Merry Christmas in June!

The kids have waited so patiently to enjoy the gift they opened from us on Christmas morning. Finally summer arrived (at least temporarily) in New England with sunshine and 90 degree temps all weekend. In between baseball games and other activities, we managed to enjoy our new pool immensely! Merry Christmas kids! Evan said it was definitely worth the wait!!

Sophia's End of the Year Show

Sophia had her last official day of pre-school today, although she will be continuing the same schedule twice a week for another couple of weeks at "Cool School", which is also at Christ Lutheran and is like pre-school camp - more outdoor activities, and fun themes each week like pirate week and beach week etc...same teachers and most of her friends are continuing on too. I cannot believe she has finished her first year of pre-school...only one more year until Kindergarten :( Anyways, she had her end of the year show and she was first to enter the church - she came in holding hands with her best friend Kaelyn, smiling, waving and saying hi to all of us! A huge change from her first show in October in which she ran into the row where I was sitting and wouldn't even go up on stage with her class! She's growing up! The theme of the show was "Teddy Bear Picnic" so they all had a favorite stuffed animal with them - the songs were so cute! Sophia had such a great school year and made so many new friends. Some of the pictures show her friends - Isa is in the princess dress, Kaelyn is in the purple dress, Kayla has on a pink dress and Charlotte (who I think looks a lot like her cousin Emilia) is in the neon green leggings. Her other new friend this year - James Ladner - yes, Grampy's dear friend Ronnie Ladner's grandson, is in the red shirt (and looks JUST like Danny and Ronnie!) What a fun year! So proud of Sophia!

First "at bat" of the season!

Baseball Parade

First Game of the Season!

Opening Day Baseball Parade!

Sunny skies, warm temps, and big smiles! It was a perfect day for the start of baseball season! Here are a couple of pictures from the parade. If you click on the picture it brings it up bigger so you can spot Evan. He is in the back row in the picture where the team is sitting down. I have a video which I will have to put in a separate post.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter and Happy Spring! By 8am the kids were exclaiming, "this is the best Easter ever!" (that tends to be a popular phrase in our household - I guess in the kids' eyes each holiday just keeps getting better than the last!) Anyways, we were up bright and early to see if the Easter Bunny visited 13 Lowell, and sure enough, he had! This year he brought the kids Furbie Rockers (miniature Furbies that talk, sing, and basically never stay quiet - and much to our dismay, have no "off" button!) They had seen them at Alex and Rachel's house last weekend and had hoped all week that the Easter Bunny would bring one in their basket. Fortunately for them, the Easter Bunny found miniature versions on-sale! Very unfortunate though for Mom and Dad. These little creatures are quite annoying! The kids were beyond thrilled though! We had our traditional early morning Easter egg hunt which Evan still gets SO excited about. We left early for church - Evan and the Sunday School class were singing two songs so he had practice prior to service. He did awesome! I did not get a great video though. Church was packed full and we were not up close so my pictures and video came out pretty blurry. After church we headed to Grammy and Grampy's house to spend the afternoon - we had a delicious Easter dinner, another egg hunt and a nice hike. It was great to see them and also Auntie Kelsey and Uncle Matt. The kids, surprisingly with no naps or even periods of rest, were still going strong into the evening. I think they are still recovering! It was a lovely day and we feel very blessed. Especially since it seems that Spring has finally arrived in New England. It has been in the 50's the past several days and we only have a few patches of snow left in the yard that have not melted. By the end of the week we should be snow-free! Finally - it really has felt like Spring would never come! Here are a few pictures from Easter day. I love the second to last picture - you can totally see our reflections in the door and you can see Jeff making monkey faces to get the kids to smile - LOL!

Visit with Grandma & Pepere

As I write this post, the kids are home for the second day in a row from school and I am staring out the window at over another foot of snow and it's still coming down hard! I guess Old Man Winter did not read my last post :) We did have about a week which was "storm-free" - Grandma and Pepere brought the warmer temps (30's) and a little bit of sunshine up from Florida for their recent visit. Thank you G & P!!!! We had a very fun visit - did some bowling, took the kids to the arcade, Sophia had a trip to the carousel and Disney Store at the mall, and we did a lot of relaxing by the fire playing games. Here are a few pictures from their visit! (my pics came out a bit grainy...tried using my new iphone camera but not all that happy with the quality - recently realized though when looking at pics on the blog, you can click on the picture and it blows it up to normal size for viewing...always learning something new!!)