Walking and Such

Annie is pretty much walking now. She still crawls a little but most of the time she waddles around. It is so cute because she is so small. I guess that means I need to buy her some shoes now. :) And today, I found her on the couch. I asked Christopher if she got up there herself or if he put her up there. He said she did it herself, but I haven't seen her do it again since, so who knows. Maybe she climbed on something else to get up there. But she is a real climber. She can climb onto the chairs and try to get on the table. Luckily I've always intercepted that one.

Also, she's an nose picker....haha. Well, I don't think she is actually picking her nose. I think she has just discovered that her nose has holes and likes to put her finger in there. Anyway, it's not very lady like. But with all the boys in this house, it's hard to be lady like. :)

Happy Birthday Baby Anne!

I can't believe Annie is a year old today. I know everyone always says how fast the time goes, but it has been so true with this little angel. It seems with each child, the time seems to go faster. I wish I could go back to when she was just a newborn. She is such a joy to have in our home. Her laugh just makes me happy and watching her learn new things every day is the best. She is starting to walk and I love the way she wobbles around, trying to stay on her feet. She is so cute and petite (just barely over 16 lbs) and I'm sure she will start getting some hair soon. ;) I hope she stays girly with all this male energy in the house. :) She can already hold her own with her brothers and if you try and take a toy from her she can hold on for dear life and give you a nice growl, (she's learned that courtesy of her brothers). But she is still snuggly and loves to be held and kissed. I can't wait to see how she grows up.....actually, I can wait. :)

Happy Birthday Anne!!!

Farewell Summer....Hello Fall!

Today is the first day of fall....hooray!!!!! This is my favorite season, especially on the east coast. The weather is perfect and the scenery is gorgeous (outside of Hudson county, that is) ;) I'll admit we did some fun things this summer......

We loved the water park this summer!


















Christopher rode a horse!....... and we went to the US Open

.....but I'm ready for cooler weather, sweaters, yummy soups to eat for dinner, Halloween, Thanksgiving, no humidity, and yes, even looking forward to the snow of winter. We are going to have a "Welcome Fall" party tonight for FHE. When I mentioned party this morning Christopher kept going on and on about who's birthday it could possibly be. I finally had to say this was going to be a "celebration" instead of a party. We are going to eat some yummy foods like; apple cider, twice baked potatoes, chili cheese dip, and maybe some bacon wrapped smokies....all yummy, warm fall foods. Then maybe we'll snuggle in blankets and watch a movie (even though it's not really that cold yet, haha).
Happy Fall everyone! Hope you enjoy it!

The Evolution of the Family Photo

I'm sure you all know how hard it is to try and get a family photo with little kids. It's nearly impossible to get everyone looking at the camera at the same time. Well, here are our attempts in the order we took them. And wouldn't you know it, after a little cropping, etc., we ended up going with the very first picture we took. But there were some other funny ones along the way. :)

Hide and Seek

Hide and seek is such a fun game with kids, but since our place is so small there are challenges in finding new places to hide. Tonight Jeff solved that problem. He decided we should play hide and seek in the DARK! The person seeking gets the flashlight and everyone else hides in the pitch dark. It makes it so much more fun! Christopher is so funny when he hides because he is the typical kid and laughs and giggles the whole time. Michael, on the other hand, totally gets the concept and he curls up in a ball and is completely quiet. Sometimes he doesn't even move or say anything when you find him. They crack me up! We had lots of fun playing hide and seek tonight. It makes me sad to think some day our kids won't want to do this stuff with us anymore. Hopefully that is a long way away. :)

Bear

Here is the real bear we saw. You can see it with it's head down in the grass, behind the BBQ grill.

Things that happen in the Fall

So today was the first day we went to the classes for children held at our town's library. They have them every day but I just signed them up for Tuesday and Wednesday which are music time and story time. Our friend Kaycee also comes with Carson, (in fact she is the one who told us about them). It's so funny for me to see how different environments make kids act so differently. My boys are so loud and crazy at home, but as soon as we get in a new environment they are so quiet and shy. I guess that's kind of typical for a lot of kids, but sometimes I wish they were like that at home. :) It took them a while to warm up, but after a while I think they really enjoyed it.

The funniest part to me was the lady that taught the class. She just made them think "New Jersey". She was nice...but tough. She was having fun with the kids and made sure to include everyone, but she had rules....and you had to follow them....no matter how old you were. You could tell that the kids that had been in the class before really liked her though.

On a different note, I'm trying to decide what the kids should be for Halloween. I bought Old Navy costumes last year, but decided to not waste the money this year and have more fun making them myself. It's too hard to decide though.
I've asked the boys and these are their ideas: rocket ship, airplane, doggy, horse, turtle, honey bee.
For Annie I've thought of: butterfly, cupcake or flower (Christopher's idea).
Give me your votes on what they should be....or if you have any good ideas.

Close Encounters

I've come fairly close to different animals in the wild before; moose, mountain lion, buffalo, wolf, skunk, raccoon, rabbit; but this was a new one. I saw a BEAR!! For Labor Day our family drove up to a park near Bear Mountain State Park and cooked our breakfast outdoors. We do this several times during the summer and it's lots of fun. We had eaten breakfast and we were just relaxing and letting the kids play. Annie was fussy, so Jeff took her on a walk down a trail and the rest of us stayed at the picnic site. A little while later, Michael and I were climbing on a big rock and I hear my mom say, "Um, Emily, there is a bear over there." (She was pretty calm about it). I look over and there is a black bear at the picnic table next to us. At that point it was probably about 30-35 feet away. At first I thought, "Oh, cool!" But I quickly got the kids and told mom to start taking them to the car. Christopher was pretty worried about it but Michael was pretty nonchalant and just stayed by me. It was just slowing walking along looking for food around the picnic bench. I know you are just supposed to make noise so they know you are there and don't get startled. It kept looking at us, but didn't seem to mind. So, I sent my mom and kids on the way to the car and I hurried and packed up our stuff. I yelled for Jeff because I knew he would be really disappointed if he missed it, but he was too far away. The closest it got to us was about 20 feet, while I was cleaning up the site. When I knew the kids were out of the way, I stopped to try and take a picture, but by that point it had started to walk off into the woods, so the picture wasn't that great. But I will post it when I get it off the camera. The picture above isn't the actual bear we saw, but it's pretty close to what it looked like. When I went back to look for Jeff he was so upset he missed it. We actually went up the hill a little way to look for it, but couldn't find it again. It wasn't a huge bear, about medium sized. On all fours it came to about my waist. It was a really cool experience. It makes me remember my college days desire to be a park ranger. :)