Reading Festival

Today we went to the 97.1 Reading Festival and got to meet George and Strawberry Shortcake. Hannah had her face painted. She also played Hockey and Katie and Hannah played in some jump houses. It was a fun morning!

Beautiful Girls

Here is Hannah before church last Sunday with her nails Painted and glow in the dark earings! She looks so old to me in this picture.

Here are the girls in their dress-ups before I cut Katie's bangs. I can't believe I waited so long!

why our toilet paper looks like swiss cheese

This picture tells it all. He must have eaten through many many layer and then he didn't wpit it out he chewed it and swallowed it.
He is proud of his work.

Baby steps

Parker just started to push chairs around the houselast week and laundry baskets and books. I think it is funny that he goes so fast, but he loves it. I am glad we have nice neighbors since it can get a little noisy. Just yesterday he took 4 baby steps actually more like shuffling steps and today he took 7 with some pauses. We are proud of our little man. Just in time for his first birthday!!

Castle Rock State Park

It was a very overcast day but we decided to brave the elements and go on a 4 mile hike at the Castle Rock State Park. If you like cloudy days it was the day to be there.
Mike, Diane and Jeff had a lot of fun climbing and finding places to hide. This is just one of the many rocky climbs that they went on. There were huge rock formations throughout the park. This is just one of them.
Mike and Jeff, the shadow men on the mighty peak. Oh my, it is really far down from here!!

Lookeee here!

Ok. I am hooked on this digital stuff. This was the third or fourth try for this page and I finally did something that I really like. I ordered my own adobe photoshop elements version!

Christmas photo

I'm not sure how well these photos will blow up. We tried to take a family picture at a friend's house but she didn't have her camera on a high resolution.

Santa and Christmas mix

Parkers first visit with Santa. Started off ok:
Ended in tears:

Parker enjoyed the Christmas mix. He loved playing with the bag. He even liked eating it too. I only gave him a couple of pieces but once he finish one peice he would come back for more.

Clapper

Parker just started to clap yesterday at dinner. We thought we would get it on video for everyone to see. He is in the mode of copying everything that we do. I clicked my tongue yesterday and now Parker will do it. To listen to the video you have to pause the music on the bottom right of the page.

Once there was a snowman

Peter stayed home to study today so while Katie and Madison took a nap, Hannah and I made a snowman. It was great packable snow. Then we made cookies to deliver for a secret santa going around our ward. Then Hannah unrolled rollos for pretzel/rollo/pecan treats for a party we are having tomorrow night. Tonight we are going to our ward Christmas party. The girls are very excited.

Fabulous Hawaiian Fun!

Now that we know how to post on the family blog we will add a few pictures from our trip to Hawaii! On the first day we drove around the Kona side of the island and visited several of the historic sites. The picture on the left was taken at Pu'ukohola Heiau. We attended a Luau that evening at the hotel. On the second day we drove south and visited more sights. On our way back to the hotel we saw the temple off the road. We wandered our way through the streets and found the temple. The temple was closed so we walked around the grounds. That evening we wnet with a tour group and drove up to the top of Mouna Loa (one of the tallest mountains in the world) and saw the huge telescopes. The sunset view was spectacular! We also went snorkeling, which was wonderful. The water was the clearest blue and very warm. I didn't think that I would enjoy the day, but it was one of the most fun.

Ward Christmas Party

Our Victorian Christmas Party fancy costumes. Anyone willing to go out on a limb could come to the Rose Photography shop to have their face recorded for posterity.

"Muffin man" houses

We went to JoAnnes yesterday to find a stocking for Madison. While we were there we saw some gingerbread houses. Hannah kept asking when we could make "Muffin Man" houses. We made snowman cookies and decorated them to take to friends and today she got to decorate her first "Muffin Man" house. Katie decorated a cookie as well, but as you can see the candies are gone. The christmas season really is fun with kids around!

first snow

Today we woke up to the first snow. The boys downstairs already have played in it.

Parker crawled right into the basket and couldn't figure out how to get out.
Sleepy boy.

Seeing Santa

We went to Tuttle Mall today to see Santa with some of our friends.

Snuggle Baby

Hannah thinks it is great fun to get Madi to go to sleep with her, so here she is. We may have less pictures of her, but there is no lack of love!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We had a great thanksgiving with friends yesterday and I told Hannah we could decorate the house for Santa. She thinks that all of the decorations are a gift from Santa. I really wanted to get a tree this year, but with space, money and clean-up issues we decided for one more year with our 1 foot tree. The girls had a great time decorating it and I'm sure they'll have fun playing with it every day. Katie would just stick the ornaments inside the tree and then they would fall to the ground and she wasn't sure what to do. Tonight in Hannahs prayers she prayed that Santa and Kristen could come. We'll work on the true meaning of x-mas for the next month!

MADISON -the forgotten child

Well, it is definitely true that by the time the 3rd comes along there aren't nearly so many pictures taken of them. I just realized I haven't taken many pictures of our sweet little Madi so I got one today. I tried to get one smiling but I just couldn't do it with Katie pooping all over and Hannah ready to get on with all of the holiday decorating--now I know why the 3rd has so few pictures. I'm trying to be better. It also means there are less pictures of all the children at this time. I actually do take the camera a lot of places and then have no hands to use it. And Hannah and Katie actually like to have their pictures taken now-they love to "see it" on the back screen. Amazing!-they just assume they can already see the picture when polaroids were our only option of that when I was growing up. Boy do times change.

A visit from Grandma and Grandpa Lovejoy

Grandma and Grandpa Lovejoy came to visit. We got to go to Chuckee Cheese and it was soooo much fun!

Potty

I found Parker playing in the toilet this morning. There is a video on our blog that you can check out.

too many lawn mowers

We cut this out of the paper last summer and thought it was really funny. I had to send it to Shawn today so I thought I would send it on. Who knew there was a town ordinance about the number of lawn mowers you can have.

July 12: Antonio Cruz of 23 Davenport Ave., was charged with violating a town ordinance by having too many lawn mowers per acre on 80 Otter Rock Drive. He faces a $92 fine or an Aug. 4 court appearance.

9 months old!

A tisket a tasket a baby Parker in a basket.
The tree outside our living room window.

9 months

So our little man is 9 months old!! We (Parker and I) celebrated by going to Ikea with friends and then trying to get Lauras house organized before this baby shows up.

So Parkers new accomplishments- Today is the best- we were eating dinner and Parker was making all kinds of sounds. Shawn and I said mama to him many times and he would try and immitate it and one time it came out really clear. It was so cute!! who knows when he will do it again, but we were really proud.
He also is in love with the toilet paper roll in the bathroom. I have to remember to shut the door.

By the way we got that UGLY air conditioner out of the kitchen and the good thing is- it is a hazard to us so it was taken to the dump. That thing was so old and rusted so now we have a pretty view of the back yard and more light in the kitchen. So hopefully the kitchen will not be an igloo during the winter.

Another funny thing- since it is 3:00 am and I have 4 sleeping patients- we have condos going up by us and the advertisment for it says- "affordable housing in Greenwich with a view of the river leading out to the sound." For one the condos are 2 million a piece- yes 2 million a piece. And second of all the water by it is gross and stinky and it has a great veiw of Costco. Here is the website to check it out if you have a spare moment- greenwichlanding.com. (I think I live in the wrong part of the country)