Pictures to go with previous post =)

Tree, manger scene, and christmas village from grandpa :)

This has been a very fast couple of months! It's already December. Alex turns six years old Ina few short days and maya will be seven months at the end of the month. We went and got our Christmas tree yesterday and it was our third time going to the same tree farm (called tranquility tree farm). Alex remembered it right away and remembered how we went on a hay rie around the farm, which we did again. However, one of his friends at school told him thT of you look at Santa he won't bring you any presents... I think it was probably a ploy by that kids parents to keep him in bed, however Alex refused to go near santa at the tree farm... Oops!

We picked a great tree and decorated last night.

I will try to upload a picture from my phone... My laptop broke, so even though I have some great pictures on my camera I can't get them on here right now. :( but my dad is fixing my laptop so hopefully I will be back up and running by Christmas!

On another note, we had thanksgiving here and it was a great success.

Lastly, we keave for Disney in a week! Better get packing!!!

lately..

-maya is grabbing everything in sight and scooting on her belly
-alex is doing great in school and learning a lot of sight words and really starting to read words and sound words out!

we are counting down until a lot of big things! thanksgiving is in less than 2 weeks; then alex's birthday is coming up; then disney world; then Christmas! needless to say, we have a calendar up and are counting down to all the fun things that are coming up.

we built a trip to the public library into our schedule on wednesdays, because alex has half days every wednesday. he asked to get "The Wizard of Oz" on audiobook last time we were there. it is LONG - 5 CD's! Alex will sit and listen to it for an hour straight - not doing anything else, just sitting at the table, listening. he is already almost done and he only started two days ago. he actually said, "can I PLEASE listen to the wizard of oz for a few minutes while I wait for daddy - PLEASE?" ... Also we are reading "James and the Giant Peach" - LOVE Rohl Dahl - best storyteller ever - of course, he manages for EVERY chapter to end in a cliff hanger so it's hard to stop reading that, too. It's great to have him beg to read - a reading specialists dream :)

we've had some very weird weather. on halloween weekend we had a freak snowstorm! because there were still leaves on the trees, a lot of them got really weighed down with snow and ice, and there were a lot of down trees and of course power outages. we were out of power for 2 nights and 3 days. alex had a hard time with it; especially when it got dark. he said, "we have to be thankful for our electricity." we were very happy when it came back on!

then, last weekend it was randomly 70*! Here is maya at the park.

Today maya, alex and daddy are representing the JETS!

fall is here!

It finally FEELS like fall, with jeans and long sleeves and even a jacket needed in the morning! We are finally in the "routine" of school, (rarely the "do I have to go today?"). Alex walks right up to the door and walks right in to school without a glance back at all!

Meemom had a surprise party for her 50th birthday, thrown by Peepop Jerry. She was truly surprised! Peepop made a BIG cake!

This month has been VERY busy!!! We went to the pumpkin patch and did a corn maze (we were in there for 45 minutes - thank goodness for the "helper", standing tall on a pedestal with view of the entire thing to "help" if needed - or I'm not sure we ever would have made it out!).

 The pumpkins in the patch struggled a little because of the overabundance of rain that we've had but we still found a good one to bring home. We will be carving it sometime this week, probably tomorrow. Maya is getting so big and she loves when Alex holds her.

They had a cool hay-stack to climb and slide.

Also this month there was a Halloween party at Alex's school, Seven Generations. Alex is Ironman this year. They had a lot of fun games and activities, and even spooky boxes with "brains" (cold spaghetti) and "eyeballs" (peeled grapes) to put your hands into. This instantly reminded me of Lisa Gerken's halloween party that her mom used to put together!!!

Maya was a pumpkin!

 They had a game of "eat the donut off the string" - this reminded me of Leone Court Halloween block parties!

Later that day was the Emmaus Halloween parade. Keri and Meghan came over to watch and Alex's friend Joshua was in the parade.

Last but not least, we also went apple picking this past weekend. Jenna came along and Sarah came along with her niece, Kaylee. We had a great time! Here is one of my favorite shots:

All of this and it isn't even Halloween yet! Time is flying by.

It's been a whirlwind!

It's been such a whirlwind. I was just wondering where September went and then here is October, already almost over too. Maya will be five months old in two days, which is hard to imagine. She's growing in leaps and bounds! She's chatting away, giggling, and, to her brother's delight, is ticklish. She's rolling across the living room, chewing on things, and drooling all over.

Alex is loving kindergarten. He educated me on what the "main character of the story" is yesterday. (by the way, in case anyone is wondering, there can be more than one main character - he enthusiastically added). We had his first parent-teacher conference with Ms. Schroeder on Wednesday night where we set some goals for the year. One of his goals is to learn how to tie his shoes! Uh oh, that means new sneakers without velcro and at LEAST an extra ten minutes to get ready in the morning.

We are gearing up for Halloween and starting to talk about our trip that we are taking to Disney in December.

Alex (husband) started a new job and he has been loving it. He is going on the men's retreat this weekend so I am praying for many blessings for him that it is a great experience for him.

Coming soon: Halloween pictures!

And here is maya:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=879328746242

Alexs book.

Busy month!

Yesterday was a big deal - we had "Open House" (or what I fondly remember as Back to School night) at Alex's school. Alex is attending a charter school called Seven Generations, and being that we live in a good school district with a good public school down the street, it was a tough decision to make. But it's great - he has 14 kids in his class (which is small!). The school focuses on sustainability and respecting self/others/the world. They go on a hike every day [weather permitting]. They've been  eating lunch outside every day. He comes home with new Spanish vocab [they have Spanish in increasing increments and *daily* starting in fifth grade - their goal is for the kids to be "fluent" by 8th grade!].. specifically, he was excited about learning the Spanish word for "bathroom" - "Bano!". Alex talks about doing yoga, stretches, and "peaceful playtime." He came home the other day excited because they built a house for an earthworm outside. All of this is integrated into a great math program, writers workshop, and a lot of language and literacy. I am just thrilled with it so far!

Alex takes the bus like a big boy home from school and loves it (we drive him in the morning).

For my birthday I got a fantastic new camera, thanks to my great hubby and my family!!! It has been so much fun taking pictures of everything. The quality is amazing and it's capturing the memories even more vividly than before.


Maya has mastered the art of grabbing!

 

She love, love, LOVES her feet and is always grabbing for them and putting them in her mouth. It's adorable!

 

She is smiling, giggly [ticklish!], and 4 months old today

 

Action drool shot!

Giggles! And a little spit-up..

Maya laughing at daddy

A lot of Firsts!

This week was a lot of Firsts!!! We went to New York City, Daddy started a new job, mommy started the fall semester, and Alex started Kindergarten.

Although Alex has ridden the train before, he didn't really remember. He was very excited to ride and talked about it all week as we counted down to Saturday! When we got there he kept looking down the track to see if the train had come...

Then, he was glued to the window for the ENTIRE train ride.

When we got to NYC we had a reunion with Aunt Emmy!

We took a pitstop at Starbucks, and Aunt Emmy taught Alex a new card game - Go Fish!

We had a great picnic in Central Park. Maya loved looking around at all there was to see.

For my birthday, Alex and my parents got me a FANTASTIC new camera. It is a digital SLR camera and I have wanted one for about 5 years now! We took the above pictures with that camera and have been having a blast playing with the settings and learning how to use it.

Also new this week: Alex started kindergarten. It all seemed surreal; but I found that I wasn't as "sad" as I thought that I would be. Alex has gone to preschool for a lot of his life and has been ready for "big kid" school for awhile now. We've been talking about kindergarten a lot, and reading "Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten" - that's one of our favorites!

On Tuesday, 9/6 (which was also my birthday), Alex, Daddy, Maya and I headed off to Seven Generations, an environmental Charter School in Emmaus. Unfortunately, it was a very rainy day; so rainy, in fact, that school ended up being closed for the second and third days! Tomorrow is Friday, and I am hoping that school opens back up. There are a lot of floods around the area - it has been an unprecedented amount of rain! But, Alex had a great FIRST day at least!

Alex's Phineas and Ferb backpack - one of your favorite shows at the moment!

Alex got to work decorating his name tag.

A special note from your teacher:

I didn't cry dropping Alex off, but this certainly did make me tear up and is so true:

Here's to a great new school year (and hoping we HAVE school tomorrow...)

Maya learns to grab hold!

Shes been working on it for about a week using this cool toy bar from greatmama, I think its safe to say shes mastered it!!

Alex's "BABY CHUBBY" song with maya

So cute!!

north carolina and more!

well, our trip to north carolina was tremendous fun. maya was an all-star on the plane, and so many people said how good she was. i was really glad that we flew while alex and daddy drove, i don't know how maya would've done in the car for that long!! daddy and alex drove and did great also, they got to stop at a cool hotel on the way down.

maya loved meeting her great-mama for the first time!

She got a lot of attention from a lot of people we met at carolina meadows... I think big brother was feeling a little left out!! But, we got to do so many fun things. we got to go back to the Marble's children's museum, which we also did last year. alex had a blast! alex loved playing vet. alex stayed in this section for a long time! he gave animals shots, and helped them, and even checked out some x-rays!

i think alex's favorite part was in the construction area. there were REAL tools there, even a real saw. daddy and alex worked really hard. alex said he wanted to make a house... and they really did make a house!!

We loved having dinner with great-mama and great-daddy in the dining room every night.

We also found a really fun beach to go to. It was gorgeous! Alex worked intently on a sand castle for a really long time. We were a little unprepared, but luckily we were able to borrow some buckets!

 Of course we did a little bit of burying in the sand of daddy. He said that he felt like he was having a mud bath!

 We were so lucky that our friend Lisa was able to come visit with us for the day on Saturday. She helped maya experience her very first sand trip ever!

It was a bit of a whirlwind, but such a fun trip! 

I also wanted to mention that we went out for dinner last night, and had the funniest conversation with alex. Alex was eating a cherry, which he learned he liked at great-mama's. He was talking about how the inside of the cherry had special powers, and was asking daddy and I if we could guess the password for the inside of the cherry.

Daddy asked for hints a few times ("Is it an animal? A person? A name?") all of which, the answer was "No!". Finally Daddy said, "Do YOU know what the password is?" and Alex said, "NO, that's why you need to GUESS!"... then he realized that didn't make any sense and we all cracked up hysterical laughing!

It's been a busy, but wonderful summer. On 9/6 Alex starts kindergarten, and we start a whole new adventure.

getting ready for a big family trip!

Tomorrow, Daddy and Alex are taking off by car towards North Carolina. They'll stop once, in Petersburg VA, and then finish the trip Thursday morning. After the drama that Miss Maya had in the car on the way to Massachusetts, we've decided it's better if Maya and Mommy fly - so we leave bright and early on Thursday morning, at 6 am, and our flight gets to NC at 9:30.

We are so excited to see great-grandmama and great-granddaddy (or, in Alex's words, Great-mommy and Great-daddy). He remembers them fondly from our trip last year, and he even remembers "I couldn't touch in the pool in the hotel." (He doesn't think he'll be able to touch this year either, but I think he will! He's a good deal taller!).

I am excited to see the grandparents! Last year we went to a great children's museum called Marble's in Raleigh and we hope to do that again!

Maya is chatting up a storm next to me as I type, so I turned the camera on her and she went to town!! It's kind of dark, but it's a good one.

Alex came to a meeting at church with me the other day and drew this picture while the grown-ups were talking. I asked him why the boy was sad and he said that he's inside of a whale. Yeah, I'd be sad too! The stuff around him is the inside of the whale, the little circles are the fish inside the whale, and the best part, is that little circle with the line, to the left of the sad person? That's the whale's "hangy ball!"

Alex's Whale Picture

Here's another recent good one of Maya girl:

Maya at the park, August 2011

 Well, I have a lot to do to get ready for our trip! I'm sure we'll have a lot of pictures to share when we get back!

Where IS the other sock?

After several years of using Livejournal.com to try my hand at blogging, I've realized that I've failed miserably. LJ was the blog of choice when I was in college, but compared to other blogging sites out there, is not nearly as user friendly as some of the others. So, I've decided that it's time to let my LiveJournal blog come to a close; although, I will permanently link it so that I never lose the memories.

I am hoping that with a fresh start to a new blog, I can try to write more often. Facebook, now that everyone, even the grandparents and great-grandparents, are on it, is a fast, easy way to share a quote, memory, or picture. However, the posts are lost into cyberspace as quickly as they were posted there; and it's not the same as having a blog to look back on.

Maya was just born, so switching formats seems perfect right now; the Live Journal can be dedicated to five wonderful years where Alex was my only child, as that was written as a narrative to him. I now have two kids and need to attempt to capture the memories of both within the blog!

Maya has fit right into our family like she's been here all along. Alex is incredibly protective of her (a friend giggled at a face she was making today, and Alex said firmly, "Don't laugh at her, babies just make funny faces."). She has been smiling a lot, rolled over at her two month well visit last week, and giggled at dinner the other night (at which I shouted, "SHE LAUGHED!" and promptly scared her, so she is sure to never do it again).

Watching her "firsts" happen is of course exhilarating, but it's definitely different the second time around; with a first child you want all the firsts to keep coming, I think. With the second, I'm more apt to want it to slow down.

Alex and I just finished reading Stuart Little last night. I didn't really remember the storyline other than that it involved a mouse, so we really experienced the book together. Well, about a quarter through the book, Stuart befriends a bird named Margalo and he absolutely adores her. She is living with the Little's, until she hears that a cat has planned her attack and she flies the coop. The rest of the book is largely about Stuart's journey to look for her, and Alex and I wondered aloud several times if he would find her. We would finish a chapter and muse, "I wonder if Stuart will find Margalo."

Well, at the end of the book, Stuart asks a man sitting by the side of the road which way he should travel, and they decide that the best course is for him to go North. The book then abruptly ends with the notion that he was going to travel North and that he felt confident he was "going in the right direction."

Well, the lack of resolution did not sit well with Alex at all; in fact it brought him to tears. He had become so emotionally involved with the characters, which, at 5 and a half is a bit of a marvel (this is exactly what I'm studying as I'm obtaining my masters degree at Kutztown). He could not accept that there is not a "Stuart Little 2" (There's a "Little Mermaid 2" and "The Land Before Time 290129," after all). He cried and mourned the end of the book for about 10 minutes until I suggested that we write our own ending.

 So, that is what we did today. The words are Alex's, as is the illustration. It is below.

Seems like a perfect first entry, so I'll leave it at that. And, so as it is not forgotten, here is the link to the LiveJournal blog, which will always have been my first:

http://littleone2005.livejournal.com/