Spring Break!!

We just got back from spring break, and it was wonderful! We took a little trip up the coast to Newport, Plymouth and Boston. It was a lot of fun! I think everyone had a great time. The first day we explored some beaches in connecticut and Rhode Island and visited the Nautilus which is the first nuclear submarine. It has been turned into a museum and is free to the public in Groton, CT just outside the naval base there. It was really interesting. We didn't get any pictures the first day because we got a new camera and were waiting for the battery to charge. The beaches were really cold.We ended the night at a hotel in Newport. The kids were so excited to be in the hotel room. Michelle was especially mesmerized by the mini fridge.
The continental breakfast each morning was a favorite of the kids. You would of thought we were dining at a super fancy restaurant. They loved it.

Day 2: The Cliff walk and Breakers (the Vanderbilt mansion). I loved Newport. It was my favorite day. I think eveyone else really enjoyed it too. The next couple of pictures are views from the cliff walk. It is a 3-4 mile trail that has breathtaking cliffside views on one side and spectacular mansions on the other. It was truly remarkable. The only bad thing is that at one point there is a 2mile section where you can't exit the trail because you would be tresspassing on private property and they have fences etc. At that point Samantha had to go to the bathroom and so she and Justin hurried off to find a bathroom. Me and the other kids followed but at a much slower rate. There are a few spots where the trial gets a little treacherous and I probably would have turned back, but we wanted to catch up to Justin and Samantha. Thankfully Joey and John were really helpful with the little kids. John gave Michelle a piggy back ride and Joey walked right by Nathan and made sure he didn't slip on any rocks or stray off the path. Nathan was pretty obedient.

After the long but beautiful walk we made it to the breakers. It is the largest mansion in Newport and belonged to the Vanderbilt's. They had a great family tour. Each of us got our own headset and was able to go on the tour at our own speed. The kids did surprizingly well. I was nervous that we would have to leave and that the kids wouldn't behave, but they did great and seemed to really enjoy the tour.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but as you can see the building is very large and impressive.

Family picture on a tree outside the breakers. After our day in Newport we hopped in the car and drove to Plymout so that we could rest for the next days adventure. The hotel there had a pool, but the heater didn't work well. The older boys were the only ones brave enough to really swim. The other kids "swam" in the bathtub in the hotel room.

We ended the night with a disney channel movie "Lemonade mouth".

Day 3: The Mayflower and Plymouth Plantation. Plymouth plantation was really interesting. They have a whole village laid out just as it was in 1627 and right next to it there is an Indian village. The people in the village all adopted a character and would talk as if they were in 1627. It was great! The people were so amazing and it was fun to learn about history at that time.

The "moo-flower"

A Wampanaug Indian home. This is a winter home. It was pretty warm inside.

THis is one of their summer homes.

Inside the summer home.

THe English fort and main street into the village.

Houses in the English village.

The cannons in the fort.

The "little" kids with their happy meal hats on their heads.

Samantha and Michelle on the Mayflower.

Katie

Nathan's birthday dinner at IHOP

Birthday cupcakes (ding dongs) at the hotel.

Birthday spankings! Don't you wish you were in the room next to us?

John, Kate and Nate!

The hotel in Boston. It had a great pool. Justin took the kids swimming while I went to the temple, then I took them to the science museum while he went to the temple.

Family bike ride on the farmington canal on good Friday.

Brooksvale park. THe destination for our bike ride.

The peacocks at Brooksvale.
IT was a great spring break. Sad to see it over. Happy Easter to all!

Samantha's baptism

Ok, the format on this is all off and I can't figure out how to switch things around so you will have to bear with me and read about the baptism weekend a little lower. I'm so proud of Samantha for getting bapitzed. It was really a beautiful meeting. Tahlia Green, Samantha, Kenya Green, Michelle.

Brigham and Samantha

Kate and Gideon Larsen

Samantha, Kenya, Tahlia, and Victoria.

I love this picture of Samantha. It is right after her baptism and she just looks so sweet, innocent and clean.

Samantha was baptized on March 5th 2011! It was a super great weekend with lots of family and friends. Justin's parents came up Friday on the train from DC. We went out to Pepe's pizzeria for world famous thin crust pizza. It was really fun to pop in and see what all the hype was about. Supposedly it is where American pizza was invented and some of the cooking techniques/equipment are so unique you can't get this pizza anywhere else. That makes for a long line at the pizzeria, but we made it through (and met some fun people). The pizza was really good! The baptism was on Saturday at 2:00. A very sweet man from the ward offered to take lovely pictures of our family using his camera and light equipment. It was nice to get some professional quality pictures. I made Samantha's dress. It was a fun challenge. I really enjoy sewing dresses, especially when I give myself ample time to work on it. Our ward here is really good about attending baptisms. Several families came in addition to my sister Maia and her family, my brother Matt and his wife, and our good friends the Green's. The service was great. Samantha is my first daughter to be baptized and it was really fun to go behind the scenes and help her get dressed. She sang a little solo of "When I am Baptized". She was really excited to be baptized! We all love Samantha! After the baptism all the family (and the Greens) came to our house for some ham and potatoes. Good food, good company, it was a great weekend.

Joseph, Grandma, Grandpa, John, Samantha, Kate, Nathan and Michelle. We really can't ever manage to get a "perfect" family picture. We love these kids anyway!

Samantha and Michelle (and Michelle's polka dot tights).

February

I can't believe February is almost over! It has just flown by. I haven't posted anything all month, partly because I can't find my camera and partly because we've just been so busy.



The last week in January we went to Coco Key in Waterbury. It is a hotel/waterpark resort. It was just the thing to wash away our winter blues. To make it even better our good friends the Greens came with us. The water was kind of chilly, but we made good use of the hot tub and the restaurant there had a nice buffet that we visited regularly (yum!) There was also an arcade that we went to quite a bit too. Valecia brought her smore's maker and we sang songs and played games in the hotel rooms. It was a lot of fun. The only bad thing is that I haven't been able to find our camera since :(

Here are some of the highlights for February:

-John's birthday and greek mythology birthday party. We played a huge board game that we made up where the players had to get their men from Athens to Troy, performing the labors of Hercules along the way, and build a trojan horse. It was pretty fun. John was really creative and had fun making the board with me and building lego men and boats for the players. Lest you think we are super creative, we totally ripped off someone elses blog for a greek mythology party, but it was still fun and we still had to be a little creative. We finished the night off with "Percy Jackson and the Lightening Theif". It was fun.

-Blue and Gold banquet. I'm one of the den leaders so I had an active part in planning the evening. We had a huge turn out and we all had a great time and of course ended the evening with the traditional father/son cake. John's cake was a round cake with a snake on top made of marshmellow fondant.

-True Moo party. My friend Heather invited us to a TruMoo party. Tru Moo is chocolate milk. She was selected to host one from houseparty.com. They sent her coupons for free chocolate milk and lots of fun paraphenelia. (which she then passed on to us).

-Quilting/sewing. I sewed a lot in Feb. I'm almost done with Samantha's baptism dress. All I have to do is sew on a bunch of roses that are at the gathers. I of course didn't save any money by sewing her dress, but it has been so fun. I like the group of ladies that I sew with because they inspire me to do a good job. I like to sew fast and furious and never unpick, but I'm learning to do things correctly, slowly, and to fix mistakes early before it becomes a huge task to fix it. As a group we are making 2 baby blankets. One that has a series of applicaed circles and another that are pinwheels. The blankets truly are adorable and it is so neat to learn how to do these techniques from women who really know what they are doing. Also, Quilt day always includes world class food. YUM!

-February break. I kind of wish they would have taken it away so we didn't have to go to school for so long in the summer, but that being said, we had a really nice time. We went to a frozen pond and slid around, saw Gnomeo and Juliet with some friends, went to the Peabody Museum (a real treat for all, I loved their ant farm), had friends over, and ended the week with Samantha's littlest pet shop birthday party!

-Samantha's birthday party! It deserves it's own paragraph. 11 girls, lots of littlest pet shops and pink peppermint pie. I think a good time was had by all. As a special treat, Samantha got some of her good friends (the Green girls) to spend the night because they live so far away. She was super excited and the girls had a really nice time. I enjoyed watching girl movies with them. That doesn't happen that often at our house.

Now we are prepping for Samantha's baptism! Grandma and grandpa Rowberry are coming into town as are Aunt Maia and family and uncle Matt and family and the Greens too. We are excited! Should be a special day.

Christmas 2010

Ok I'm finally writing about our Christmas this year. It was busy, busy, but full of fun. I'm committing right now to simplify next year. Remind me to read this then. From about the week before Thanksgiving to the beginning of January I just felt slammed. Joseph had a birthday party the week before and then we had 23 people over for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a ton of fun. Janae and her family came and so did our friends the Greens and Matt and Colleen. Lots of good food and good company! The weeks before Christmas held the usually things shopping for Christmas presents, parties, scout and preschool events. The scouts put on a nativity show for the ward. I was partially in charge of this so it added a bit of stress, but wasn't really my baby so I was able to stress less about it. The kids did a really great job learning lots of songs and acting it out.
I am in a quilting guild here in Connecticut. I'm not really a great quilter, but I do like to sew so it's been fun to learn some new techniques here. It was my turn to host. We had a gift exchange that everyone was supposed to make something homemade for. I made this table runner. It didn't turn out perfectly, but I'm happy with it. I designed it and had fun picking out all the material. We decided to go to Washington DC for Christmas. I didn't want to bring all the presents so we opened them on the Saturday before. Here are a few pictures:

Nathan had a little song presentation at school. He learned the words and sign language to Rudolf the red nose reigndeer and the 12 days of Christmas. It was pretty cute.

Christmas eve nativity at Grandma Rowberry's house.

Joseph and Mary (Nathan and Samantha)

Our family with Grandma Rowberry, Uncle Ryan, Aunt Barb, and Aunt Kristy at the Barlow Center. We spent a lot of time here playing games and visiting. It was fun. We hadn't seen Ryan and Barb for a long time. It was really great to see them.

Snowed in

Samantha and John at the bottom of our hill.

Icecicles on the back of our house.

Bearded Joey and Nathan.

Joey and John on the snow cave.

Ok, so I need to catch up a ton on my posts, but will just start with today because who knows if I will ever actually be able to get everything covered from Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The weather the last couple of weeks has been crazy! In the last 2 weeks the kids have only had 4 1/2 days of school and one of those days was a 90 minute delay. Needless to say we are suffering from a bit of cabin fever. Even the kids were dismayed today to wake up to a blanket of snow and the early morning recorded call from Mrs. Smey cancelling school. Last week the days off were welcome and everyone had a great time building forts and sledding down the hill. This week has been freezing rain and sheets of ice which just means hours of chopping up ice on the drive way and lots of salt. Also the snow on the ground is completely covered with ice so it's not even fun to play in.

On Tuesday a tree on our street fell over and took out the power lines so we were without light or power from about 6 pm to 1 am. It was cold, and I learned that in addition to having flashlights for emergencies, you should keep them in an easily accesible place where you can find them in such an emergency. We were just sitting down to dinner and it was completely dark when the power went out. Justin was still at work. I found the kerosene lamp fairly easily, but we didn't have any kerosene. Then I found the camp lantern we had but realized that the kids had been playing with it and had broken the bulb inside it. I found various pieces to lots of flashlights (including batteries) but couldn't find all the pieces to a single flashlight. (Nathan and his friend Lucas played camp out last week and apparently took apart all the flashlights.) KIDS!! We were finally able to find some candles and I also realized I could use the light of my cell phone to search for things. We ate by candle light and then played some cards. I called Justin at work and asked him to pick up some flashlights on the way home and some firewood. When he got to our street the street was blocked off so he had to walk all the way up the hill carrying a load of firewood and flashlights. The firewood was a little wet so we never actually got a fire going, but put everyone to bed with extra blankets. It was pretty cold and I secretly wondered if we would end up having to pile everyone into one bed to keep warm, but the extra blankets did the job and we were extra toasty when the heat came back on at one. Now I have a long list of emergency supplies to buy (if I can ever actually make it to the store).

Since I began this post it stopped snowing, the sun is out, and the neighbor boys came over and are sledding down the hill. It's super fast now with it's topcoat of pure ice. The snow plow came by and plowed our road, we might even be able to go shopping this afternoon (after a few hours of shoveling the driveway that is). I've never had a desire to own a snow blower till we lived here. But I secretly know that if we buy one it won't snow for the rest of the season and next year will be unseasonably warm and we won't even need it. Ah well, I guess I will just have to put those boys to work ;)

Happy Birthday Joseph!

Joey is 11 today! I can't believe how old he is. He is becoming a nice young man. I'm able to depend on him to help with the other kids which is really nice.

For his birthday this year he asked me if I would just take him and 3 friends to the new Harry Potter movie instead of having a birthday party. I agreed, but then somehow we ended up having a party anyway. I guess I just like to party too much. He ended up having 5 friends over for pizza. Then Justin took them to the movie and they came back and 2 of the boys spent the night. They didn't sleep at all, but they did play a whole bunch of wii. The poor boys had basketball practice the next day. So after no sleep they had to run around a gym and didn't fall asleep until later Saturday afternoon. Here they are completely crashed out on the couch.

I know this is a lousy picture, but it's the only one I have of the party. (of course I couldn't find my camera when we were singing happy birthday). I made each of the boys a stenciled Harry Potter t-shirt for the movie. They were super excited and had a really fun time running around the house.

Fall in Connecticut

I have been busy this fall. Many times I have composed entries in my head but never quite had enough time to upload pictures and sit down and write all about everything that has been happening here. Today will be a monster post, sort of a photo essay of our fall here in Connecticut. This is a picture of the joy school kids that Michelle does joy school with. It was my turn to teach last week and we went on a scavenger hunt to find leaves and acorns to glue onto our turkeys. This is the wall in our back yard. Kids are lt to rt: Michelle, Elijah Larsen, Gabriel Palmer, Amelia, and Jack Dynes.

John buried in the leaves. Our fall was definately full of leaves!

Alexa (neighbor) and John playing in the leaves.

Samantha.

Samantha on Halloween. Since it was Sunday we didn't go trick or treating, but some friends of ours, the Larsens came over for dinner and good times. It was alot of fun. Heather made these cool broomstick candy sacks for all of the kids. She's so crafty and fun.

Close up of the cool broomstick sacks. I'll have to make these some time.

Heather also brought cupcakes for the kids to decorate. We had a lot of fun building different monsters.

Here's Kate's halloween costume. She was a flower. As you can imagine, she didn't enjoy wearing it, but I thought it was really cute.

Nathan's halloween party at school. His class had a little performance and then snacks for the parents and kids. He was a pirate.

Little orange jack o lanterns I made for Nathan's party. They were filled with fruit salad. I got the idea from familyfun.com. I love that website.

Michelle. She decided to cut her hair this month. Right up front. I would have tried to fix it, but nothing would really work short of shaving her head, so she just looks ridiculus. She also has become fixated on wearing rainbow pants every where she goes, so she is definately one of those crazy dressed 3 year olds. She also thinks that rainbows match rainbows and constantly fights with me about how she should be allowed to wear striped pants with a striped shirt and is sure that it matches better than stripes and solids. Gotta love her. She also is able to take her shoes off in 2 seconds flat. She hates shoes and the minute we get inside anywhere, be it a store, church, school, her shoes come right off (as does her coat). She is so stubborn. We have lots of fights about clothes. I guess it's just the age, got to love 3 year olds. I do have to admit though, she is hilarious and adorable in her own crazy way!