Another week of catching up the journal

It's time for another week of the little things in the life of a Patch.

Tuesday, September 8 -- What do you get from two silent boy toddlers? Missing keys on the keyboard of your laptop. A friend came over to work through some projects for church, and we had a great time chatting and getting things done. The boys were so good! It was perfect. After they left, I noticed the missing keys on Jared's computer. I about died. The worst part was that I couldn't find the letters at first. I thought the boys had swallowed them. How do you call up a friend and say, "I'm sorry, but I think your son ate the letter C from my computer. You might want to make sure everythign comes out alright." Turns out they hadn't eaten them, and I managed to put the computer back together. It was all OK in the end.

Wednesday, September 9th -- Discount London broil led to an attempt at marinated fajitas. Not all that great.

Thursday, September 10th -- Goofy children.

Friday, September 11th -- We had the Gray family over for dinner so that Jason could help us fix the balusters that I broke when I fell down the stairs months ago. So glad to have that finished!

Sunday, September 13th -- Yummy dessert! You know a dessert is good when the family doesn't even bother to get out plates. We ate it straight from the pan. Oh, it is so good. It's on the top of the list for desserts in our house -- the best part? It only takes about 5 minutes to put together -- from scratch!

Labor Day Fun

September 7 -- We had a great time on Labor day going out bike riding as a family. This is the first time Maddie has been out on a real bike trail. We headed to Bluff Point State Park in Groton. All in all we did about six miles of trails.

This was John's first time in the trailer. In the parking lot, he was a bit reluctant to be strapped in and closed up. We have to use the netting because we're on rocky trails and the rocks can get kicked up by the tires. Dirt gets everywhere. John was pretty content to sit back there and wave and smile a everyone. He didn't complain one bit after we were on the move.

Maddie LOVED biking. She kept begging us to take her on more biking trips -- before we had even hit the halfway mark. She's on a fairly inexpensive bike, the kind where you push back on the pedals to stop. Well, it's not made to stop on hilly trails. She nearly killed herself going down a hill -- I was behind her and could see that her rear wheel had completely stopped turning, but she was still going full speed and couldn't do anything about it. When we finally got her stopped, she was shook up, but said she still wanted to go biking some more. What a girl!

I can't get a straight on shot of John to save my life, so you get three side shots of his cute little face instead.

It was such a great day as a family. It's one where you just look around at how beautiful the surroundings are and how much you love your family and you think, "It can't be better than this!"

A Week of Enjoying the Little Things

Monday, August 30th -- The kids played on the swing set while Jared and I picked a bunch of tomatoes to use for our dinner.

Tuesday, September 1 -- We got a new entertainment center. The old one was gigantic. This new one fits perfectly into the corner. I love it!

Wednesday, September 2 -- John and I went up north to the Hartford area to check out some furniture that was supposed to be on sale. It wasn't a very good deal for us though. I needed some face lotion and so we went to the gigantic mall there. John loved the glass elevator. We went up and down several times. He was just fascinated.

Saturday, September 5th -- Jared painted our front porch. It was desperate and could wait no longer. He did a great job. John had a fun time watching through the windows.

Sunday, September 6th -- We purchased some new bar stools -- such a bargain! -- and John loved sitting on the boxes until we opened them up and put the bar stools together. It was a great climbing tower for him.

Catching up

Wow! I've been gone from blog land longer than I thought! I'm so far behind in posting our picture journal, I'll have to do some catching up!

So, some of the posts will be combined, rather than the way I was doing it before by posting day by day.

Thursday, August 27th -- I went to lunch with a friend at Olive Garden. We had such a great time. The kids did great and we were able to enjoy a nice hour chatting. After we left the restaurant, John jumped into the shrubbery outside the windows and tried to peek in at all the people eating. I was able to grab my camera out of my purse and get this cute snapshot of his mischievous behavior.

Friday, August 28th -- Maddie had her first homework assignment of the first grade. She needed to make a representation of herself to be posted on the walls. We were really proud of the idea for her curly hair. It's hard to see in the picture, but it's construction paper that we curled around a pencil.

Catch you later with more updates!

Day 227 -- First Day of School

Maddie was so excited for school! Our street is really fun the first day. All of the kids gather under the street sign to take a picture. (I posted the one blocked out on purpose) The dads stay home from work to send them all off and everyone just celebrates the big event. It creates such a wonderful happy feeling -- I just want to hug them all!

Day 226 -- Mrs. Zito

Today we met Maddie's first grade teacher -- Mrs. Zito. She is great! There is a chrysalis in Maddie's class that is about to burst and produce a butterfly. Maddie is so excited for school she can barely stand it!

Day 225 -- Brown Day

Maddie had fun celebrating "Brown Day" today -- she had everything brown, including her chocolate milk. She thought it was so funny! She requested that it be the picture of the day -- here you go darlin'!

Day 224-- Dinner Party

We celebrated our newly painted room by having friends over for dinner. I just love sitting in the bright beautiful room!

Day 223 -- Celebrate!

We finished all the touch up painting tonight -- all 4 hours worth -- and decided it was worth celebrating. Now on to fining a dining room table......

Day 222 -- Painting

We've been working on the dining room all week-- we took the tape off tonight. Yahoo -- it looks so good! Here's what it looked like before:

Day 221 -- Sturbridge Village

We went up to Sturbridge Village with a few friends today. It was a really fun place. It's an old colonial villiage with costume, homes, farm animals, and demonstrations. It's much more relaxed than Plymouth Plantation. There are big open spaces, barns, playgrounds and a Children's Museum type-room with tons of fun stuff to do.

It was a really hot day, so the kids were looking for shade and water often, but we really enjoyed it. Their favorite demonstration was the Blacksmith. He was a great teacher -- showing how the iron was hot, showing how to tell when it was cool and on and on. My favorite part was when he explained that if there is ever a fire you should test the door with the back of your hand. If the door is electrified and you touch it with your palm, the muscles in your arm will be electrically charged to keep your hand in contact with the door. If you use the back of your hand and it's electrically charged, the charge will contract your muscles and pull your arm away from the door and break the contact with the electrical charge. Sorry for the long explanation, but I thought it was pretty cool!

Here's some cute pictures with the kids:

Day 220 -- Going Bananas

Little John loves bananas. I hate bananas. I don't really choose to buy bananas.

Where does the innate knowledge of like and dislike come from? How can John see bananas in the store without ever having one and know that it's something he likes? He saw them and started shouting, "A ME!" Which in John-speak means, "Give that to me right now!" We bought them and he's eating them two-a-day now.

Day 218 -- My boy

Do you ever look at your kids and think that the suddenly look like a different person than they did the day before? That's how I felt about John all day today. He just looked like a different kid to me. It was unnerving.

Day 215 -- Cookie Dough

Today John enjoyed eating the cookie dough I made for a PTO meeting. It's so cute. When I start the mixer, he runs over shouting, "Yum, Yum!" and needs to see inside, all the while saying "Yum."  Apparently all things mixed are tasty.

Day 214 -- Cape Cod

We had a great day driving out to Cape Cod. We toured the Potato Chip factory which was yummy, but a bit anti-climatic since it was so short.

We ate lunch at Uno's pizza and then headed out to the Chatham Lighthouse. It was freezing! The beach patrol was decked out in full rain gear with hoods! The waves were surprisingly big, and the kids got nailed by a couple. John was wallowing in the sand as usual -- happy as could be.

Day 212 -- Mailing Packages

I love finishing things on the to-do list! I mailed off a vinyl order and a big box of hand-me-downs that went to Anna. Two things checked off the list, only 43 known tasks left!

Day 210 -- Vinyl

I finally got to cut the vinyl for our toy storage bins. I'm really excited with how they turned out!

Day 209 -- Yellow Jackets

Jared, being a wonderful and dutiful husband, went out to mow the lawn today. After about 30 minutes of work, he came running in the house, stomping and swatting. Apparently, he ran over a nest of yellow jackets in the front lawn. They started to attack him -- we learned through some research that they consider the lawn mower to be a threatening insect.

Jared only got stung twice, but they were miserable. The bugs were able to sting him through his clothes!

We waited a bit and then went outside to see where the nest was -- it was like that scene in Winnie-the-Pooh where the bees go shooting out of the hive. The yellow jackets were shooting out of their nest in anger. Jared didn't go back to that part of the yard until after sunset when the bugs calm down.

We went and got some spray to shoot down into the nest that night. Jared dug the nest up a couple of days later -- look how big it was!