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!

Columbus Day - Bishops orchard

On Columbus day we went to bishop's orchard with the Larsens. It was fun. The day was absolutely beautiful! It's always nice to go to the pumpkin farm, go through the hay maze and enjoy some homemade apple cider. I was a little frazzeled heading out the door this time and some how forgot to pack the stroller. (big mistake). Luckily they had these cute little wheel barrows so I didn't have to carry Kate around the whole time. (especially since she was asleep and of course Jusin was working.) I planned to take some cute pictures of the girls while we were out there and had some ideas about coordinating outfits, but of course Michelle had to be her own person and I couldn't get her to wear anything other than the crazy outfit she has on here. So, we all tried to coordinate around her and her rainbow pants. I think we did pretty well considering the circumstances. Kate was more coordinated, but had a blowout just before we got there so had to be changed as well, but still did ok. Michelle.

Nathan

The whole crew. Jonah Larsen, Nathan, John, Noah Larsen, Elijah Larsen, Samantha, Michelle, Joseph and Isaac Larsen. Just after this picture we got yelled at for climbing on the maze (whoops!). Leave it to mom to disobey the rules.

Everyone on the tractor. Should have zoomed in a little closer.

Kate in her makeshift stroller. I can always count on her to be a great sleeper! YAY Kate!

The boys chugging cider. yum!

Samantha, Michelle and Nathan. You can tell that Samantha loves to pose for pictures. She actually looked really cute. I thought the bow was a bit too big to wear right there in her hair, but she really loved it and I think it worked out. She's pretty good at putting things together.

Here's my girl picture, if only I could have gotten Kate to look at me. What you can't see is that there were about a million little kids trying to jump into this pile of hay so I really couldn't take a lot of pictures right here (plus my camera isn't that good).

After playing in the pumpkin patch we went into the store where I was able to pick up a bunch of lower grade apples for a great price. The next day I made a couple of batches of apple sauce. That's something I need to do next year too. It was so good!

The 35th day of school

Ok, so the first day of school I couldn't find my camera, so we didn't get any pictures of the kids ready to go. I took these pictures about the 5th day of school, but didn't manage to get them uploaded until now. That's just kind of how my life is going right now, slow. That's all right though. Nathan was avoiding me at all costs. At least I got some sort of picture. He is really working hard at his adjustment to kindergarten. It hasn't been as easy for him as it was for some of the other kids. He just has so much more energy. However, he is making some real improvements and he may actually like school when the year is over. His teacher, Ms. Peel, is realy sweet. She is young, but seems to do a pretty good job of managing the class which is full of lots of energetic boys that don't always get along. Nathan calls her Ms. Banana Peel. So far this year I've been able to voluteer in his classroom twice and go on a field trip with them to Brooksvale park. Every time I've gone with him, he's been pretty well behaved as long as he doesn't sit by his nemesis Blake. They tend to fight. Blake likes to push peoples buttons and Nathan doesn't deal well with that.

Samantha is still such a girly girl. This is her favorite outfit. On this day she especially planned to wear this outfit because two of her other friends have the same outfit and were going to wear it to school that day. She is big into dressing alike. She constantly tries to get Michelle to wear matching outfits with her, but Michelle is her own person and won't allow it so Samantha usually just gets Kate to match her. She even asked me once if I could wear matching outfits with her. (I'll have to remind her of that when she's a teenager.) She's very creative and will often pick out some of Michelle's dresses to wear as shirts. It actually doesn't look too bad, and since Michelle hates to wear dresses it all works out. She is a really sweet little girl and is really looking forward to getting baptized in February.

John. As always he is doing really well in school. His teacher called me one day at the beginning of the year just to tell me how well behaved he was and how he fits in with all the other kids so well. He has a good friend named Kyle that he makes up stories with at lunch. He really has an amazing imagination. His stories are quite funny. He also has a very sophisticated vocabulary.
He is obsessed with video games especially Age of Mythology. He also loves all the Percy Jackson books and is the one child I can count on to have his nose stuck in a book continually.
He started playing the drums at school this year and is going to play basketball in the upcoming season.

Joseph. I had to laugh because when I took him school shopping this year, the one thing he wanted the most was a bright green dri-weave nike running shirt. You know, the kind made out of that special material that wicks the sweat off of you when you are exercising. I wasn't sure it would really be that cool to wear it to school, so I tried to dissuade him, but he really wanted it so I relented, and you know what, it actually looks pretty good with his nike shorts and shoes. The part that makes me laugh is because he then said something like "mom, I want this shirt because it's pretty much who I am. I love sports." It only makes me laugh because I'm pretty awful at sports and Justin is not what I would call the super sporty type. But, I guess if Joey wants to identify himself through sports that's fine with me. We just signed him up for basketball. It will be interesting to see how well he stacks up to kids out here. There are just so many more kids out here than there were in Mt. Home. I hope he has a great experience with lots of playing time. He really wanted to play football, but I had to focus on helping Nathan get adjusted to kindergarten and getting Michelle potty trained during that time. Next year for sure we will have to do football. I have to admit it is probably my favorite sport to watch.

This is the new experience for all of our kids - the bus! They've always walked to school before. They are the last ones picked up in the morning and the first ones dropped off in the afternoon. So far it's working out pretty well.

So far we like our new school. The principal and staff are all really sweet and seem to know us all all ready. It's not as big as our Texas school, more the size of the school in Idaho, but better organized more like in Texas. They are a lot more intense, even in things like school lunches. The kids are not allowed to bring in cookies or candy or cakes or anything in their lunches. Also, the school menu is a lot healthier which is a good thing, but ilicits more complaints. As for our family, we are actually doing cold lunch this year. Lunches cost 2.50 a piece. With four kids in school now that comes to $10 a day. That just seems like too much, so we are trying it. So far it's going all right. It's hard to come up with things besides sandwiches. Also, we have the occasional water leak from their water bottles which is annoying. All in all we love Bear Path Elementary.