tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43435400019164460252024-02-08T00:37:40.193-05:00Going MamarazziLike going insane except that instead of padding the walls, you plaster them in pictures of your super cute offspringterrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.comBlogger592125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-54999093064809311132016-10-18T22:13:00.002-04:002016-10-18T22:13:35.843-04:00December (2015)We finished our basement renovation early in December of last year and enjoyed having the extra space to play in the evenings when the dark of night descended before dinner.<br />
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With the basement finished, we directed our energies to the holidays. Growing up, my family tradition was to put up the tree and holiday decorations during the first week of December, and since becoming an adult, I have mostly upheld that tradition.<br />
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Jacob participated in Hannah's long-held salt-dough ornament-making tradition. His are the gingerbread men. Hannah opted for hedgehog this year.<br />
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As usual, my family came earlier in the month to celebrate. An awesomely warm December meant we got to spend the day outside, and we even got to have a photo shoot with Grammy (enforced by me with my mom's January birthday in mind) without having to be bundled up.<br />
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The dirt bike is Eric's favorite party favor to bring out when we have people over.<br />
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Jacob refused to allow his picture to be taken in front of the tree, but he felt fine about posing with the construction costume grammy bought him.<br />
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He took that costume very seriously and spent quite a bit of time cleaning his trucks after putting them to good use.<br />
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The following weekend we had Hannah's best friend and her family over for an impromptu campfire and their first 'smores experience (they're from France and do not have 'smores there).<br />
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Even constructions workers need to take a 'smores break sometimes.<br />
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Back to work! Here is driving to his construction site. Ha!<br />
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I think I just took this picture because I was so shocked that Hannah was wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt in December. In December!! Insane...<br />
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The colors in this next picture got all warped, but since Jacob worked on it for so long, I wanted to share his very elaborate construction.<br />
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And then came the hand, foot, mouth disease...One day while attempting to swallow a bit of his dinner, Jacob screamed in pain and just kept screaming. I was confused, but we'd gotten an email from the school a few days earlier saying that someone in his class had hand, foot, mouth so I took him to the doctor who took one look at the enormous sores on his throat and confirmed that he had it as well. He sucks his fingers so we expect him to pick up every germ that's being put down. Hopefully this means his future immune system will be amazing! A few days after the throat pain, the spots appeared on his hands and feet. They blistered up and bled on the fingers that he sucked, and a few weeks later, his fingernails shriveled up weirdly and when enough of a new one had grown in, the old ones fell off. It was gross...Grossest disease ever. It went around again this year, and I'm pretty sure he had it again, but the sores were minor, and there were no other symptoms so maybe not.<br />
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Their school has a holiday production on the last day of school. Here's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c-VGMI78_Y">a link to the whole production </a>if you'd like to see it.<br />
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No holiday season is complete without a trip to Hampden to see the lights!<br />
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This year's visit to Hampden coincided with our friends' winter solstice party where the dress-up box was the biggest hit for our kids.<br />
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Just a random lazy afternoon...<br />
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The book fairy strikes again! This year we were excited to be able to give her books as well to hold onto until baby Zoe made her way out of the belly.<br />
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And then it was dad's birthday!<br />
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Christmas is up next, and since I took very few pictures, I had to go onto Grannah's Facebook page and borrow a few from her album. Joel and Eric busied themselves building a tree platform for Hannah on Christmas Eve.<br />
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Jacob hung out down below and helped pound nails into this log.<br />
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Hannah wrestled with Joel the other Hannah on the trampoline and learned a few jiu jitsu moves.<br />
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Jacob was a bit disgruntled about not being able to climb up to Hannah's tree house, so the guys made him one at ground level in the woods.<br />
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Hannah and Hannah hung out on the tree platform all afternoon, just drawing and talking.<br />
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She got some quality time with Granpah in the tree fort as well.<br />
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Hannah challenged everyone to a game of checkers, including Joel's girlfriend (also named Hannah).<br />
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After the kids were in bed on Christmas eve, we had grown-up game night.<br />
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Eric's aunt always sends a big basket of food for the family. Last year she sent breakfast items, which we cooked up for everyone to enjoy on Christmas morning.</div>
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This is the awesome hug I got from Hannah for buying her a guinea pig cage. Yes, just the cage. I got a lot of flak from people who though it strange that I just bought her the cage. I had to keep explaining that I told her she had to save her allowance and buy the piggies herself, and I wasn't about to go back on that, but I wanted to help so I purchased the large expensive item.<br />
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Grannah got her a joke book, which we've all enjoyed this year.<br />
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Eric found a cheap ping pong table on Craig's List and set it up in the newly finished basement where ping pong battles between all family members ensued.<br />
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This <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Educational-Insights-Design-Drill-BrightWorks/dp/B00TIC8X6E/ref=sr_1_2?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1476843017&sr=1-2&keywords=design+and+drill">Design and Drill</a> thing turned out to be a pretty rad present for Jacob. He kept busy with it for quite a while. </div>
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With the holidays behind us, it was time for our annual bowling fiasco!<br />
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On New Year's Eve we happily accepted an invitation to go ice skating with Hannah's best friend and her family. This was the kids' first time, and Eric and I have only been a handful of times, so we were all a bit wobbly, but we had a ton of fun!<br />
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And with that I say adios to 2015!! Finally!terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-11054124677867265892016-10-10T19:35:00.003-04:002016-10-10T19:35:48.860-04:00November (2015)November of last year was pretty uneventful. We segued from Halloween to Thanksgiving with a few fall-centric activities in between, and as usual, since I'm so far behind, I'm going to sum them up fairly quickly and try to keep my typing to a minimum in the hopes that if I take less time posting each post, then I'll catch up faster. So far this does not seem to be working, but I've at least managed to not get a fully year behind.<br />
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This is a post-Halloween pirate story time session. There was a long period last fall and winter when Jacob regularly turned our couch into a pirate ship, and we all hoped aboard and played along. When I tired of saying "argggh" and burying booty in the couch cushions, I suggested a story.<br />
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It's not terribly noticeable from the angle that I ended up snapping this next pic, but Jacob had somehow managed to get smoothie all over his face. I'm always amazed at how messy children are able to get while eating. Can they not feel the food all over their face? Or do they just not care? I don't get it...I find it uncomfortable to be covered in food...<br />
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I didn't realize that Weber's wrapped up their farm fun after Halloween...we didn't make it until November, and it was a ghost farm by then. We putzed around the store and played in the tires and went home a tad dismayed.<br />
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One of our most favorite fall activities is raking up an enormous pile of leaves under the Japanese maple out back and then climbing the tree and jumping into the leaves from one of the branches. Hannah demonstrates below.<br />
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Trampoline hair!<br />
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This is the family room post paint (wasabi green up top) and pre-floors.<br />
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We went to see The Secret Garden at Center Stage with Brandy and her mom the day before Thanksgiving. This is when, unable to hide her 4-month baby belly, she broke the awesome news that she was pregnant. Hannah and I were so excited!<br />
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And then it was Thanksgiving. We happily accepted another invitation to celebrate with my aunt and uncle. Here are Jacob and Kim hamming it up.<br />
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We spent a decent amount of time outside and ended up teaching Hannah to play catch. (Is my butt seriously that big??? That's probably just extra weight added by the camera, right??)<br />
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My other uncle is truck driver now, and the kids were thrilled when we rolled up and found the cab parked in the front yard. After dinner they spent some time hanging out in the truck.<br />
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Here are all the kiddos with my aunt and uncle who hosted. This year there will be a new teeny tiny baby in that mix!<br />
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This is one of the few decent pictures I have of me and Kim, and I'm particularly glad that we both look fairly normal and that my butt is not in the shot.<br />
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Later that weekend, Hannah's friend came over and after hunting up some worms, they did a little fishing in the stream out back.<br />
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They caught one!<br />
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We took care of the class guinea pigs again over the Thanksgiving break. They were into whatever Hannah was watching and definitely into the vegetables she was eating.<br />
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Then we finished the basement family room!! This is before we cluttered it up.<br />
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Just before the month ended, we met Amy and Zoey and the late Nelson dog for a hike around Oregon Ridge.<br />
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Then there was this trip to IKEA to get furniture for the basement...I know I shouldn't have let them jump into the bins of stuffed animals, but it looked so fun, and I wished I was small enough to fit in there and uninhabited enough to jump in and bury myself and flail around, so I took off my fun police badge for a bit and just played dumb mom when an employee came around with his fun police whistle and called an end to the stuffie pit of fun. Sometimes I just don't want to be the bad guy.<br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-87527355010626450932016-09-20T21:42:00.002-04:002016-09-20T21:42:49.817-04:00October (2015)The other day hubby asked me if I knew that I was a year behind on my blog. I corrected him: I am not quite a year behind! I posted September of 2015 BEFORE September of 2016, and here is October of 2015 well in advance of October of 2016.<br />
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Hannah started what is traditionally know as first grade last year and was thrilled to discover that her classroom (lower elementary in a Montessori school) had a furry class pet: guinea pigs. When the first 3-day weekend arrived and the guide was looking for someone to take home the piggies, she very eagerly volunteered. Our house guests reminded me very much of the various piggies I had growing up, and it was a fun walk down memory lane. I don't think the piggies are coming back this year--whoever cared for them over the summer seems pretty attached. Fortunately, she has her own piggies now (and a puppy!), but I'm ahead of myself...these are posts for 2016 if I ever get there.<br />
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Eric's closest friends came all the way from Michigan last year to visit us. Here's Hannah and Stacey at an apple orchard that was having a festival.<br />
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Our almost finished play room in the basement! Of course, at the time of writing it's been finished for almost a year so the almost finished part is not so exciting....<br />
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I can't remember why we went back to my aunt and uncle's in October...but these pics were in my October 2015 folder, so we must have gone!</div>
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A front yard full of deer (and lately a front yard with a hunchbacked white deer) has become commonplace at this point, but still we congregate by the big front window and watch them graze.<br />
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Halloween is pretty high up on our list of favorite holidays, especially for Hannah. She was a grim reaper last year and was quite scary. I don't seem to have any pictures of that though...<br />
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We celebrated Clay's birthday at a bounce house place in Hagerstown last year, and the kids did a few rounds in the hurricane machine before I cut them of financially.<br />
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Jacob was not a lion last year--he was that the year before when the whole family went as the cast of The Wizard of Oz. Last year he was a pirate, but I don't seem to have any pictures of anybody from Halloween last year...I'm not sure how that happened, but I guess that's a good reason to post pictures much closer to their date of occurrence.<br />
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These next two are two of my favorites. I have them printed and taped to the wall at the moment (in the process of trying to find gray frames...when I do, they'll be framed).<br />
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In this next one, Hannah is wearing the flower girl dress that she wore to Brandy's wedding when she was 3. On the night before school pictures, Hannah disappeared to the basement and was quite for a disconcerting amount of time. When she came up, she said her outfit for pictures was ready, but she didn't want to show me. I snuck downstairs after she'd gone bed and found that she'd painted some of the flowers on this very expensive dress to add a little color. In the morning I feigned surprise and was able to tell her she looked nice since I'd gotten over the shock. I had no idea that she'd even carried that dress downstairs with her. She's quite the ninja when she wants to be.<br />
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And yes, she wore this in her school pictures. She was quite dismayed to realize that the colored flowers didn't make it into the head shot.<br />
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Jacob wanted to try it on too. How is it possible that this dress fits everyone who puts it on??<br />
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Jacob's first of many field trips to Roger's Farm.<br />
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Alright, so see, I'm not a year behind! Not yet anyway, and I'm doing my best to keep it that way.terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-17721840864193097142016-08-26T15:09:00.002-04:002016-08-26T15:09:44.022-04:00September (2015)Again, in an effort to catch up, I'm restraining my overly type-happy fingers from story-telling....short captions only!<br />
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This is one of our favorite little nooks in our woods wherethe stream bends.<br />
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Does anybody know what this is?? It's like a raspberry flower or something...so strange.<br />
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Hannah made her first pot holder! I made so many of these as a kid...<br />
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Chip made me try the dirt bike first, and when I managed to not kill myself, he bucked up and gave it a go.<br />
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Hannah started growing shark teeth last year! Her new teeth tend to grow in quite a while before her old ones fall out. This was the very first one, and then the pic below shows her with smile with her first lost tooth.<br />
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My finished office!! I think the destruction pics were in the July 2015 post...<br />
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I forget the name of this festival--maybe some sort of fall day at the Baltimore County Ag center--it was pretty fun though. I think Hannah might be too big for the ponies...<br />
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The highlight was definitely the rides in these giant tractors.<br />
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Eric decided that a good way to get rid of all the wood he tore out of what is now my office was with a bonfire...a giant bonfire...I was worried that the tress were going to go up in flames, but fortunately, they did not.<br />
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This shirt belonged to my aunt when she was younger, and I rocked it in my twenties quite a bit (though I really shouldn't have--I'm not slender enough for the size), and now it's one of Hannah's favorites.<br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-90190376459766124722016-08-03T21:37:00.002-04:002016-08-03T21:37:26.024-04:00August (2015)As we ramp up for Hannah's birthday, I'm plagued by the realization that if I don't post the pics from last August post haste, I will officially be a full year behind with the blog, and that's just too intimidating. I don't know if I can every return from that...Ever since we moved I've been saying that I'm just going to do photo dumps with no text, but I end up not being able to resist narrating the pictures. Today I am going to try really, really, really hard to just dump and not narrate...wish me luck.<br />
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Birthday waffles for Hannah on her 6th birthday!<br />
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Birthday carrot cake!<br />
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Random visit from Mason while the big kids were at school.<br />
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Spined micrathena--my favorite spider and abundant in our woods in July and August.<br />
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Our week in Michigan.<br />
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We visited an alligator sanctuary while there that is run by a guy who Eric was very close friends with growing up. Very awesome place!!<br />
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As usual, we swung by my Aunt Sharon's and Uncle Tom's house on our way home.<br />
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Dang. That was a chubby summer for me. Blaming it on the broken foot that forced me into a contraption from April through July.<br />
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We let Hannah invite some friends over to celebrate her birthday with her for the first time last year. I always promised her that we'd do it when we had a yard, and she held me to that promise!<br />
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Decorated visors at the Walter's Art Museum.<br />
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Good times at the state fair!<br />
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Jacob's first time milking a cow with veteran big sis to show him the ropes.<br />
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Hannah's first sleepover with a friend! <br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-33305485621400025232016-05-08T21:31:00.000-04:002016-05-08T21:31:03.263-04:00July (of 2015)I'm beginning my nearly year-old recap of last July with Hannah's Titanic moment on this boat we cruised around in last summer on July 4. We spent the holiday with some of Eric's friends/coworkers who own a house (and a boat) on the Chesapeake Bay. <br />
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Atticus' birthday is the 5th so his celebration was next. We don't see them as much now that we've both left Hampden, so this was a welcome reunion for me! Shannon's sister was painting faces, and Hannah asked for a sunset. How awesome is this?? I love it. </div>
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The parties simmered down for a bit then and Eric got back to work on the house. He'd borrowed his dad's power washer and intended to power wash everything in sight before returning it. This is him cleaning the driveway. The dark part is not just dark because it's a little wet--it's dirt. As you can see, power-washing made a HUGE difference.<br />
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Then we bought a trampoline. We'd been looking at used trampolines on Craig's List and were planning to get one for around $100, but then we went to another July party where, in the span of one hour, two kids came off the trampoline with blood pouring out of their face. One of the kids had chipped a grown-up tooth. So we decided that safety needed to be more of a focus. We found <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Octagon-Magic-Circle-Trampoline-Color/dp/B0016GNDF6">this Magic Circle trampoline</a> posted on Craig's List for $900 which was WAY out of our budget, but we looked it up online anyway and started researching it. It sounded amazing, and the one listed was only 2 years old with minimal use, but it was still too much money, so I emailed and told them that while I was sure that their asking price was fair, it wasn't within my budget and if they got desperate enough to unload it for $500, to let me know. They wrote back a week later and said they'd take $600, and I agreed. It was still way more than I wanted to spend, but it's been worth it. It's one thing the kids never get tired of, and us bigger kids have a lot of fun on it too. And no bloodbaths! <br />
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Then he turned the power washer to the pool. It ended up not being strong enough to get off much of the peeling paint, but it did a good initial clean. Eric borrowed a stronger model from our neighbor to get the peeling paint, and then he started looking into the price of pool paint and and the cost to fix some of the concrete cracks....and all of those things were enough to stop us in our tracks. The pool slowly began filling up with water again as it rained, and when fall hit, it filled with leaves, and then in April of this year, the frog's returned and resumed their yearly mating. So we're mostly back where we started, with a concrete pond, and we're thinking of keeping it like that...We've been researching natural swimming pools and are going to try to create one of those at some point.<br />
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I found this bug on our grill cover and was totally fascinated by it. If you look at the profile picture, you can see the formidable probiscus (as it is so aptly described by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduviidae">Wikipedia</a>). It took me until just last week to finally name it. I was online trying to find the name of another bug, and I came across the Assassin Bug. This bug uses its formidable probiscus to stab it's prey and will stab a human too, sometimes repeatedly according to one of the sites I found, hence it's name. Needless to say, I left it alone even without knowing its name. </div>
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July is also when we started to demolish the basement. Step one was to tear out the wall that separated the room we were using for guests from another small room that had no windows and was useless as a result. Eric and Jacob are shown below on the site where I now sit typing at my desk, but we didn't finish the room until closer to the holidays so you'll have to wait to see those pictures since I'm a stickler for chronological order (and more so of one since I'm so far behind on posts).<br />
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This is the view from the guest bedroom pat to the room that has no windows, which leads out into the laundry room.<br />
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Now for a not-so-slick transition from basement demolition to sleeping babies...I never really took sleeping pictures of Hannah because getting her to actually go to sleep was such a painful process, that I never wanted to disturb her. She was also a very light sleeper, and rarely stayed asleep long so in the rare precious moments when she napped, I did not return to check on her. Jacob usually lays right down, pops his fingers in his mouth, and falls asleep. Every now and again he wants me to hang around for a few minutes, but as long as he has his lovey, he's usually fine. He was also a champion napper. I honestly have no idea how long he would sleep if I let him; I usually woke him up after 2 hours. When he started pushing his bedtime back to 9:00, I started waking him up after only 1 hour. And sometime over the winter he dropped the nap altogether. <br />
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We had a super lucky day at the Aquarium in July where we happened to head to the rain forest (we don't always go everywhere since we go pretty frequently) and the sloths happened to be incredibly active. We hung out in the canopy and stared with awe and delight as he climbed all over the ceiling and trees and came very close to where we were. One of the staff members said she had never seen the sloth so active in all her years there. It was a total sloth jackpot. <br />
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We always stop to play at Pierce Park on our way back to our car which I always park in Little Italy. This willow tunnel is a favorite, and I'm hoping Eric can build us one here some day.<br />
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Closer to the end of July we found ourselves at Oregon Ridge celebrating Ronan's 6th birthday with him at <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/towson/ph-tt-mud-day-oregon-ridge-0729-pg-004-photo.html">Oregon Ridge's Mud Day</a>. Hannah loved it and did everything she could to win the muddiest kid prize. <br />
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I think she came pretty close to winning, but as you can see, the girl to her right looked as if she'd dove into a mud puddle head first. She was literally covered from head tow, so she won the crown.<br />
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Then it came time to remove the mud, and that's where things got hairy. The water coming out of the hose was cold, obviously. Hannah HATES cold water. A lot. It's why we can't join the YMCA even though we'd love to. Her lips turn blue in any water that isn't kept pretty close to body temperature. So she freaked out when I sprayed her. I opted to leave her muddy and head back to another birthday party where we'd left Eric. She bundled up in her towel in the car, covered in mud and chattering from the cold. Eric managed to hose her off a bit better at the party, but again, the water was cold. We headed home then and put her in the shower, and I'm pretty certain that she will never again get that muddy. The cleaning up part was pretty traumatizing and not worth it. I told her this year if she wanted, she could just play in it with her feet and maybe even sit it, but maybe not put it on her face and in her hair...<br />
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The rest of these are just some pictures of our woods in July. None of them is terribly good, and all are a bit bleached out at the top, but I'm posting them anyway for posterity's sake and because I love watching the seasons come and go here. Summer is when the ferns and skunk cabbage take over everything, including our trails.<br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-38289636142579667392016-03-21T22:01:00.002-04:002016-03-21T22:01:25.985-04:00JuneJune started off normally enough with 2 trial weeks of Tai Kwan Do,<br />
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large bowls of miso soup,<br />
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flamingo-watching, and<br />
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cousin snuggles in oversized bird nests. <br />
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Then things got interesting.<br />
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One Sunday morning, Jacob and I drove to the grocery store as we were in the habit of doing back then, and as we were loading up the car with our newly-bought groceries, Eric called and told me not to bother coming home because a giant tree had fallen from across the street and taken out the wires that stretched across our driveway prior to landing in our yard. As it was stretched across the street, no cars could through, and even if I drove around the long way to come in from the other side of the street, there were live wires stretched across our driveway, so I couldn't make it from the street to the yard. Oh, and by the way, the power is out so all the newly-bought perishables will likely thaw and need to be pitched. <br />
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I did not take kindly to his advice to not come home and insisted that there was no place else for me to go with a 2-year-old and a trunk full of groceries. I called our neighbors across the street who welcomed me to park in their driveway. Eric met me there and we trekked across the street farther south where the wires weren't down, through the field, and then when we were far enough from the wires, we took a hard left through the woods to our house. I honestly cannot remember what we did with the groceries. I assume we carried them back the long way as well and attempted to keep them cold. <br />
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We spent the rest of the day marveling at the insanity of it all, calling friends and family to relay the story to them (which Eric and Hannah had seen first-hand since they happened to be sitting in front of the window when it happened), laughing at the ineptitude of the various utility workers, and wishing for our power to return before everything sweltered in the heat and had to be pitched. <br />
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The tree stayed in the street until much later that day when county workers finally came and moved it since it had became abundantly clear that none of the utility workers were going to do it. <br />
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Every day that week our power went off for a few hours at a time while workers came out and attempted to get everything straightened out and fixed. Them attempting to get the piece of fallen tree (because it had been cut by this point) off of the wires was particularly amusing as they managed to slingshot the tree quite a bit. I think Eric caught this on video (he saw it coming and had his camera ready for it), but I have no idea where that video is. <br />
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Yard cleanup took forever. We had to hire someone to come and move the trunk pieces to the side of the yard. (It's a red oak so we're hoping to be able to use the wood someday for something.) Then we spent the rest of the summer cleaning up the leaves and branches from the top of that giant tree. Fortunately our neighbor came over with his chainsaw and together him and Eric got the big stuff done in one very hard day (a day in which our power had gone out again so we had no water to keep them hydrated, and this again, is where our neighbors saved the day since they still had their power and thus, their water).<br />
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Later that month, after the tree debacle had mostly settled (though long before the work was actually complete), Eric found a set of eyeballs that he said previously belonged to a baby bunny. He assumed that Kaya made away with the rest of the bunny and thought it funny since (according to him) the eyeballs are the only part of an animal you can safely eat raw. Silly cat! I guess she didn't attend that particular lesson in survival school. That or she was just too full after eating the rest of the bunny that she had no room left for even one eye. <br />
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When Eric wasn't inspecting baby bunny eyeballs or lugging branches out of the center of the yard, he was busy cleaning out the concrete pond in the hopes of turning it into a swimming pool. This was no easy task since it first required us to displace all of the frogs and toad and as many of the tadpoles as possible. Then he pumped out a bunch of the water and then got in there with a shovel to dig out all the old stinky leaves. <br />
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Then he pumped out some more water, and voila! An empty pool. He borrowed a power washer from our neighbor and sprayed down a ton of the chipping paint, he researched the price of new paint, he watched various YouTube videos on DIY pool repair, and then he realized that the work needed to repair the concrete was not going to be fun or fast, so he moved on to another task. The pool filled up with rain water again, the fall leaves fell in when fall hit, and now the toads and frogs are laying egg sacks out there so it will soon be full of tadpoles again, and he'll have to start all over. Fun times! <br />
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Later in June I took Jacob to the ER for the first time. Hannah had already been three times by the time she was 2, but I had learned a few things by the time Jacob came around, namely that it was wise to buckle them into their high chair and also that although fevers might be nature's way of fighting a virus, Ibuprofen was a good way to prevent a fever seizure. I can't remember why she went to the ER the third time....<br />
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Jacob's trip was not nearly so terrifying or urgent. A few days earlier, Hannah had pulled the towel that he was standing on out from underneath him and he'd hit the wooden floor hard with his head. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but he acted strange in the days that followed. I called the pediatrician who assured me that the symptoms (which I can't remember now) didn't match those of a concussion but said to bring him in so she could be sure. She felt the bump on his head and he flinched pretty bad, more so than she thought he should have considering the wound was a few days old by that time, so she recommended we go to the children's emergency room and have it looked at just to be on the safe side. We had to wait for a long time both to get the cat scan and then to get the results, and he fell asleep while waiting, but fortunately, there was no fracture. It was a really hard hit, but it was all intact. Whew!<br />
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We were back to running around the yard enjoying summer in no time. Speaking of the yard, how cool is this little fungi I found out back?! <br />
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How cool WAS that fungi I should say...Jacob wanted to know what I was crouched down staring at. He also thought it looked cool and must have thought it would look cooler in his hand than lodged safely in the dirt. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnPM4qjiTVNf2-A2BzBqvgFv58C6gs92pP3BnwqdKSWHMSMNxZRVqytVJU7JFf2gSftk-k1sRG0zU1vBVYvKPnYSENM_7siUQiXLa-s8vxE1slbC3itpwKD7iEs6gLAC_273YBBtBPhA7M/s1600/20150625_124453+ed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnPM4qjiTVNf2-A2BzBqvgFv58C6gs92pP3BnwqdKSWHMSMNxZRVqytVJU7JFf2gSftk-k1sRG0zU1vBVYvKPnYSENM_7siUQiXLa-s8vxE1slbC3itpwKD7iEs6gLAC_273YBBtBPhA7M/s400/20150625_124453+ed.jpg" width="225" /></a> </div>
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Au revoir fungi! <br />
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My other favorite thing in my yard in June was this mimosa tree which looks to me like a tree from a Dr. Suess book. Apparently it's invasive, but it smells amazing and looks cool so I'm not complaining. <br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-43810561809602407482016-03-06T21:26:00.000-05:002016-03-06T21:26:39.524-05:00The woods in MayThis will all be old news to most of you, but I was feeling guilty the other night because Jacob's childhood is not so well documented as Hannah's. As a result, I'm back! This will mostly be a series of disjointed memories inspired by the photos I have from May of last year.<br />
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So this is May of last year. It was our first spring in this house. This playground was one of Eric's early projects. He found it for free on the trader at work, posted by a person who'd inherited it upon buying a new home and had no need for it. Eric took his tools, took it apart, and brought it back here where he powerwashed it, painted it, and put it back together. We've gotten a few good deals since moving here, but the free playground is probably the best.<br />
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Grannah and Granpah came for Grandfriend's day at the school at the beginning of the month. The warm weather had the kids begging for camping, so we gave in and set up a tent in the backyard. Grannah read the bedtime story, and then I moved Jacob inside. Eric and Hannah slept out there all night.<br />
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For Jacob's first real haircut, we took him to <a href="http://oldbankbarbers.com/">The Old Bank Barber in Hampden</a>, Eric's favorite spot to get a trim. We haven't been back since though because they give a very short, tight haircut, and Jacob requested longer hair, which Eric and I both love, so he's growing it out.<br />
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He was not a student this time last year, but I had to be at the school for something one afternoon, and while there, he beelined for one of the kid-sized wheelbarrows and kept himself busy. I think we might get him his own for his birthday this year...<br />
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I love these next few pictures! Our woods are a magical place when all the ferns come up. Of course, they grow over our trails so it's hard to get around, and I get paranoid about ticks, but rose geranium oil seems to keep the ticks at bay!<br />
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This picture below shows what was Hannah's favorite hidey hole until the day she shared it with a large spider. All along the stream are trees with roots that are partially exposed and make for a great place to climb into. She spent a lot of time playing down there in the early spring with her dog, and then one day later in the summer, she climbed in and was surprised to look up and see a large spider just over her head. She was never afraid of spiders prior to that, so I think it's just that it surprised her and also that since it was over her, it made it difficult for her to get out and away. Anyway, I hurried over and caught her as she leaped out of the spot into my arms, and she never crawled down there again. Actually, she didn't go into the woods alone again. We've spent a lot of time talking about it since then, trying to make sure that all the emotional puzzle pieces stay put together in the hopes of her going past it, and I think she has now, but it took quite a while.<br />
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There's our Joy! She was with us for such a brief time, but it was so memorable, and she is missed. She died later in this month, so this is the last post she'll be in. Eric was leaving, and Joy was behind the carport with the kids playing. She was nowhere near the car when he got in, but he stopped then to look at his phone, and when he started to drive, she must have run over and sat down right in front of the tire. He felt terrible. We all did. She was such a sweet dog, and watching her tiny little furry self run and romp in these big woods was so much fun.<br />
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Hannah found a chrysalis on one of her adventures and put it in her butterfly keeper in her room. She did not zip the butterfly keeper though, so one night while we were reading, we were all startled to see a shadow flicker overhead. Fortunately, it was just a butterfly. We hurried to remove the screen from the window so this beautiful Eastern Swallowtail could fly free. <br />
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One night after the kids were in bed this little toad hopped onto the windowsill and croaked his looking-for-a-lady-toad song for a few hours. It was awesome! <br />
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We celebrated Memorial Day with Eric's friends, and one of them brought (and left) his dirt bike. The kids love it! Of course, Eric does too.<br />
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Like his sister at that age, Jacob ends up in some pretty silly outfits sometimes. I love the red socks in this one!<br />
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Finally, this is what my foot ended up in after 6 weeks in the big ol' walking boot. After 6 weeks in this brace, my foot was free to walk again! <br />
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That was May as best as I can remember it at this point, nearly a year ago.terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-65826153972594297592015-11-08T20:35:00.001-05:002015-11-08T20:48:49.897-05:00The rest of AprilI'm going to catch up; I'm determined. I have to go all the way back to April to do it though, back when the trees were as barren as they are now, but instead of the forest being covered in crunchy leaves, it was covered in the bright green shoots of early skunk cabbage.<br />
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On one such day, Jacob helped Eric move a few plants around the yard.<br />
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When the wheelbarrow stayed put for an extended period of time, he perched on the bridge to read a <a href="http://www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx">Foxfire </a>book that we'd pulled out of the mailbox that morning--a thank you present from Grammy for daddy. <br />
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On another one of these nice April days, we strolled down to the stream, still freezing cold from winter, and Hannah stripped off her shoes and tights and strode in. <br />
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Jacob followed her lead. Kids are crazy.<br />
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I want to stress that it wasn't <i>that </i>warm, but I suppose it's all relative, and the winter was bitter cold by my standards (anything that drops to the single digits, let alone staying there for days at a time, is too cold in my book), so 40s and 50s did feel pretty amazing.<br />
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I think this one was taken at the park near their school...that's all I have to say about that.<br />
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I find myself taking shots of this section of the stream frequently. I'm not sure what the attraction is, but in this one I think I was admiring the way those stinky skunk cabbages greened up a sea of brown.<br />
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<br />The thorn bushes were the next plants to show up to the green party. <br />
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I'm not sure I made this clear, but this post is just the rest of April--everything after Jacob's birthday party. I want to stress again that it was definitely not bathing suit and sprinkler season, but the kids disagreed, so I set up the sprinkler. Hannah put on a bathing suit, and Jacob merely discarded his drawers. Their wardrobe choices (or lack thereof) often leave me chuckling.<br />
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They wanted to eat dinner outside, so I carried out the little table and their bowls of soup, and they enjoyed a half-naked meal on the front porch. <br />
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The weather seriously warmed up after that, so much so that we felt compelled to get ice cream--our first ice cream trip of the season. It's days like those that make us miss living in walking distance to The Charmery. With that off the table, we headed over to Stone Mill Bakery and drooled over the gelato section for an indescribably long period until finally deciding on a little bit of everything.<br />
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On some days warmer weather means ice cream, and on other days it means campfires and 'smores; that's just how we roll. <br />
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Our friends Brody and Addison came over toward the end of the month to climb tress and catch frogs. <br />
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During the catching frogs part, I broke my foot. I was walking down the steps into the concrete pond, and I rolled my left foot and crushed my fifth metatarsal. It's called a dancer's fracture because it's commonly done while dancing around on point shoes. The second most common group of people to break this bone are uncoordinated moms attempting to catch toads. So, I rolled it in a pair of sneakers that have just the slightest amount of a sole (this is why I don't wear heels people!); it was just enough to roll off of. I rolled it while I was stepping down so I landed on it with all my weight. I heard a crunch and and knew instantly that I'd broken it, but I was also in denial. I'm not sure if that makes sense...Have you ever known something for certain while simultaneously being in denial of that same fact that you were certain of? This was the situation. <br />
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I couldn't put any pressure at all on it so in between piggie-back rides from Eric, I hopped on one foot and then resorted to a sort of three-legged downward dog hop. That's how I was getting around the next morning when I decided to go to the doctor. Hobbling around in a boot for the next 6 weeks sucked but was significantly better than the three-legged down dog hop. After the boot, I was put in a tie-up brace for another 6 weeks. That took me up to mid-July, at which point I happily bared my bare feet for the rest of the summer. <br />
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After a long winter of terrible home haircuts, I broke down and took Joy to a groomer for a proper trim. My instructions were simple: take it all off, or at least as much as possible. A dog that small with hair that long running around these woods meant that we all spent way more time grooming her than we did grooming ourselves, so I said to skip the fancy face fluff and make it functional. It's amazing how much a haircut can change up your look!!<br />
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At the end of April I took Hannah to the Hippodrome to see Wicked. She'd been begging to see it since I went with my mom when she was 3, and to calm her freakout at the time, I promised her I'd take her next time Wicked came to Baltimore. I almost bailed when I saw ticket prices, but I ended up keeping my promise. This was our pre-show photo shoot. <br />
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Jacob photo-bombed this one. <br />
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I was quickly reprimanded after snapping this shot of Hannah inside the theater. Apparently there is a pretty strict no-pictures-in-the-theater-EVER rule. <br />
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Pictures outside of the theater are just fine though. <br />
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This is where I make an abrupt transition from Broadway to deer carcasses and the dogs who eat them. One day while putzing around the woods without me, Joy led Eric and the kids to a pile of mostly picked over deer bones. She managed to dislocate a leg and attempted to carry it off, but Eric swiped it and threw it into the bushes. He then got distracted, but she did not. She found the leg and carried it up to the house where she spent the day gnawing on it. I find the image of a tiny fluffy dog like that chewing on a deer bone hysterical, but if it's too gruesome for you, my sincerest apologies.<br />
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I guess this pic of the guys in the Japanese Elm by the driveway is the last one I took in April....so that's that! As the weather turns colder and darker, I'll see if I can post more pics of us enjoying the weather getting warmer and brighter.<br />
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terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-74301938624596000522015-06-28T22:08:00.003-04:002015-06-28T22:08:31.529-04:00Little Big Man Turns 2! Celebrations, frogs, and family photo lineupAs is the standard in our house, Jacob had a 3-day birthday celebration with three gifts spread out throughout. He opened Hannah's present right after breakfast on his actual birthday. This was the longest that I could convince her to wait to give it to him. She got him a Lightning McQueen die cast car and Mater to match. His grannah and granpah had gotten him a Cars book for Christmas that he was obsessed with, so we figured the actual cars would be a big hit.<br />
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First he unwrapped Lightning. His reaction was hysterical. He was literally shocked, like he couldn't believe his eyes that these things had jumped off the page of a book. His jaw dropped and he walked away from us, turning his back and staring seriously at Lighting, still in the package. <br />
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Then he unwrapped Mater, and with the shock worn off, he went straight into excitement mode. Mater is his favorite. When him and Hannah play cars, he only ever gives her Lightning to play with. Mater he keeps for himself.<br />
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He carried those cars around all day that day, except into the kids room at the gym. After hanging his coat in our locker, he carefully put the cars down on the floor of the locker before trotting off to the kids room. I don't know if he was concerned about losing them or having to share, but he was serious about having me lock them up. <br />
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Normally we stretch the presents out with one for each day for three days, but Eric and I were as excited as Hannah to give him ours, so we handed it over that afternoon. We bought him a set of child-sized real tools. There's a shovel, a trowel, a leaf rake, a garden rake, a hoe, and gardening gloves. Both kids have gotten a lot of use out of them this year and are currently digging "the world's largest hole" in our front yard. Fortunately we are not in the running for "the world's nicest lawn," so we're okay with things like random holes and unmowed patches (Hannah's experiment inspired by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/On-Meadowview-Street-Henry-Cole/dp/0060564814">this book</a>). <br />
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They got right to work digging in the big pile of mulch that dad had picked up the day before. (If you're wondering, the little girl in purple is one of Hannah's school friends).<br />
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After dinner we struck up a fire and stuffed our faces with birthday 'smores. I think this may become a family a tradition...<br />
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We didn't have anything to give him the next day since we'd doubled up on his actual birthday, but his birthday was back in full swing the following day, Saturday. My family came down for a mash-up birthday-egg-hunt party. Our new yard is awesome for egg hunts!<br />
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I conned the cousins into posing for a post-egg hunt picture.<br />
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Then I conned them into sticking around for a few more minutes so I could get grammy in the frame. When my mom's birthday rolled around this year I thought some sort of a photo memorabilia would be a nice present and was shocked to learn that I have few photos of her with the kids, and the ones I do have are not particularly good. Apparently I am too busy talking when we hang out to take pictures, so, for to make future holidays and birthdays easier, I'm trying to balance my talking with picture taking.<br />
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After a pizza lunch, we broke out the cake. Strawberry shortcake. Jacob was clearly thrilled.<br />
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Then grammy gave him her present, and the kids took turn racing cars down the wooden slopes.<br />
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My aunt and uncle came for the day as well, and since I again realized that I rarely, if ever, take photos of the important adults in our lives, I made sure to corner them before they left and pull my kids into the shot as well. <br />
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While Jacob and Mason napped, Hannah and Clay and the daddies pulled toads out of the pool and carried them down the stream.<br />
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Their eggs are so cool!<br />
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After about an hour, Mason was out there catching frogs with the big kids.<br />
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By this point Clay had tired immensely of my constant request for him to stop having fun and smile for another pictures. He hit his limit for snap-happy aunt Terri!<br />
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They even caught two mating frogs, and in spite of the children's fascination, those frogs kept right on mating. I get it that animals aren't modest, but it still seems like being picked up and carried around would be a bit of a mood killer.<br />
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They spent the afternoon catching and releasing toads, climbing, and playing by the stream.<br />
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Then we found some salamanders under a log.<br />
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Shortly after his big birthday celebration, Jacob went in for his 2-year checkup. I haven't been as good about posting his milestones and measurements and all that jazz like I was with Hannah, but since I happen to have left the measurement paper that the pediatrician sent me home with right here by my computer for the last few months, here they are: on April 9, he weight 29.5 lbs and was 34.5 in. tall. That puts him in the 68th percentile for weight and 61st for height, so, he's pretty average in size.<br />
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As for milestones, he's always been very communicative, having picked up sign language early on and then quickly taken to creating his own signs. He started talking a lot more after his second birthday too, which is similar to Hannah, but where she was mostly pretty quiet and uncommunicative until her mouth could form the words clearly, Jacob has been babbling and signing for quite some time. He's leaving the house in underwear most days, but we still have diaper days as well, and our underwear days are rarely over without a few wardrobe changes. He definitely fits the stereotype of boy more so than Hannah with his love of cars and construction equipment and "hi ya" chopping/hitting....Of course, he also enjoys rocking Hannah's baby to sleep and will say "aww" when he sees a cute baby animal, so hopefully he's getting a balanced upbringing. <br />
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And now, for my favorite tradition, one I have totally sucked at keeping up with Jacob, here's the whole fam at age 2:<br />
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Eric is actually only about 18 months in that picture, but his face is hard to see in the one I have of him at 2 (it's on <a href="http://www.goingmamarazzi.com/2011/08/happy-birthday-hannah.html">Hannah's 2-year birthday post</a> if you want to see it).<br />
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Disclaimer: I'm so tired and eager to cross this off my to do list that I'm not going to read it again to edit...this is never a good idea, but I'm doing it anyway. Don't judge please.terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-39220897767389784372015-04-25T14:26:00.000-04:002015-04-25T14:26:05.165-04:00Our New Life: Part II (winter, winter, winter, SPRING!)The toads came out when the weather finally warmed up at the beginning of this month, and shortly after the toads came the eggs: hundreds of small black eggs floating along the shallow end of our mostly empty pool in their jelly-ish sack. Two weeks ago I noticed teeny tiny tadpoles swimming around the egg sacks and began regularly climbing down the stairs into the pool to keep a close watch on the life cycle of the American Toad. Eric is hoping to drain the pool at some point early summer so he can clean it out and see what it will take to get it working. We'll relocate all the toads down to the stream at that time, so I figure this is probably our only opportunity to have such a close-up view. And there are SO MANY toads in there. The kids and Eric have already emptied close to 10 buckets of them into the stream, and still I count 30-40 sitting around the edges on a sunny day. I haven't even tried to count the tadpoles...<br />
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I've been eager to share them with friends so we invited friends over last weekend, and as I was walking down the pool stairs to point out the egg sacks, I came down on the side of my foot with all my weight. The crunch was audible; the pain, manageable, but enough to let me know that it was likely broken. I climbed back out with help from my friend and settled on the pool deck to order pizzas for the kids. I spent the evening hopping on one foot. When that got exhausting, I dropped my hands to the floor and got around using a sort-of one-legged hopping mountain climber movement. I bought crutches the next day, which was just as exhausting of a way to get around, but at least I was upright.<br />
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On Monday the bone doctor confirmed that I'd fractured my fifth metatarsal. It's commonly referred to as a <a href="http://www.footeducation.com/foot-and-ankle-conditions/dancers-fracture-5th-metatarsal-avulsion-fracture/">dancer's fracture</a>. He put me in a boot and instructed me to return in 6 weeks.<br />
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I haven't been back out to the pool, but Eric said it's overflowing with tadpoles, and that he's never seen so many. I can put a little weight on my foot now so I'll probably try to sneak back out there later today. <br />
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I do have photos of the toads, but they'll be in the next post. I'm way ahead of myself story-wise and need to catch up on January through March first, so here it is: another 3-month photo dump that takes us back to winter....ugh! The trails were still clear at the beginning of January, and Joy could still get down to Bone Island for snack without getting buried in snow on the way there. <br />
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Then we got a little snow...that was fun. We found a great sledding hill behind our house. Jacob is not a big fan of cold-weather play, so we usually end up back inside pretty quickly while Hannah and Eric wear themselves out sledding <br />
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Then we went to school with Hannah, and she showed us all the number work she's been doing. <br />
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That snow mostly melted before more came, so we returned to Bone Island. Eric has since moved the below log; it is now part of a three-log bridge. <br />
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Uncle Justin came to visit in mid-January. <br />
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It was chilly, but not too cold for 'smores! <br />
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Then the snow started. The first one didn't amount to too much (you can see the ground around Hannah and her snowman below).<br />
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When it wasn't snowing, it was still pretty bitter cold, so we spent a lot of time indoors. Turns out Jacob likes dress-up every bit as much as Hannah. (He also really likes robots.)<br />
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Every time the temperature outside rose above 25 or so we took full advantage of the seeming warmth and took to the woods. <br />
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Although we don't typically do much of anything for Valentine's Day, we did make some dark chocolate covered strawberries a couple days later. Yum! <br />
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Okay, I know this next one seems weird, and I agree, but I wanted to share anyway. Hannah set up this shrine of sorts on the back of the sink with two lucky beans and this little regal kitty that Amy brought back for her from one of her trips to Japan. I love it when I walk into someplace mundane, like, say, the bathroom, and find a Hannah shrine. <br />
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This next one was after one of the medium snows. I think we got about 4 inches. This one never melted though so all the big snows that followed added to this base. <br />
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Eric shoveled our super long driveway after this one which saved us from paying $60 to have a guy plow it. We had two more big snows after this, too big for Eric to shovel in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable amount of energy. Fortunately, we lucked out again with awesome neighbors, and these neighbors also have a tractor with a snow blower that they generously used to clear our path out of here following both subsequent snows. <br />
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Jacob loves helping with outdoor tasks! <br />
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Hannah and Eric built a snow fort after the last big snow. The snow was taller than the dog by this point (not that that takes much) which
made it impossible for both her and Jacob to walk through, so it didn't
take long for cabin fever to settle in. <br />
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Then the temperatures inched above freezing, and the snow started to melt, and we left our house to see if the fish in the cove had made it (they had). <br />
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At the beginning of March we returned to Hannah's classroom to celebrate her half birthday. Her summer birthday (and her mother's laziness) means that she had never had a chance to celebrate at school before, and it's such a beautiful celebration, that I wanted to make sure she didn't miss out completely. Since this is her last year in the children's house, this was our last chance. The children were already gathered in a circle when Jacob and I walked in at 11, and the sun with the months around it was already set up in the middle of the circle with a little candle in the middle of it. Hannah started at August and walked around the sun. After each lap, she paused so I could share her milestones that year with the class and show them a picture. After she'd made her final lap and ended at March, I passed out the <a href="http://www.ambitiouskitchen.com/2014/07/healthy-double-chocolate-zucchini-muffins/">chocolate zucchini mini muffins</a> we'd made and an assortment of cut vegetables for the special birthday snack. I left the birthday book I'd made her in the classroom, and she shared it with her friends and teachers over the next few days. The laps around the sun are pretty small and didn't leave me much of a chance to take pics before I had to speak again, so this is the best I could do.<br />
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And then it was spring, and the rapidly melting snow was flooding the streets, and the sound of the car tires splashing through it combined with the warm sun streaming in through the car windows felt like freedom! Of course, it took FOREVER to melt at our yard, so we took our freedom to the playground near Hannah's school where we traipsed through the slush that still covered the path in some places and tried to wear out the dog who was losing her mind from lack of fresh air and exercise. <span style="color: #0000ee;">We<span style="color: #0000ee;"> were all going a bit crazy <span style="color: #0000ee;">by this point and were <span style="color: #0000ee;">happy just feeling the warm sun on our faces. </span></span> </span><u><br /></u></span><br />
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As soon as the snow was gone, the strange plant that I referenced in my last post burst through the wet soil adding it's purplish self to the otherwise brown landscape. I sent another picture to my friend Jeanne who managed to identify it as an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symplocarpus_foetidus">Eastern Skunk Cabbage</a>. The picture below shows the flower which pops up first, before the stem and leaves. It smells bad to attract the flies that pollinate it...awesome. They are everywhere in the woods, especially in the low parts that are really wet. In spite of their prevalence, I rarely smell it. Every once in a while I get a whiff of the gnarly-ness.<br />
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Cheeeeeeeeeeese!!! <br />
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The fog on this particular day made the woods look really magical and mysterious. <br />
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Hannah is into drumming lately and asking for drum lessons. In lieu of professional training, she is opting for lots of practice and prefers to practice outdoors on sunny days while perched on the concrete sewer top thingy (likely the only warm spot in the yard at the time the picture was taken).<br />
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We finally made it to the zoo during spring break to see the not-so-new-anymore penguin exhibit. It's really nice, but it was pretty cold that day so the penguins weren't terribly active. <br />
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Nesting children! <br />
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Jacob found this comfy seat and threw a fit when Hannah joined him. He is visibly mad and trying to push her off in most of the pictures I took. <br />
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And then it snowed again. Arggghh! It dusted every single branch of every single tree so that I couldn't help admiring it in spite of being totally over winter. <br />
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We haven't taken Hannah to the family concerts at the BSO since Jacob was born, and I've been wanting to get back into it and see how he does, so one weekend when Eric was out of town, we joined Kylie and her mom. Remind me not to do that again. Jacob refused to sit still. After running up and down the stairs in our section a few times, he bolted for the door and made it out into the hallway where he took off running. I caught up to him and brought him back, but after the third time, I gave up trying to restrain him. I left Hannah with her friend and let Jacob run around on in the lobby. He's clearly not ready for the symphony.<br />
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He did better at Tales &Tails at the Irvine Nature Center where he got to pet a toad after a few stories. This was before our pool was overflowing with toads so it was still a novelty. Now he catches toads almost daily, and it's all I can do to keep the kids from bringing them indoors.<br />
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More on toads to come...April is full of toads, and I'm going to try really hard not to get so far behind that I'm dumping 3-months worth of pictures on you at a time anymore. terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-71670209042911687402015-03-22T21:44:00.000-04:002015-03-29T14:25:06.543-04:00Our New Life: Part 1 of a Massive Photo DumpHannah and I were teary-eyed before going to sleep for the last time in our old house, but we adjusted to country life pretty quickly. For the first time for this city kid, fall meant a whole yard full of leaves and grass to sprawl out and roll around in!!<br />
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Plus streams to splash in (this tiny one runs in front of our house by the street)!<br />
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This next one of the stream out front has a hidden child.<br />
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Fall also means Grandfriend's Day at Hannah's school. Here's Hannah showing Grammy how to write a story with the moveable alphabet. <br />
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While Grammy and Hannah were at school, the boys and I played in the woods and threw rocks in the bigger stream on the north side of the house. All the rock-throwing pics were blurry, but here's one of Mason wielding a stick like a sword. <br />
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We took a break from our yard for Hannah's once-a-month <a href="http://thewalters.org/family/artkids.aspx">Art Kids preschool program at the Walter's</a>. Younger siblings are not supposed to participate (or even come really, though that's often impossible), but Hannah has been a regular since age 3, and this particular class was small, so they let Jacob squeeze in and try out painting for the first time. He loved it!I signed him up for the<a href="http://thewalters.org/events/?tag=art-tots"> Art Tots </a>classes as soon as he turns 2.<br />
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Back to the yard: We had a beautiful fall here with a lot of really mild days that were perfect for crunching through leaves and exploring our new place.<br />
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Eric cut a piece of wood and used some rope to tie it to a tree by the house. It's pretty rudimentary, but the kids love it.<br />
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Snacks are often more delicious when munched from a partially rotting log while tickling your bare toes in fallen leaves.<br />
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Hannah and Eric stuffed the scarecrow again this year, but there were no passing pedestrians to enjoy it. I used to enjoy watching the reactions from my perch near the front window. <br />
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Hannah wanted to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elphaba">Elphaba </a>this year so I bough her a witch costume. The rest of us jumped aboard the bandwagon and dressed up as Oz characters as well. Eric got this awesome evil monkey costume, we found a cute lion costume
for Jacob on Craig's List, and I got pushed into being Dorothy, a
decision I followed through with begrudgingly, especially considering
the big drop in temperature that happened right in time for Halloween. It was our first time picking a theme (and my last time picking anything with non-face flesh being exposed to air), but since it took a lot of the thinking out of it for me, it will not be our last. From now on, I'm going to let Hannah and Jacob decide what to be, and then I'm going to pick something in that theme.<br />
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For the second year in a row, we spent Halloween in Rodger's Forge with our good friends who snapped this picture of us. <br />
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I didn't feel like fussing with the green face paint for her school party, so she's just a witch here. the adorable lamb is one of her closest friends.<br />
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I walked into Jacob's room after nap one day to find Hannah in the crib with him and both of them giggling uncontrollably.<br />
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It was fun watching Kaya tentatively explore her new outdoor space.<br />
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Hide-and-seek has so many more options out here!<br />
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Dance parties are a regular event around here. During this particular dance party, Hannah broke out her old flower girl dress to make it a fancy-dancey party.<br />
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So far we have still not grown tired of watching the deer cluster around the bird feeder at dinner time each night.<br />
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Having never before lived beyond the confines of the concrete jungle, I found all kinds of amazingly beautiful things that I took pics of to show Eric when he returned home from work each day, like this sprouted acorn....<br />
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...and this one, which lost its hat...<br />
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...and this piece of bark with a really pretty pattern of roundish shapes on the inside...<br />
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<br />
...and, on a larger scale, this tree, under which I found the above things. In spite of having a kabillion trees, this is the only good climbing tree, so that's a bit of a bummer, but at least there's one!<br />
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This access trail runs along the north side of our house and used to be a driveway to an old farm house back there. Just north of this trail is the big stream, and on the other side of that is a development. The old farm house is still there though mighty run down and can be accessed from the development. When the developer was buying up plots, the previous owner of our home, who originally only owned the land up to this trail, bought up the stream and woods on the other side of the trail, which is awesome since that was the main appeal of this place.<br />
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I love it when they play nicely and quietly together! <br />
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Jacob thought Kaya might like some crackers for a snack... <br />
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<br />
...and a kiss.<br />
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In addition to joining Hannah in her many art projects, he also shares her love of dress-up. <br />
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<br />
This is the big stream I keep talking about, the one on the north side of the house.<br />
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There are tons of big trees along the edge with partially exposed roots that the kids love to play in. I love how they look!<br />
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Hannah spotted this marbled orb weaver (which we called "Camo Orange Spider" until my friend Jeanne told me the true name). <br />
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My dad brought down a riding mower that he'd refurbished so Eric could cut the grass once before winter. Other than that, it's been used primarily as a kiddie ride. <br />
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We took another break from our yard one morning to visit Port Discovery before the Curious George exhibit left. <br />
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And then the snow started.....just a little at first, but this much before Thanksgiving is crazy and was not a good omen. We had fun though and promptly start rolling balls in an effort to get them big enough for a snowman. <br />
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We spent an awesome Thanksgiving at my aunt's and uncle's house this year. I love any excuse to get the crew together, and a holiday is a pretty good one. Somehow, in spite of the snow being patchy, we managed to build this huge snowman. <br />
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No trip to my aunt's is complete without a little target practice! <br />
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And then it was December. We bought a real tree this year, just to see how it was. We were not impressed and do not intend to do it again. It was my first real tree ever, and honestly, I thought the smell would be more noticeable. Everyone talks about the awesome smell of a real tree, but I didn't notice much of a smell at all. Here's what I noticed: lots of pine needles constantly on my floor, weak branches that can't hold most of the ornaments, and a constantly crooked/falling tree. To be fair, that last one was probably due to the tree stand. In addition, there's the environmental factor which has always been a big enough deterrent for me in the past (I realize that there's an environmental impact to manufacturing fake trees as well, but since we already have the tree, that seems a moot point, one better used on someone who is considering buying a tree). Oh, and there's the cost: pay $60 for all that trouble, or put up the plastic one that we've had for eons. The latter it is!<br />
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This year Eric let Jacob try to put the star on first.<br />
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And then he let Hannah finish the job.<br />
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Jacob liked the idea of decorating but thought he was a better canvas for all those lights than the tree.<br />
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December was mild, so we enjoyed lots more outdoor time.<br />
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We used the pallets that the insulation came on to stack up some firewood. <br />
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And then Hannah's long-term wish came true: she got a dog. This is Joy. She's a little shih tzu who belonged to my uncle's late father. She's 6 and very sweet. Although she's not bred for this filthy outdoor lifestyle we live, she loves it! There's a little island of rocks in the big stream that we named Bone Island because there was a pretty close to a full animal skeleton on it when we moved in. Joy loves, loves, loves Bone Island. She hops down there using the stumps we stacked up, finds a bone, and happily gnaws away. <br />
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She also keeps my feet warm while I work. <br />
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As usual, we had two Christmases this year, the first a few weeks early with my family. As usual, I neglected to take photos and had to steal these from my cousin, Kim.<br />
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Clay and Mason got Ninja Turtle get-ups from someone, and walkie talkies from us.<br />
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Ok, another abrupt topic shift: does anyone know what this plant is? It looks like a bulb from the top, but as you can see from the photo below this next one, it's not. It grows all over the place around here mostly in the lowlands where it's really wet. And it was sprouting in the winter--how weird is that? Now that they snow is melted, there are a ton more, but they're purple and yellow now. I took a picture, but it's still on my phone and will have to wait until my part 2 photo dump.<br />
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We took a long walk on Eric's birthday through the woods on the south side that don't belong to us, but did belong to the woman we bought the house from. The whole thing was her family's land for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, she sold the south woods and the parts shown in the photos below to a developer and McMansions are now pending. Grumble, huff.<br />
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Our second Christmas lasted for a week, starting with Eric's birthday on Monday. The next day we took his parents and the kids to the hibachi grill for an entertaining dinner. Eric and I were the only ones who'd been before so we had fun watching everyone else watching. Jacob loves all things flammable, but even he shied away from this giant of a fire.</div>
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I think Hannah would have liked it more if there were more space between the fire and her seat.<br />
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She did like the shrimp-catching part; who doesn't?? She even caught one, much to her surprise (and ours). I never catch them, but I'm always game to let a few smack me in the face while I try! <br />
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I love this picture of Jacob; he's so James Dean, minus the cancer stick. I'm pretty sure I like the first one best, but I had to share the second one too.<br />
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The kids loved reading all the wonderful books that Grannah and Granpah picked out for them.<br />
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The highlight of Hannah's Christmas was this shooting star necklace from her grandparents that has a real piece of meteorite in it. She wore it nonstop, including while showering until that chain broke. We put it on another chain, but this one is pretty big so she has to take it off when she swims or it falls off without her even realizing it. <br />
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They both ended up with cute knitted hats. Jacob's, shown in the picture below this one, is a dog and gets a ton of compliments from people wanting to know if I made it. Hah! Scarves people--I am limited to crocheting scarves. <br />
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Joel came in time for Christmas and stayed through the weekend so there was plenty of time to join us by the camp fires we've had pretty regularly since moving here (until the snow hit, that is). He also spent some time panning for gold in our stream. Sadly, this was not a successful venture.<br />
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Hannah's friend, Kylie, came over the following week, and the girls packed their backpacks full of snacks, toys, and books, and then went out for a walk in search of the perfect place for their picnic. <br />
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That wraps up 2014 in whatever the opposite of a nutshell is. I should read back through and edit, but honestly, I just want to be done with 2014. It took me forever to get this far, and I still have 3 months of pics from this year to get posted. So, no judging on any editorial mistakes I'm sure I made!<br />
<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-12286663362032462892015-03-12T21:10:00.002-04:002015-03-12T21:10:16.178-04:00Kitty in the windowIn our final days in the city I snapped some pics of Kaya hanging out in her favorite perch. I can't wait to see where she chooses to perch in the country.<br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-18800550877234919162015-02-15T21:29:00.000-05:002015-02-15T21:29:46.003-05:00The beach!!<!--[if !mso]>
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<![endif]-->The morning after we put in an offer on the house, we took the kids climbing and ran into a friend with a beach
condo who had a last minute back out. It was available from Monday through
Friday, and he offered it to us at a discount. We accepted his offer on the spot. The beach is, and
always has been, my happy place.<br />
<br />
We were packing up on Sunday when we got the call from our realtor saying the sellers had accepted our offer. Woohooo!!! We were ecstatic and
wondered if we should skip the beach, but instead we busied ourselves with
filling out the forms our loan officer needed to process our loan in a month. I also immediately typed up an ad for our current home and posted it online to start the process of looking for tenants.Then we hit the road!<br />
<br />
After dropping off our bags at the condo, we walked straight to the beach. It was
close to dinner time so we kept our clothes on, planning on just a walk in the
surf and sand, but I should have known that wasn't going to happen! What
started as just splashing in the surf turned into an all out, fully clothed swim
for Hannah and Eric.<br />
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I focused more on relaxing than picture taking on this trip, as has been my practice as of late, but here are the few I took.<br />
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<br />
We had such an awesome week. Being there from Monday to Friday was the
perfect amount of time, and it meant that we weren't traveling on the weekend so we didn't have to deal with insane traffic in either direction. The condo was awesome and in such an ideal spot, far
from the insanities of the boardwalk and backing up to a huge park on the
bay with trails and a really nice playground. It was such a peaceful and
perfect way to end the summer! terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-81702677666058284082015-02-08T14:20:00.002-05:002015-02-08T14:21:16.319-05:00The house (continued)A few days after we returned from Michigan we contacted our realtor about the house with 5 acres located not too far off the beaten path that I wrote about in <a href="http://www.goingmamarazzi.com/2014/12/lake-life-in-michigan.html">this post</a>. Like I said before, by this point, we had become pretty jaded by house hunting, and as a result, we were no longer easily excited, but this one looked promising and it was actually in our price range unlike a lot of the homes we visited. So on a Friday morning toward the end of August, we loaded up the kids and headed north, out of the city and then completely out of the beltway to a place where trees outnumber houses. The house sat on a slight hill far off the road. As we ascended the driveway, it occurred to me that the driveway was quite possibly longer than the city block on which I'd spent the previous 8 or so years fighting for parking.<br />
<br />
It was a modest rancher with nothing particularly exciting or unique about it...except the land where it sat. In addition to the huge front yard, there were woods on both sides and in back. A small stream ran across the front yard by the street and connected to a much larger stream in the woods on the north side of the house. The woods were full of bright ferns and tall, straight trees that stretched way above our heads and dwarfed us in a way that felt far more calming than the skyscrapers downtown.<br />
<br />
We wanted a really unique outdoor space, preferably with more than an
acre, without being too far from the civilization I'd built my life around. We'd visited suburban
neighborhoods all over the place, and I loved the appeal of being in a neighborhood with
sidewalks for trick-or-treating and a close-knit community like the one I'd be leaving, but the gridlocked backyards in those suburban neighborhoods turned us
both off. I had no idea I'd be such a snot about that; after
all, we had no grass at the house we were living in. You'd think that
I'd be thrilled with even the smallest patch of green, but I wasn't. I'd walk out into
the yards of those suburban homes and look at the fences on all three
sides and just feel claustrophobic. I wanted something with more
character and more space, ideally with water running through. (I'll share pics of the outdoor space soon.)<br />
<br />
There was a pool too (selling point for Eric). It was full of cracks, and the small amount of water it held was murky and full of frogs, but it was a pool which fit Eric's dream of creating an outdoor paradise. In the meantime, we knew the frogs would be well loved.<br />
<br />
We walked in through the back door and laughed at the kitchen which was circa 1960 with a tiny vintage wall oven and was completely closed off from the dining room save for a small doorway. We weren't looking for fancy though; we had long since come to the realization that we couldn't afford a house as nice as the one we were living in. We were looking for something that was livable as is and showed potential for greatness. <br />
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Then we walked through the dining room, saving the basement steps for later...<br />
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We admired the huge front picture window in the living room.<br />
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Then we
walked down the hallway and looked at each of the three bedrooms. The first one was the smallest, but it wasn't so small to render it useless like the tiny bedrooms in a lot of homes. (I can't get these pictures to line up next to each other and am giving up; forgive the terrible formatting please!)<br />
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The next bedroom was huge (for a kid). <br />
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The master bedroom was big too. (Yep, no central air conditioning.) <br />
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That door Jacob is in front of goes to a little half bathroom off the master. And how about that sweet mirror??<br />
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So all bedrooms were normal to large in size and all had normal-sized closets. Some of the houses we'd looked at would have one ridiculously tiny bedroom or one crazy large bedroom or all the bedrooms would be fine but they'd have these useless closets.<br />
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We retraced our steps back to the dining room and we went downstairs where we admired the huge basement
complete with a large family room where we could shove all the kids'
toys, a room we could use for guests, and a huge workshop that, when coupled with the pool and woods, had Eric chomping at the bit. (I forgot to take pictures down there.)<br />
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Years of house hunting had me relating to Goldilocks and trying to find the house that was just right. These were our criteria:<br />
<ul>
<li>A house that was not too big and not too little. I didn't want to have to furnish, heat, or clean a large house, but I also didn't want to have to loft furniture and get creative to fit everything. This house fit that criteria perfectly. Check!</li>
<li>A house that could be spruced up with paint and move-in ready. We were cash poor and couldn't afford one that required extensive work just to move in. We were looking for an old lady house: dated but solid and sturdy, something livable with potential. This one was an old man house. Check!</li>
<li>A house with a really unique outdoor space, preferably more than 1 acre and with water. It also couldn't back up to anything weird like power lines or a parking lot or a highway. Check!</li>
<li>A house in a good school district...nope. No check here, but I'm not a fan of public schools anyway, even if they are "good", so although we were hoping to have this to fall back on if needed, we were willing to let it go. </li>
<li>A house with neighbors, ideally in a neighborhood with as sidewalk and on a street that did not have lines separating lanes of traffic. This one had some neighbors, but it was definitely not part of a neighborhood. There were no sidewalks, and the road out front had a double yellow line so there would be no walking around using the road. It was not a very busy street though so although I originally felt pretty strongly about this one, I was willing to let it go.</li>
</ul>
We really had looked at a ton of houses and we knew that our dream house did not exist in our price range. Really, it probably didn't exist at all, especially the part about having a unique outdoor space that was still part of walkable neighborhood...It would have to be made. We just needed the right setting, and we'd take care of making it dreamy. This one was it. We calmly walked back outside and asked our realtor to draw up the contract. We could offer what they wanted and felt no need to haggle. We had found our just right house.<br />
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The house turned out to be an estate sale. It was built by the previous owner in 1960 who raised his three children there and outlived his wife by about 10 years. All three of his children needed to agree on our offer before it could go any further so we weren't sure when we'd hear back, but we weren't too worried. We had come to trust in the universe and knew that if it was right, it would happen. terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-3078948896148152892015-01-10T21:10:00.002-05:002015-01-10T21:10:44.052-05:00Aunt Sharon and Uncle Tom!On the way home from Michigan each summer we stop at my Aunt Sharon's and Uncle Tom's house for an all too brief but most pleasant visit. Aunt Sharon is my dad's mom's sister, and since I don't know my dad's mom too well, and since my grandmother on my mom's side is dead, she's the closest thing I have to a grandma. Lucky for me, she's an amazing substitute.<br />
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Aunt Sharon has these two bears that stand about as tall as Jacob. Her sister sews various outfits (many of which are seasonal) for the bears. Hannah took an immediate liking to the bears so Aunt Sharon got out their box of clothes. Hannah dressed up the bears, and then she dress herself in the witch costume prior to posing for this picture.<br />
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Meanwhile, Jacob followed Uncle Tom to the garden where he scored a giant tomato that he was busy devouring during photo time.<br />
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It's not often we have someone else to man the camera so we took advantage of the opportunity for a family shot, and then we bid adieu and hit the road. Until next year! <br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-79157387454627580842014-12-29T21:19:00.001-05:002014-12-29T21:19:57.147-05:00Lake life in MichiganPrior to our annual visit to Michigan, hubby and I found a home listing that intrigued us. It had 5 acres and was not too terribly far off the beaten path that is I-83 and my lifeline. By this point we'd been looking at homes off and on for 4 years and had put in offers on at least as many homes. The timing was never right, and if we're being honest with ourselves, the homes were never quite right either. I never got discouraged because the universe has always taken care of me in the past, and I knew it would this time around as well. Also, I loved my life in the city, so although there were aspects of it that I was eager to leave behind (the fight for parking!!), there were plenty more that I knew I'd miss terribly. <br />
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Anyway, we were less enthusiastic/more realistic by this point in the process. We had come to realize that most homes seemed far better than they were, and that, generally speaking, most of the homes in our price range were not worth getting into a tizzy about. So we half-heartedly texted our realtor and asked if he could fit in a showing in the next 2 days prior to us leaving for Michigan. He couldn't. No sweat. We left. Michigan or bust baby! (House story to be continued....)<br />
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Day 1 was sunny, and Hannah and Eric wasted no time suiting up and jumping in. It's a good thing they did because days 3, 4, and 5 were rainy, dreary, and downright freezing (for August).<br />
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Joel must have struck the children as a top notch stuffie snuggler, and they wasted no time testing his talents in this arena. <br />
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Grannah and granpah bought a pontoon boat last year and used it to ferry us around the lake and back and forth across the lake from the cabin we'd rented to their house. Hannah even got to drive a few times!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Uncle Justin's pic)</td></tr>
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The little cabin we rented is in the background below. It was in a really private location with a neighbor on only one side and lily pads on the other. It was rustic to say the least, but totally worth the $400 we spent on it for the week. <br />
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On the evening of Day 2 friends and family came over for food, fun, and fishing. The tug on the end of this line was hard enough to garner everyone's curiosity.<br />
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They hooked a turtle!! (Don't worry, they threw him back after a few pics.)<br />
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There was a little fire pit type thingy, and where there's a fire, there's 'smores...Jacob eats so many things that I would never have dreamed of feeding Hannah at his age...His first impression of a 'smore was "hell yes, more please."<br />
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This is one of many pictures taken in the last few months that have caused me to look more carefully at the fluffiness I'm harboring in my middle. The holidays have fluffed me up even more...eeek! Looks like I'll be joining the masses of people who make resolutions about changing shape/toning up in the new year.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLxzy86_gFszU_cAqZ4RqEOoX0jV-W7DYgW5rb_QrdBrGmn-3y8hBBLaYB6lEzlIA6VPsfH5AFi9MnJfs8WM9Cj6I_t9R3kqqrIlizU4fzUhqlYPbzvYp-wqqZnD2t4OusWvf0TKdRMVa/s1600/IMG_4090.jpg+ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLxzy86_gFszU_cAqZ4RqEOoX0jV-W7DYgW5rb_QrdBrGmn-3y8hBBLaYB6lEzlIA6VPsfH5AFi9MnJfs8WM9Cj6I_t9R3kqqrIlizU4fzUhqlYPbzvYp-wqqZnD2t4OusWvf0TKdRMVa/s1600/IMG_4090.jpg+ed.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Uncle Justin's pic)</td></tr>
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Eric had a ton of fireworks left over from July.<br />
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Jacob loved them in July. He couldn't get enough. Afterward, every time he saw the box, he freaked out and begged to light them. He's a bit of a pyromaniac.... <br />
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Hanging out with granpah...<br />
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...followed by some snuggles with grannah.<br />
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Hubby and his best buds. <br />
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Hannah posing with beloved members of her fan club :)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Uncle Justin's pic)</td></tr>
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Loving up on Socks, her fur cousin.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CAjuPpdto3StHQQjCYfsIXmCB7EhLZ9R4ULuJuOrNI-g0GsCns6zi75SAh5M9JWAI-K992qkh3S0BtWWcgUThxAFPgVoA3-zijltxWTVvL-UUY6MEk9Ybsbz6Nu35R0HLl8U1cUEqj16/s1600/IMG_4069.jpg+ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CAjuPpdto3StHQQjCYfsIXmCB7EhLZ9R4ULuJuOrNI-g0GsCns6zi75SAh5M9JWAI-K992qkh3S0BtWWcgUThxAFPgVoA3-zijltxWTVvL-UUY6MEk9Ybsbz6Nu35R0HLl8U1cUEqj16/s1600/IMG_4069.jpg+ed.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Uncles Justin's pic)</td></tr>
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All dressed up in her new outfit from grannah complete with new puppy purse.<br />
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When grown men wear <a href="http://www.babiators.com/store/original-babiators.html?gclid=Cj0KEQiA8f6kBRCGhMPFtev8p58BEiQAaMLmqYklmOijqO4T-6_FGd-YJ2K9ZVH2OeS8EWUTeIRce5MaAktj8P8HAQ">Babiators</a>.... <br />
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Granpah loaned us his little motor boat so we could ferry ourselves back and forth across the lake on our own when the pontoon taxi was taking a break. <br />
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Another fashion show at the other side of the lake, this time with grannah. <br />
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Relaxing, lake style.... <br />
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Fishing? Water poking? Relaxing.... <br />
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Oh yeah. Tubing. As soon as weather cleared up and warmed slightly (I think Thursday), grannah and granpah brought over the giant tube, and Hannah jumped on eagerly. <br />
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Hannah let her dad take a loop with her, and then she kicked him out and rode around in that tube by herself for as long as grannah and granpah felt like pulling.<br />
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I stayed suited up in my sweatshirt and hung out lakeside with Justin and Socks who can apparently sleep in any position.<br />
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More 'smores!!<br />
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Jacob's turn to float around in the tube. And no, one picture was not enough...too many cute ones. Prepare for a sequence.<br />
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More relaxing.<br />
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The first of many photos of uncle Justin reading to Jacob.<br />
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Floating around...getting some sun.<br />
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If your lap is empty and a book is in sight, Jacob will happily curl up and have you read to him for as long as you're willing. <br />
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Hannah celebrated her birthday again while there. She shared a cake with granpah who also has an August birthday.<br />
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One of the only things as cool as 'smores: bubbles.<br />
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The menfolk doing their best to smile.<br />
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Hello family! <br />
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This lap is beloved by babies and dogs. <br />
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More maxin' and relaxin'.<br />
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On our final full day in Michigan, we drove over to our friends' house on another lake, and they graciously invited us to test drive their brand new jet skis. Racing Eric around that lake was the highlight of my vacation!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju31JRo6KVkow8x9Q7qgAtxh1GBJ2GpXboTdFzundqJLn_LgaU7bBHG4lLsWcazTf9LI0xu-aNMEfFN7EdyYojRzIPA0OTnykMxVHzSNmxT92NtnT9Xylg7wyBhqXMz-sEABcY8KtLmu_R/s1600/Summer+vacation+on+Fine+Lake+2014+163.jpg+ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju31JRo6KVkow8x9Q7qgAtxh1GBJ2GpXboTdFzundqJLn_LgaU7bBHG4lLsWcazTf9LI0xu-aNMEfFN7EdyYojRzIPA0OTnykMxVHzSNmxT92NtnT9Xylg7wyBhqXMz-sEABcY8KtLmu_R/s1600/Summer+vacation+on+Fine+Lake+2014+163.jpg+ed.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Grannah's pic)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAQzyHjSmQK8UIbIOo2xekHLfd9yqWHmImI0gtyS41IbKbgV3KgA_ZjdZKjtZl4eS07yTHlBpOhv94AhCB9Ro7mEfP1j2igb3HGIV4n-vGkDEO4xlg3rwBJmTInHrLNP6rZ111NOyArf3e/s1600/Summer+vacation+on+Fine+Lake+2014+164.jpg+ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAQzyHjSmQK8UIbIOo2xekHLfd9yqWHmImI0gtyS41IbKbgV3KgA_ZjdZKjtZl4eS07yTHlBpOhv94AhCB9Ro7mEfP1j2igb3HGIV4n-vGkDEO4xlg3rwBJmTInHrLNP6rZ111NOyArf3e/s1600/Summer+vacation+on+Fine+Lake+2014+164.jpg+ed.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Grannah's pic)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Grannah's pic)</td></tr>
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After a few laps we talked Hannah into jumping on with her dad. He taught her how to drive, and she pinned the throttle back, laughing maniacally as they cruised around that lake at top speed and asking to go faster. Speed demon? Adrenaline junkie?? Eeeek.....<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Grannah's pic)</td></tr>
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I have just a few more end-of-summer awesome-ness posts before I slam
you with a giant data dump of photos of our new life in the country.<br />
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terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-455424692694437052014-11-17T21:54:00.001-05:002014-11-17T21:54:23.822-05:00Hannah's 5th Birthday!Hannah's birthday was on a Tuesday this year (a Tuesday way back at the beginning of August, mind you), but we kept with our usual tradition of a multi-day celebration starting on Saturday. I made her chocolate zucchini muffins with a chocolate avocado icing, and her cousins, along with Grammy and uncle Chip, came to play for the day.<br />
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She got a scooter, a make-your-own jewelry box kit, and a new dress because Clay really wanted to buy her a beautiful dress. Hannah totally agreed with his idea of a beautiful dress!<br />
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We spent the rest of the day chasing them around the pool; fortunately, it was pretty easy to keep track of them because an overcast sky toward the end of summer resulted in a pretty empty pool. <br />
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I really wanted to throw her an official party this year, but the logistics proved too much for me. I am just not an events planner. It's why we never had a wedding and why my kids have never had a party outside of just family. See, I wanted to throw an old-fashioned sort of party, the kind where her friends come over to play in the yard, and there's nothing really scheduled except impromptu and spontaneous fun, but we didn't have a yard in August, so that wasn't an option. I thought about shelling out insane amounts of cash to have her party on-site at some location--she always has fun at the ones she attends, and there are advantages like nothing for me to set up or tear down or clean up--but I really wanted something more personal.<br />
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Another thing I'm beating myself up for is not scheduling Hannah to celebrate her birthday at school. Since she's a summer birthday, I have to work with the teacher to find a time during the school year to recognize her, and I never managed to do that for her third or fourth birthday. I'm not letting her fifth slip by though!! I already scheduled a half-birthday celebration in March with her new teacher. They have a great ceremony where the birthday kid walks around the earth (or maybe the sun?? I can't remember) once for every year old that they are, and they bring in pictures of themselves at every age. I'll probably just send her in with the book I made her.<br />
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Since she never had a party AND since she never celebrated at school AND since the logistics of a house party weren't working out for me AND since her birthday was on a Tuesday, I had the semi-genius idea to commandeer a day of summer camp. I figure that way I don't have to stress out about who to invite--whoever is at camp that day is invited. And I don't have to stress out about feeding them--you know I'd want to do something healthier than pizza, but I'd also want the kids to eat it--because they bring their own lunches.<br />
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So I rented a big moon bounce and ordered some cupcakes. Hannah and the other kids in summer camp spent the morning alternating between the bounce house and the playground. We got there a little early and bounced around by ourselves for a few minutes before all the kids gathered and came out.<br />
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The camp directors granted Hannah's best friend VIP status and let her out for some early bouncing too.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.greenspringmontessori.org/">Greenspring Montessori</a></td></tr>
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And then there were cupcakes! The two camps of 3- and 4-year-olds had almost 40 kids between them, so I took the easy route and ordered from Whole Foods. They were delicious and way cheaper than I expected, so it was totally worth it.<br />
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<br />The moon bounce was there all day, but Hannah didn't want to stay. She cried and cried and begged to come home with us. We tried to talk her into staying and continuing the party; we even left without her at first thinking she'd calm right down and have fun, but we had a bad feeling about leaving her crying on her birthday, so Eric dropped off me and Jacob and went back to pick her up. She was still crying, so it's a good thing he did! It's her birthday after all, so if the morning was enough, so be it!<br />
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Since I'm behind on blogging, I'm lumping in a few earlier summer camp pictures....Hannah's school is awesome about taking and posting pictures on their Facebook page. I lifted a ton of them and wanted to re-share here, but it occurred to me that other parents might not be thrilled with their kids appearing here without permission (hoping the group photo above is too small to upset anyone), so I'm left with the two below: Hannah the snake charmer and Hannah the star of the sequel to <a href="http://movies.disney.com/up">Up</a>. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.greenspringmontessori.org/">Greenspring Montessori</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.greenspringmontessori.org/">Greenspring Montessori</a></td></tr>
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Happy 5th birthday to Hannah!!terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-64286733724985435502014-11-07T22:40:00.000-05:002014-11-07T22:40:00.328-05:00Back in the SaddleWe had a lot of dad-less adventures this summer since Eric was busting his butt in a new training program and traveled almost constantly until the end of July. My favorite of these adventures occurred in the middle of July. Early one Saturday morning (Jacob woke up at the ungodly hour of 5 that day so when I say early, I mean early), I packed up the kids and drove to S<a href="http://shepherdstown.info/">hepherdstown, West Virginia </a>to visit <a href="http://www.lauramaesocks.com/">Laura </a>at her east coast home base. Hannah loved picking pears from the tree, exploring the cool old house and everything in it, and having some much needed one-on-one with her auntie Laura and Maesy. As usual, I sucked at taking pictures, but no worries since Laura always shares hers!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of <a href="http://www.lauramaesocks.com/">Laura Mae Socks</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of <a href="http://www.lauramaesocks.com/">Laura Mae Socks</a></td></tr>
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It cracks me up how serene we look in this next photo Laura took; it was actually the most chaotic hammock experience ever. I had child elbows, knees,and butts in my face, guts, and boobs for the entire two minutes that I was in that thing. I jumped out of it somewhat frustrated and annoyed, but this photo makes all that sound like a blatant lie, huh?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMl5qG6m8M-vjSl3dPUHn7ulLYAEXUD_eMeu08MonS3dcYD3xEGuVmkBUKa76Ty5JFMooMTZjZtjpz7WD1G6y40H2CJdDftVw0B6vPWLrAjVBjmNCsb1TM0Pfg8rBmhbZNVUCYi8_JRbq/s1600/10565121_10152270786602406_333368298540713269_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMl5qG6m8M-vjSl3dPUHn7ulLYAEXUD_eMeu08MonS3dcYD3xEGuVmkBUKa76Ty5JFMooMTZjZtjpz7WD1G6y40H2CJdDftVw0B6vPWLrAjVBjmNCsb1TM0Pfg8rBmhbZNVUCYi8_JRbq/s1600/10565121_10152270786602406_333368298540713269_n.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of <a href="http://www.lauramaesocks.com/">Laura Mae Socks</a></td></tr>
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On Sunday morning we followed Amy to the farm where we <a href="http://www.goingmamarazzi.com/2012/03/hannah-rides-horse.html">reacquainted Hannah with Desi</a> and introduced her to Jasper, Amy's mom's newish horse (new to us).</div>
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Jacob loved the farm and all the animals every bit as much as his sister.</div>
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The people who own the farm breed Irish Wolfhounds, and one of the puppies from a recent litter took to Hannah pretty rapidly. This worked well for Hannah who spends her days drawing pictures of herself and her future dog and wishing on every star she sees for a puppy. <br />
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Hannah was pretty psyched to be able to ride Jasper and was in no hurry to hop down.<br />
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Jacob, on the other hand, was not thrilled with being on top of the horse and resumed his on-the-ground position fairly quickly. <br />
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Hannah spent much of the later part of the day down at the pasture with Sharon petting the horses and enjoying life. <br />
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I am immensely grateful to be part of such an amazing tribe of people who adore my children and enjoy sharing their lives with them. I only wish we were able to spend more time with all of them!</div>
<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-18808014795141120562014-11-06T22:22:00.002-05:002014-11-06T22:22:21.270-05:00Group Selfie with AmyI made Hannah a photo book for her 5th birthday with all my favorite photos from the first 5 years of her life. It took me for-EV-er (until the end of October, well after her birthday at the beginning of August) to finish, and now I'm bummed because this photo didn't make it in. Argghgh! I thought I was so thorough in siphoning through the millions and bajillions of photos I have...<br />
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This group selfie is from a hike we all took around Robert E Lee park in July. Amy wore Jacob on her back, so I was feeling light and free without my squishy little 25-pound snuggler. It was awesome! terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-33461639266576033322014-10-10T21:50:00.000-04:002014-10-10T21:50:03.991-04:00Finger sucking/self soothingI snapped this not-so-great picture because I wanted a visual reminder of the way Jacob tucks his lovey into the crook of his arm and then pops his middle and ring finger into his mouth and sucks away contently. I love it! <br />
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This is the last photo in the June folder of
photos! On to July....terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-1677560448547466652014-10-09T21:31:00.000-04:002014-10-09T21:31:09.386-04:00Summer time...family timeWe're time traveling back to June tonight on this, my once-every-other-month blog post, to my annual family reunion. As has been the case lately, I didn't take any pictures...I should probably change the name of this blog if I'm no longer going to be obnoxiously photographing my kids. My cousin Kim shared a few of her pics with me. Only the younger kids are represented since both Hannah and Clay are eating in the pics I have of them and the adults don't look so hot either. So here are Jacob and Mason!<br />
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This year we rented a pavillion in Waynesburg and spent the day chowing down, running around the playground, swimming at the water park, and visiting with family.<br />
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On the way home the next day, we stopped at my dad's. Hannah remembered riding the tractor on her last visit there in the winter and went straight for it this time. She got to drive it herself this time!<br />
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Then she let Jacob in on the action. <br />
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And of course Ginger was a huge hit as well.<br />
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They'll have their own tractor to ride soon since we'll be needing one to mow 2 of the 5 acres we just bought, and maybe they'll even end up with a dog sometime in the next year! Big changes are coming soon for this family!<br />
<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-53155461490691757962014-08-31T21:34:00.003-04:002014-08-31T21:34:38.056-04:00Petting the PossumIn all my visits to Oregon Ridge, I never noticed the possum that lives just outside the <a href="http://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/Agencies/recreation/programdivision/naturearea/oridgenature/">Nature Center.</a> One morning way back in June, we were coming out of the bathroom during the possum's breakfast, and we got to pet the possum! So cool.<br />
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And then we went for a hike around the quarry. It's our favorite trail there and is the perfect distance when when young children are trailing behind.<br />
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<br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-81201619911163603372014-08-23T12:58:00.002-04:002014-08-23T12:59:06.584-04:00Pixie Grotto at Robert E LeeThis is the most catching up I think I've ever had to do. I wish I could say we've been partying it up over here in celebration of summer, but we spent most of June and July pretty busy. Eric was gone for 2 and 3 weeks every month from May to June, and I was slammed with work in addition to single mom status. But it's all over now, and we're squishing as much summer into the month of August as possible. When we're not summer-ing it up, I'll see if I can catch up, starting with this hike around Robert E Lee that we took back in June with our friends Liam, Jeanne, and Jim who showed us how to get to Pixie Grotto.<br />
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Jacob held his first worm on this hike. He threw it the first time we handed it to him, and then he held it a little too tightly the second time.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Jeanne Stafford</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Jeanne Stafford</td></tr>
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Since then we've followed that trail the whole way around to the other side of the lake a few times, but this little spot is definitely one of the best. terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4343540001916446025.post-26015838494161976782014-06-08T21:47:00.000-04:002014-06-08T21:47:02.409-04:00Zoo daysOf all the things kids learn to do, learning to hug has got to be the best. Jacob has been wrapping his little arms tight around my neck quite a bit the last few days, and the result is that he ends up getting to stay up far later than he should be up because I can't bear to pry him off me and lay him down in his bed. Hugs are awesome. <br />
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So is spring at the zoo, in the days before the sun and heat become oppressive. Jacob and I met Autumn, Greg, and Asa there back at the beginning of May. I put him in the backpack because I need to carry his lunch (which ruled out the Ergo carrier) and because the stroller is so low to the ground that I end up pulling him out of it to see the animals and inevitably, after the initial out, he stiffens up into the baby back bend, fully rejecting being put back in the stroller. This means I carry him and push the stroller. The backpack seemed like a good alternative, but sadly, I was wrong. It's set to Eric's height, and I don't know how to change that so when I stood up straight with it ou, it pulled me over backwards. I had to lean slightly forward the whole time to stay upright, and my shoulders and back were killing me within minutes. Next time we'll take the stroller, and he can just walk beside it if he doesn't want to ride. Sure it takes longer to get around, but it's not like we need an agenda at the zoo. That's the beauty of having a membership to these places; you can go and spend an hour hanging out with the goats and then come home and not stress out about getting your money's worth. Of course, these days, I've learned to not worry about getting my money's worth anywhere. Kids have limits. You do what you can, and when they've had enough, you leave, and if it really rocked and there was more you wanted to do, you just go back another day. <br />
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We paused for a photo op in front of the elephants.<br />
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Baby Asa's first visit to the Maryland Zoo! I'm sure he'll remember it for years to come.<br />
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We went back as a family a couple weeks later to celebrate Julia's 5th birthday. After the party we spent a fair amount of time with the goats. <br />
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The gift bag had these glasses with a fake nose which Hannah wore for 3 days straight. Best accessory ever. <br />
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Daddy love! <br />
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<span id="goog_1342633410"></span><span id="goog_1342633411"></span><br />terrihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12751280167534440357noreply@blogger.com0