October 2014

Catherine is growing and changing so much! She has mastered putting the orange circle into the shape box and can even do a few other shapes with a little help. She is saying more and more animal sounds and words and can do a little sign language too. She is also working on eating yogurt with a spoon and loves it!

Elsie is growing too and doing great in school. She loved playing in the leaves this fall and it was fun to go to the local shopping village and see all the decorations they put up for Halloween. I don't think we did any thing major in October but since I take so long to blog about it you never know. 

September 2014

September was a good month too. Catherine continued to practice walking and could finally go all the way down the hall if prompted by mid September. She did not pick walking over crawling until the end of the month though. Will and the girls went swimming for the last time on Labor Day and it was cold. We have been harvesting more tomatoes and have gotten lots of yellow pear tomatoes and big red ones too. We went to the State fair where Elsie had a Monarch Butterfly land on her when they released them! She also got the ride on a pony with her aunt and see lots of other animals.  

There was more baking and jam making after Catherine and I went raspberry picking! Elsie had her Fun Run and did great and even raised some money for the PTA at her school. Miss Catherine loves to read books! Will found her in the chair one day where she had climbed with a book by herself. I often find her in her room by the bookshelf where she loves to pull all the books down to read. Catherine also started to make some animal sounds in September! She started out with a cow "mmm" and kept on going. 

The End of August 2014

Well most of August was spent on our trip so here are the last of the cool things we did. Mostly we cooked yummy things and grew a few things. The pictures of the sunflower plants at the bottom are from the end of July so they got much much bigger (you can see one of them in the photo to the right of Elsie holding her tomato). The top photo is of a plum tart form grandpas plums, then you can see a pretty beet we grew below the tomato picture. Below that are some pickled beets we made and then some roasted beets that we grew in our garden. 

August was a great month. Catherine started to take steps in Vermont, she cut all her one year molars, and she charmed everyone she met while we were traveling. Elsie had lots of fun with cousins in Vermont and Boston, she continues to be a great big sister and then she started school. These girls are so amazing we love them so much! 

Happy Happy Birthday Daddy Dear

Daddy had a blazing fireball of a cake this year! But he managed to get all 37 candles blown out in one breath. It helped that they were all really close together on his little cake. Since Daddy is vegan, and has been for over a year, we did not try to bake him the cake. We just bought it at a cute bakery in town that sells things like this to crazy people like us. We had a good day. 

As it has now been over 2 months since his birthday and as my memory is not so great I can't tell you all the details of what we did . I know we had a hunt in the morning for dad and we gave him a small lap quilt we made him. Elsie picked out the fabric and designed the quilt. She helped to sew it a little by pressing on the presser foot while I guided the fabric through the machine. We had our good friend quilt it for us and now we just need to finish binding it by hand! He likes it a lot and plans to use it while laying by Elsie at night. 

Later that day we went out to see Will's dad and step mom. I think the boys went golfing and when they came home we were waiting for them with a surprise cake! Elsie put all 37 candles on and then we ate it! Here's to a new year filled with love and lots of laughs. 

Our big girl is in...

...second grade! I can't believe it! She is getting so big and growing so fast. She is only a head and  a neck shorter then I am now. She wanted her hair curry this year for the first day of school. She was a little nervous but she did great! We got there with a tinny bit of time to spare not a lot so we did not get any extra photos with friends. She walked in like a big kid and had a great first day of school!

NYC 2014

We got to spend a weekend in NYC near the end of our trip. It was great to see Will's sister and brother there and spend time with family! We went on an old carousel, walked on the Brooklyn Bridge, had lunch in a park where we could see the statue of liberty very far away, Catherine ate her first ice cream cone, and we walked A LOT. Mostly just hung out though. Will's sister, her husband and their baby were kind enough to open her home to us and we got the royal treatment. We loved seeing family and spending time with them even if it was just for a day or two! The babies still like each other so that is a plus too. Hopefully we can make it back there soon.

Boston 2014

We had a great time with family in Boston. I guess Elsie must have been too busy to get in many photos but I got a few of her there. We got to go to the beach one afternoon and the girls loved it. I knew Elsie would but Catherine did too. She loved crawling in the tinny waves and had no fear and went right in! But we enjoyed a lot of time in the sand as well.  some of hte other things we did were we made soft pretzels with the kids, went to the park and played in the back yard too. We spent one day at the children's museum in my sisters area but I only have photos on my phone so hopefully I can add to this someday! I am having a hard time recalling what we did but just remembered that my sisters youngest and our Catherine kept us home a few days with fevers! But they got better! 

We love our family and miss them. It was so fun to see them and we can't wait till next year when we can see them again!