out for my bedroom curtains back in Jr. High! :) At least I finally got to use it, this tote will be perfect for our next trip to the beach! I plan to make a few more of these, but with a little tweaking to the pattern. I'd love some of THIS fabric! :)

EXCITEMENT!!

Well amazingly they actually did start paving our road today... at 6:30 am!!!!!!!! The kids LOVED watching the workers and the big trucks, it was even so exciting that Dan stopped working on the honda and came to watch too!

This is the paving machine.

And here is the roller, right after I snapped this shot the man parked, got out and did some hand work on the drainage grate just blocked by Dan in this picture. Dan is a very good narrator and the kids really enjoyed the show!

And P.S. we did not wash away, and we are still waiting for curbs and the rest of our driveway. And the honda is back up and stopping (brake job), but even after the new $60 part the van is still parked, now it needs a $50 part that takes at least 7 days to order. So I guess we will continue to throw our money at the van and order the part in a couple weeks, until then I still have my anti-deer fence! :)

Life...

Please look past my half dressed daughter and my messy kitchen!! :) Dan volunteered to give me a night off and make his delicious pizza, then he enlisted help! Here is Fern rolling out the dough!
And my flour girl posing for the camera! :)

By the way the pizza was a good as always and there is enough left-overs for tonight!!! YEA!

Do you like our moat?

If anyone is planning to visit please call ahead and we will put the draw-bridge out.

During this last week the city started working on taking out our old road to put in a new road, so we have no curbs or gutters or street and we lost a quarter of our driveway! And now we are under flash flood warning... nice! :) It's ok we are not going anywhere, Dan has both of the cars torn apart! :)

And last but not least, even though Dan beat them home we got some more postcards today! This is in Girona Spain, on the back it says, "Carrer De La Forca (Barri Jueu)". Pretty hu! :)

I'll post soon so that you all know we did not float down our moat! :)

Just So You Know...

"You're as popular and relaxing as vanilla ice cream. You go with the flow, and get along with all sorts of people. You appreciate peace and simplicity, so you sometimes find crowds and loud noises overwhelming. You are a chilled-out, calming influence on the people in your life, and your friends appreciate how supportive and flexible you are."

So there is your complete brain freezing twaddle for today! :) They obviously did not see me during the move! :)

Today's Post Card

Sigh.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ours is completely overtaking the yard!! Here is the widest view I could get, I was all the way up against my new fence! (Picture below!)
We actually planted probably half of what you see, this is one that has sprung up on it's own. I figured it had to be something from last year but in the squash family we planted, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, bird-nest gourd, and yellow squash. I have no clue what this is or where it came from but we have 4 all around this size! I thought it was the gourd, although that is practically impossible, but now it is looking more like a green striped butternut squash. WEIRD!!
One of our potato plans is flowering, so pretty!
Miss Fern with the garden loot I was able to get before the torrential down pour became too torrential! :) Cucumber and a few green beans, I have been making ranch dressing almost daily to eat all of our yummy veggies! :)
And my new fence!!! :) The van is on the fritz again and so I had Dan park it up there and the kids and I reclaimed my Honda (yes that leaves Dan wheel less)! Thank goodness I bought such a reliable car back in high school, who knew I'd be driving it around Connecticut with three kids in the back! :) So hopefully this will further deter the deer from my garden! I feel like I am back in Buena (b-you-naa) Vista again! :) Now if only I had a few spare tires to chain to that tree, and a couch for my porch, oh yea and a porch! :) I love BV and I really do miss it, just not the tires! :)

Have a great day!

:)

Ok, so Danna has quite a few things on her to do list and plenty of things that should be done. Surely anyone would think, well she had housework to do, or things to get ready for school, or even she is probably making lunch for her children. But no she has been carried away making doll clothes.

Because I have nothing else to do! :)Here is Fern's doll that I made her for her first birthday, it had one dress Aunt Mary made her and one nightgown Grandma made her. But the poor girl froze all winter because she was wearing a summer dress and it bothered me to no end! Yes I am a freak! So I made the white dress I have been planning to make her that then I could just make skirts (which is more in my range of skill) to go over. Fern wanted her to have a pioneer outfit like hers so here it is!
I did get a little crazy, because I enjoy hand work and after I hemmed the white dress I did a little blanket stitch around the bottom, cuffs, and neck line, and I added little lace to the skirt. :)
Fern ran to get her pioneer outfit and then I got this too cute photo before Fern took it all off again and threw her doll on the ground. Oh well, I guess I should go make lunch and do some of those lurking chores that are threatening to take over the house! :)