Simple pleasures

I just love it when the kids play well together. They spent almost an hour I think spinnning in the chair and singing. I just had to capture it on video. Thanks grandpa for the camera you gave CA for his birthday, it has come in handy!

6th Birthday

Son turned 6 April 19th. We had his party on saturday and it was a Star Wars theme including Jedi outfits, light sabers and games such as "Yoda May I" and an obstacle course the young Jedi's had to go through. But first, we went to the AC Gilbert House in Salem. It was the first time we went and we had a lot of fun. Here's a picture of IA grocery shopping at the museum. I had to throw in a couple of pictures of the girls:




Blowing out candles with everyone looking on. It took a few tries but he eventually did it:

Opening Presents in the backyard:

Learning how to be a Jedi (aka attacking daddy). This was toward the end of the party when it became a free for all to attack.

Showing off some of those Jedi moves:

Millenium Falcon cake, we think it turned out pretty well:

New Camera

We got a new camera about a month ago that I love. It takes the pictures so fast. It is a huge upgrade from our very old digital camera. I am still learning how to use it but here are a few pictures of the kids.

Global Food Crisis Day

I was listening to Air 1 (a Christian radio station for those who don't know) this morning on my way to work and was struck by the stories that I heard. Today is Global Food Crisis Day and they are joining with radio stations around the world and Compassion International to raise money for starving people/children. It truly broke my heart to hear of women in Haiti using shortening and mixing it with dirt to literally make mud pies to feed their children just so they have something in their stomachs. And people digging in rat holes to find grains of rice that the rats have collected or men who are the supporters of their families to have to tell their children they have no food to give them.
They say every 7 seconds a child dies from hunger, not cancer, not AIDS but hunger. Something that we can all do something about.
Here is the link to Compassions' website. I am not sure how long they are taking money for this but I imagine it will go longer than just today.
http://www.compassion.com/global-food-crisis/?referer=98494&utm_campaign=gfcradio-air1-98494

JA's 2nd Birthday

We had JA's 2nd birthday part early as we didn't want to have it on Valentines Day. It was a laid back small party. Here is our birthday girl playing with the dollhouse the girls got for Christmas. She loves the babies in it.

Birthday girl fingerpainting. She would only let one hand get paint on it and wanted it washed off as soon as she was done.

Here she is with Nana thinking about blowing the candles out. Eventually she had big brother help her out.

Here is a better shot of the cake. I didn't want to go too elaborate and she didn't care what I did. She loves her bunny that she sleeps with so much, I thought I would copy it. I think it turned out pretty well.

Catch Up

I thought I should add a few more pictures from Christmas. Since JA's birthday celebration is this weekend and I will be hopefully adding pictures then.
Here are some random Christmas pictures: Nana with JA holding her new blanket for her baby.

Grandma and IA

Sledding at the park. JA loved it and didn't want to quit or take turns.

I still cannot believe how much snow we got. You don't see this around here ever! It looks like a Pennsylvania kind of winter.



Finally, our gingerbread house. This year, all AA and I had to do was put the house together, the kids did all the decorating and loved it! I think they did a great job.

Stay tuned for birthday pictures.

Christmas time

So it has been a busy few weeks. Here we are getting our Christmas tree. It was a beautiful day, not rainy at all which was great. The kids got a little frustrated that it took us a while to pick the tree we wanted but we finally found the perfect one.

Guess who forgot there was a tree on top of the car before driving into the garage? (He's not so pleased I took a picture so I imagine he doesn't like me posting it, but I thought it was funny).

Here we are decorating it.

Weatherwise, this week has been crazy for us here in the Portland area. We don't often get snow. This is from Sunday's snow. It wasn't the best snow but it was the first snow of the season. It snowed, then rained, then snowed and everything froze over. Needless to say no school Monday or Tuesday.

Then here comes Wednesday with more snow. It snowed all day today. Enough to make a snowman. The kids' first one.

We are supposed to get more snow in the morning and then another storm on Sunday. CA is getting a 3 week winter break instead of 2 b/c of all of this. He doesn't seem to be minding missing school but I'm afraid we are all going a little stir crazy.