Last day of snow?

It snowed Thursday night. And snowed and snowed and snowed and when I woke up Friday morning, this is what it was to:

Okay, so the deer was actually Thursday morning, before the snow, but it was right outside my bedroom window. How awesome is that though!! We frequently have a herd of about seven in our backyard about every other night. Sterling's excited for hunting season in the fall!!

Anyways, back on track, this is what I woke up to Friday morning. B-E-A-Utiful!

It was also very warm out (like 37 degrees warm, what's wrong with me?!), so I bundled Cami and Austin up in their snow suits, boots, hats, and gloves and we headed out into the snow. My boots recently decided that they would rather be flip flops, so I had to wear a pair of Sterling's boots (I'm a size 6 1/2, he's a 10 1/2 - I felt a bit like a clown).

Cami and I made snow angels, we had a snowball fight, and then we all tried to build a snowman. The snow was perfect for a snowman, it stuck together well; maybe a little TOO well. I was trying to think back how long it's been since I've built a snowman and I'm pretty sure it was freshman year of college. Way too long. And maybe my memory is just fuzzy, but I don't ever remember it being that hard to make a snowman when I was a kid. But since snow is snow and I can't really blame it on that, I'm betting it was just operator error.

Here's the finished product. Sad, I know.

For those of you wondering where Brandon was during all this, this is what I had him doing while we were out having fun.

Just kidding. I'm not THAT bad of a parent. He was taking a nap in his room and I frequently went over to peek in his window to make sure he was alright.

After that we wandered around the yard and went to look at the little stream or 'ocean', as Cami calls it, that runs through the woods beyond our back yard. Glad we got out to play in the snow for (maybe) the last time this season.

First hair cut

What? What's this? I have a blog? Cool!! I imagine any readers I once had have all given me up for lost since it's been three months and a bit since I last posted. Well, I'm back.

Brandon has started crawling - I posted a video on facebook of that. He now has six teeth, the two bottom middle ones and four on the top. The other milestone he reached last week was his first haircut. Actually, he got all of them cut. It was sorely needed. Now he's a handsome little devil. That's it for now. More to come.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We dressed up for our church's trunk-or-treat activity. Fun times.

Dancing

Today we were watching Enchanted and usually, when this part of the movie comes on Sterling will dance with Cami and I'll dance with Austin. Since neither Sterling nor I were in the mood today, we told them to dance together. This is what we got out of it.

My favorite part is near the end when Cami tries to dip Austin. We laughed so hard!

Family pictures preview

Ugh. I can't believe it's taken me this long to blog again. I kinda forgot that I even have a blog. Sorry.

So it's fall and the colors out here in NY are b-e-a-utiful! This is one of the few redeeming qualities of NY. I've been wanting to get family pictures taken with all the colors, and luckily one of the girls in my branch at church is a professional photographer. Her name is Angie, she runs Angie Starr Photography. To anyone in my area, if you need someone to take pictures for anything, Angie's your girl.

We went down by the Hudson River. There's a nice path that runs along the river for 5 miles. She did a fantastic job and I'm very pleased with the results so far. She posted a few of the pictures on facebook, so here's the preview. More to come.

 We love the face Austin is making in this one. So funny! One of our favorites, if only Brandon wasn't being smashed between us. My fault.

The wind kept blowing every time we sat down to get pictures. Wasn't a problem for anyone but me. Sterling said I looked like a Herbal Essence model.

Random

So, as I’ve been looking through pictures to see what I want to post, I’ve found several that don’t have any big story or event that goes along with them, so this will just be a random post of pictures that I have taken.

First off, if you have never read or heard of the book ‘The Host’ by Stephenie Meyer, then this first picture won’t necessarily make sense to you. But to those of you who have read it:

My baby is an alien.

I don’t know how to photo shop. This is actually what his eyes look like. He has this gorgeous silver ring around his pupil. Beautiful, but it always reminds me of The Host. Here's a picture from the movie. Looks just like my little boy, only his eyes are naturally like that.

The rest of these are pretty self explanatory and are mainly for the grandparents. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Fourth of July at Old Orchard Beach

After my parents left, they headed up the coast to Vermont and Maine and traveled around. A week later we joined them for the week of the fourth. Sterling was off that week, so we drove up to Maine to a campground at Old Orchard Beach. We had a lot of fun and the kids did great in a tent.

We set up our campground

Walked to the beach and along the pier

Boy’s bench

Girl’s bench

Went swimming

Took naps

Ate out

Played at the beach

And in the waves

Build the Titanic (it was supposed to be a sand castle, but my skill are about 15 years out of practice. Mom said it looked more like a ship than a castle.)

Got buried in the sand

For the actual Fourth of July, it was absolutely pouring rain. They did fireworks on the pier and at the beach, but we didn’t want to brave the weather with little kids, so we all climbed in my parents tent, whipped out the laptop and watched movies. It was a great evening regardless.

While you’re in Maine there’s one thing you must do. Eat lobster. We took full advantage of that and enjoyed lots of shellfish for a ridiculously low price. Yum!

When we arrived home, I realized that I got eaten alive up there. I tried to remember to keep mosquito repellant on at all times, and I did well remembering to put it on the kids, just not myself. My legs were covered with bites. I counted and found roughly 50 bites over both legs. Yeah, 50. Fortunately they didn’t itch too badly and went away quickly.

All in all, it was a great trip!!