Happy Birthday, Dawn!!!

Happy Birthday, Dawn! I won't tell you how many takes we had to do to get this result. Oh, these kids!

For My Grandma's Birthday: Me and My Brothers

When I was in Ohio over Memorial Day weekend, I managed to get this picture taken of me and three of my brothers. Only my brother Local Hero was unable to make it to my parents' house, so we superimposed his face on top of baby L's body.

And, because my grandmother's 90th birthday was coming up, we went ahead and added my favorite picture of my grandparents behind us to blow up a copy and send to her for her birthday.

Longwood Gardens June 2012

Backdating Posts

I am going to backdate some posts so keep checking back for posts backdated in May and June!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I got so many good wishes yesterday--it felt really special. This is the AMAZING cake J made for me, from the vegan dessert cookbook his parents gave me (a little early, for precisely this reason)! He and the kids also spent all day Saturday putting together a special book for me, and making a pop-up birthday card. They also gave me a Nook with an awesome pink cover, the Planet Earth documentary series, and Sherlock Holmes (the one with Robert Downey, Jr.) It was a really, really lovely day.

Day Trip to New York

I've been wanting to take the kids up to NYC for awhile now, just to be in the city and do some random fun things we wouldn't have the opportunity to do down here in the good ol' First State. We went yesterday, and it was AMAZING.

Of the many things that were perfect for us: we found free parking right on Central Park West, only a 10 minute walk away from the Children's Museum of Manhattan and right across from the American Museum of Natural History. FREE. PARKING! My day was already made!

Not only that, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Light breezes and balmy, upper-70s and low -80s temperatures just made me love being outside. We walked around Central Park, went up to the Belvedere Castle and saw Turtle Pond and some of the Shakespeare Garden and just soaked up the atmosphere.

NOT ONLY THAT, but on the way to the Children's Museum (we ended up doing that instead of the Natural History Museum--next time!) we passed by a completely vegan restaurant and decided to eat there after the museum. Seriously? There aren't THAT many vegan restaurants out there and there definitely aren't any around here! But we passed one on our way! And the food was amazing. I loved it, and really hope we go back there.

And now for the pictures. WE HAD SO MUCH FUN! I immediately wanted to plan another NYC trip, maybe at Christmas time to see the lights and Rockefeller Square and I don't even know what. And maybe visit my cousin in Brooklyn.

I Might Be Back!

I'm gearing up to do some catch up blogging and to give you more of a scoop on our happenings the last, oh, four months or so. It's been quite the hiatus. It's been good for me to take one more thing off of my plate--taking and uploading pictures, thinking up blog posts to write, actually composing and attaching pictures to posts--but I have really missed the kind of chronicling that's gone on on here. And I've missed feeling motivated and interested in taking pictures--I haven't been taking many pictures because I haven't been blogging, and I really notice a synergy between writing up what has been going on and having good photos to illustrate those stories and taking more pictures.

Summer is more than half way over, and as I get ready for fall, I'm planning to work blogging back into my regular routine(s), although I am not sure yet of how MUCH blogging I'll do. I'm hoping it will at least be a couple times a week that I share photos or news, especially because I AM hoping to keep this blog as a kind of photo album for us moving forward, turning it into a blog book for every calendar year.

With that, let me go ahead and start adding some pictures. Here's my favorite one of the kids. They are wearing their "matching" sports ball pajamas. I think RUS's were hand-me-downs from Surf and Cali, while R received hers from Santa this past Christmas.

Rosemary is FIVE!

There are no words to explain how wild it is to have a five-year-old. Rosemary's fifth birthday was a Car Wash themed party, complete with car-wash hand-made by J and Grampy, plus plenty of sponges and buckets and baby pools for all kinds of car washing fun. It was a BLAST.

Memorial Weekend Trip to Ohio

For Memorial Weekend Surf and Cali had a wedding to attend in Ohio, so they called around to see if any of the rest of us could head up that same weekend. Sure enough, we were able to wrangle an almost-complete family reunion out of it. So J and I packed up the kids and headed to Ohio as soon as the semester ended in order to meet up with Surf, Cali, Li'l T, L, A&M, G, Trucker, and our newest nephew that I don't think I've named on here yet but will call C, Geg, and my parents.

On top of that, A&M had C baptized at my parents' church (a lot of the cousins have actually been baptized there, it's almost tradition now to bring the babies to Ohio to be baptized).

AND, on top of that! Cali's parents happened to also have a wedding (they live in Florida) and Cali has a bunch of family in Ohio too, so my parents had a baptism party at which they invited Cali's family to visit, and it was really, really nice to get to see our extended families--my aunt, uncle, and cousin who drove up for the day, as well as M's parents who drove up for the baptism, and Cali's parents who happened to also be travelling nearby.

This was the first time we'd met L and he is a complete CHARMER! R was absolutely enthralled by him and cried and cried when we left and had to say goodbye, because she was going to miss him so much.

Trucker continues to melt my heart as the biggest imp in the family and that's saying a lot because there is quite a lot of impish behavior among these kids!

Here's Li'l T and RUS chowing down on goodies from the market.

Grandpa with RUS, Trucker, and R during the baptism picnic.

Cali's mother with L, who, at 8 months, was just starting to eat table food. I think this was his first taste of watermelon!

 My parents. LOVE THEM.

My mom and my uncle W and aunt C. This was another huge treat--getting to see members of my family that I see far too rarely.

A with two of his boys. I love this picture!

 M, her mother, and Cali with C and L just after the baptism.

Surf and Li'l T, who really did not want me to take his picture (he was actually hiding behind the hat most of the time!)