Overdue pictures and a special treat...

Heather and I did the Danskin Women's Triathlon a few weekends ago. Here's our afterpicture celebrating with the moms.

Here are Owen and his friend Ava enjoying Dad's On Stage performance.

Katie trying to keep cool.

Katie and Owen playing at the Ecotarium playground.


Dan and I went to Vermont last weekend to visit Kelly and Brian and the future Ella. We had such fun. It was the first time we had been away without the kids since Kris and Pat's wedding in Vegas 4 years ago. Anyway, Kelly and Brian introduced us to Wii. So much fun! Now I really want to buy one, of course with our financial situation we can't afford luxuries like that so I just keep checking CraigsList in the hopes of finding a good deal. Anyway, here's a video of Dan playing the hula hoop game. Kelly and Brian were all impressed when I played and beat the record of their 10-year old nephew. Dan blew me away. He's a natural hula hooper. So enjoy this video before he makes me take it off.

Pictures from my Dad

My dad is our own personal paparazzi. The problem is we never get to see all of the pictures he takes. Here are a few I found this morning when I invaded his computer.

I guess we'll keep her

I know the most challenging is yet to come... but here's part of why Katie is just so darn adorable!

A Few Tidbits

I know, I know, once again I've been lax in my blogging. As it is I'm trying to get a quick post in right now even though I can hear Owen and Katie wreaking havoc on the porch. Katie has started to master going down stairs lately so the porch is no longer off limits to her. She only goes down one step at most and only if she has something to hang on to, but it's still yet another thing to worry about.

If you ask me what's been keeping me so busy lately I won't really have an answer for you, but somehow I still can't find the time to update this blog. Truthfully, if I have free time, I'd rather read my book... even if it is the Harry Potter series and I'm reading it for the millionth time. So here are a few tidbits to bring you up to date with the kids and us for now.

We went blueberry picking last week with Cris and Tommy. It was really fun. I think I prefer blueberry picking to strawberry picking. Owen helped a little more too. Of course, eventually the boys got bored so they started playing in the dirt. They found a worm and I was able to add one more phrase to my list of things I never imagined I would say. "Get the worm off your sister's head!" Yeah, he put the worm right on Katie's head and it wiggled there while I yelled at him to get it off because I was too afraid to touch it myself. Bugs I'll touch, worms I won't without gloves on. Even if it's on my daughter's head.

He's not all trouble though. Owen took it upon himself to "clean up the whole outside of the house" the other day. It was pretty cute and he actually helped out a lot. He raked the leaves out from under the huge rhododendrun bushes/trees behind our porch.


Katie of course has been her usual adorable self. Every once in a while I'm reminded that I have no idea how to take care of a girl, although mostly I just have to dress her up in adorable clothes. Here she is watching Sesame Street in Owen's chair.


We've been spending a lot of time at the Splash Pad in our town lately. I finally remembered to bring my camera yesterday when we went. Of course the battery died quickly but I promise I'll post more pics of it soon. Here are some cute ones to hold you over until then.



We also had the kids pictures taken at a local park on Sunday. It was a candid kind of thing. I'm not sure what kind of pictures will come out of it, Owen spent most of the time running full speed back and forth or jumping across the stream, while Katie fell repeatedly on the hill and tried to walk into the stream as well. We'll see. Hopefully I'll have those pictures to post soon too.

Preschool Graduation!

I can't believe it took me so long to post this! I think I've been in denial. I'm not ready to have a kid in kindergarten. Anyway, here are some pictures/videos from Owen's preschool graduation. They made their own shirts, notice his is the only one with a multi-colored handprint. He's so creative!

More Butterflies and a Monkey

For those of you who knew Nana, you know that she loved butterflies. Well, if I ever really believed that she was now a butterfly it was the other day. I walked out of the house to find Owen and Dan in the driveway with a Monarch. If it had been one of the Painted Ladies that we released it wouldn't have been as surprising, but this was a whole other butterfly and it was flying around Owen like it was going to land on him. I've never seen a Monarch around our house and I've certainly never seen any butterfly so close to a crazy little boy. It was really amazing. It was perfect timing too because Owen had been very upset at the release of our second butterfly and this made him much happier. Needless to say, we drove up to Westford and got three more caterpillars on Tuesday. Here are some photos of the release of the second Painted Lady.





I promised you a monkey as well. Here she is...



I guess that gate won't hold up much longer. Any ideas?

Celebrating new life

We adopted a couple of caterpillars a few weeks ago. One is in a chrysalis now, the other one because a butterfly two days agoo and we set it free yesterday. A few days after we got them Owen made the different stages out of playdough (eggs on a leaf, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly).

In case you haven't noticed, we've had rain at least 23 out of the last 30 days. Not the best weather to set free a butterfly. We finally had some sun yesterday. Owen and I went out in the morning and tried but it mostly sat in the grass and crawled around on our hands. So we brought it back in and tried again later in the afternoon. The second time it flew right to the neighbor's tree. It was so neat to watch and so exciting for Owen. We can't wait for the second one to come out. Nana would have loved this.