Have you ever seen a happier cousin!! Jake was so excited to hold the baby!
Riley was in awe, he did not want to give her up. Riley loves babies in general, but Aunt Mary and Ryan's baby tops the cake!!
Of course Aunt Danna got to hold her! What a blessing to be there and help as much as I could. We can not wait to get to know Novella better!
Yea! Novella Royale got here Friday, she shares a birthday with her mama!!! After a VERY long labor little Novella was not doing so well, so Mary had an emergency c-section. But they are doing really well now, Novella is a good nurser too! She was 8lbs. and 20 1/2 inch. And has a good amount of her Daddy's red hair!!
I have some great pictures of the kids meeting cousin Novella, but I will share just one tonight. Here is Fern taking a peek at her new cousin. 
Here is the Eiffel Tower, doesn't this picture just make you want to sing "Paris in the Spring Time"? 
Dan took this one just for me, because I like daffodils, I love the barely budding trees and the misty-ness of it too. Pretty, Pretty!
Here is Dan in Rome at the Colosseum, pretty handsome guy, wish I was there with him!! :)
Then at the end of their trip they stopped in Ireland for fuel ON St. Patrick's Day! Do the Irish pinch too??
Yep, it snowed, big time. Dan got home last night and had to shovel snow!!! He said there is about 6 inch. And here we are enjoying the sun! :) He He! 
Here I am! 
The package that Aunt Mary and Ryan sent with the boys skateboards got here today, I think they may get a package back!
Maybe two!
Fern thought the skateboards should be hers! Jake gave her rides up and down the hall, when he decided he wanted to play with it, we all heard about it from Fern!
Jake summed it all up when he said," I am not a cowboy, I am Ryan!" He enjoyed posing for this action shot! :) Thanks Mary and Ryan!
Well for the two days Dan was home we got a TON of snow, every other time we have had enough to play in he has been gone. He we so excited he took the kids out three times in one day to sled and such! Here is Miss Fern who decided she would brave the snowsuit and the cold and go play with Dad.
Here they are happy as clams. Why do we say that, are clams happy? Not when they are being eaten I suppose.
Fern is NOT sold on sledding, but Dad is sure if he keeps taking her she'll learn. :)
I got the boys to stand still for one second and I got this photo, then they took off in opposite directions!!
We finally had enough of the right kind of snow for Riley to get his snow man! He was so happy! The snowman later got attacked and knifed and his head got rolled down the hill at my Honda. Poor snowman, poor Honda.
Dan comes home this evening and this is part of his surprise! I completely cleaned out Fern's (aka:paint/storage) room, hauled stuff to the attic, made a box for Goodwill, and actually put stuff away! Then decided to set up the crib & changing table. Well the movers did a number on the crib, I was venting about it to Mom and she saved me by buying Fern a new crib so last night we got it all set up and today I hung a couple pictures. Since we got out the changing table I finally got out the cloth diapers! So this is a picture of Fern's new room and our first cloth diaper in CT. Now all she needs is a door and she can sleep (at least nap) in her own room! The other part of the surprise is I did some work in my craft/school corner downstairs. It was just a wall of boxes, now I can actually find school supplies and there is a good 4 feet square section of floor exposed! Now if I had only been able to keep up with laundry and general clean up around the house! I have a cold so I am not sure much picking up will happen this evening, unless I crack the whip on the boys! So hopefully he will be so surprised by these two projects that he will not notice the general disarray!
Yes Danna has finally fallen off her rocker! For dinner tonight I served oven potatoes and popcorn. And I made Ronald Regan proud, ketchup was our veggie. Have you all fallen off your chairs? Riley was so excited he asked if he could call and tell Dad, so I let him, so he told Dan, then Jake told Dan, then when I got the phone, Dan asked me what we were having for dinner. I smiled and told him, he thought the boys were dreaming! :) I did have some happy campers at dinner! But hey at least they meet the criteria for whole foods; they remember where they came from. I scrubbed the potatoes we picked up at the farm, and I pan popped that organic popcorn! So there you have it a crazy night, with very happy kids at the Hook House!
Here is miss cutie! What a good camera hog, and it is completely impossible to stop taking pictures!! It is hard to see, but the reason I was taking pictures of Fern is because she is wearing barrettes in her hair. One on ether side, they are cute snap ones covered in blue and white gingham ribbon. Grandma J. bought them long before Fern had much hair!
Then Jake came to join the photo shoot, Fern LOVES Jake a ton! Except of course if Jake wants her to do something. Fern loves to tuck the boys into bed every night, and she often times gives Jake a few rounds of good night kisses, and hugs. It is too cute!
I know another X, but it is a great video of the boys new game, Jake was not adventurous enough to let Riley push him! Smart guy! :) Fern wanted to get in on the pushing Riley over the edge action too! Don't mind the messy downstairs, or my mountain of unfolded laundry!! Have a great day!
Wow can you believe it, this is post number 101!! Crazy!
This is from Oct, actually I think it was on Halloween, but it is so sweet with Fern's eyelashes and all so I thought you all might not mind an old picture. Especially since it will be the only one, I let the batteries in my camera die, so I missed the too cute fun of Dan and the boys out back in the ice trying to build an igloo! By the way there was ice inside on the slider again this morning! Yesterday morning it was frozen shut!!!!! AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
How cute is this little girl!! She is wearing Riley's "coon skin" cap that Grandpa bought him on his fist trip to Disneyland when he was 10mo. old! But now it has changed from the "Davey Crockett" hat to the "wild cat" hat, because Grandpa M sent us a care package a while back and he included a DVD of a mini series of Little House on the Prairie. Now I grew up watching the Michale Landon Little House on the Prairie, so I was quite skeptical! But this was great!! We loved it, and have enjoyed watching it! Anyway in the mini series Mr. Edwards wears a coon skin hat because he is a "wild cat from Tennessee", so now when Riley puts his hat on he says, "I'm a wild cat"! It is great! So here is cute Fern when Riley put it on her! :)
You may have to click on this photo to see but there along the INSIDE of our slider door is ice!!!!
And here is outside, that is ice, not snow! It is hitting every side of the house! The wind is blowing SO hard. It is accumulating on all the window sills, and pinging on all the windows! It has only gotten to about 19 degrees! BUUUURRRR! So needless to say we are having a very nice indoor Valentine's Day! 
Riley and his birthday loot!
Dad did another awesome cake (fighter jet) , this definitely rivaled the Larry Boy one for #3 birthday!
Yes and I lost my marbles for those few short minutes I was at the store and I bought loud party blowers. Fern is full of these "eyebrow faces" lately!
Grandma J. is doing her best to keep her California babies warm! We got packages from her, the kids each got a stocking cap, Jake got a great Orange one, Riley a blue one (he says it keeps his ears really warm, but does mess up his hair), and Fern got this pretty pink one! I opened the package for Fern then told her to pull it out, she cautiously put her hand it, when she saw it she immediately put it on her head. How sweet does she look!!! No one else was up for posing! :) It was mostly in the teens today so these are welcomed! Fern has a little cold though so she will not be trying hers outside just yet!
Of course we all went outside! It took us over a half an hour to get all the warm stuff on, Fern and I are lacking in that department! Here are the boys making their first tracks!
We had some good sledding down our little hill.
Fern screamed from when I put her warm clothes on until I took them off. Jake followed close behind because his hands hurt so much. (He would not keep gloves on). So I put a movie in for the 2 party poopers, and went back out to play with Riley, we had a great time sledding. We then thought it would be good to shovel our driveway. Yea, we have a bum shovel that is bowed, the center does not touch the ground. So I was using the kids shovels, but Fern just could not handle life with out me, so I went inside. I am hoping the shoveling fairies will visit so I can go to church tomorrow. We'll see! Riley played outside for over an hour, his cold feelers must be on the fritz!!!
Here is the same picture this morning! Look at the roof of the shed!!
Here is the front of the house. As an inexperienced snow dweller I'd say we had somewhere around 3-4 inch.!!!
Well we finally ventured out into the cold and went to the library! It was nice to be there, I have missed it! I did not get to get a book for me, but that is ok, I have a couple. But they have a good children's library, it is separate from the adult library, same building but the children's is down stairs. They even have an area with toys! It was nice because they had all the books little kids might like in the center in almost bins, separated by first letter, or they had a couple popular areas, like a bin for all the Aurthur books. Then under the bins there was a bin sideways, that is where all the board books were. This wasn't little ether, probably 8 feet long, 2 bins deep.
