Braces....

Do you want your child to suddenly look old? (of course the answer is 'no')
One sure way though is to get them braces.
Mary is one who will need 2 phases of braces and phase 1 has just begun.  I originally thought it was just going to be head gear but the orthodontist said he'd put braces on the top 4 teeth to get things started with them as well.  That is what got Mary excited!!!  It feels pretty cool to be the only girl at activity days with braces.
She's being pretty tough too--I can tell it's taking some getting used to but we're not hearing the complaints.

Before:


After: 

I look forward to the real "after" picture.

It's Christmas Time in our City...

Since I'm too slow and too tired to do multiple posts, this one will sum up much of our Christmas season thus far.

First up--the annual Santa Claus and Fire Truck visit put on by our fire station.  The truck is all decked out and over the course of 3 weekends, drives down every street in our town.  Santa visits and collects toys for tots.  Very great.

Check out this fire truck!!  Plus imagine it blaring really loud Christmas music.  Obviously, you can see, it's a neighboorhood event!

Right behind the fire truck is Santa on his sleigh.  He gave the kids big handfuls of candy.  So great! 

Next up--well, there is no real name for it.  We call it 'the amazing Christmas light show at that house on Tripp Rd.'  The home owner has a ton of Christmas lights and syncronizes them to Christmas songs.  Every Thurs-Sun, there are 3 different showings.  You drive up and park in the field across the street, tune in your radio and sit back and enjoy almost 40 minutes of syncronized Christmas light awesomeness!  We've been twice this year. 

No picture can do it justice--maybe a youtube video could but I prefer the real deal.  Here are some happy viewers in the van.  Gotta love having 3 of us in the passenger seat!

 Followed by McDonalds ice cream cones, of course!

 Next up--decorating Christmas cookies with some awesome neighbors.  Usually our Monday night family night is just us but we ventured out this season and had the neighbors join us for a fun night.  Much sugar was consumed!!

 This year our home got an Elf on the Shelf.  Our neighbor and Andrew's bus buddy, Andrew, got an Elf on the Shelf this year after his cousin asked their elf to send an elf to their home.  So our sweet neighbor, Andrew, asked his elf to send an elf to our home.  After 3 days of our Andrew coming home from school and searching and just knowing this elf would magically come, it did.  Elves are awesome like that!

Actually, it's been a lot of fun.  The kids enjoy searching every morning and trying to find "Snowflake"
(note--too many Andrews in the neighborhood makes for confusing storytelling.  Good thing our other neighbor Andrew wasn't involved in this tale.)

 And then there was Santa--he came to our ward Christmas party...before the party (the best possible way to do it).  The kids were excited to have a chat.

And there you have it.  With 4 days til the big day, we still have lots of fun in store.  I'm really looking forward to the days afterwards as well with Matt off work!

Merry Christmas!!!

Snow!

Our first snow was a success.  There wasn't very much so school wasn't cancelled but it was perfect for snowmen, sledding and hanging out with our neighbors.  After school we had neighbor friends come on over and the kids played until it was dark enough that they had to come in and get moving on "important" stuff like homework. :)

It was fun watching some sled, some build snowmen, and others just doing various things around the backyard.  Happy times!

Oh Annie

This girl...I tell you...  There is never a dull moment.

A few weeks ago, our neighbor Julia came over to play.  The girls love to play dress up and put on their make up.  I definitely wasn't expecting this when she came down stairs.

I guess she prefers pink and purple make-up.  Attractive, huh?

New York Family Reunion

An amazing cousin in New York, Katie Bunker, has made a point of seeking us out.  Her mom, Kathy, and Clem are cousins and though we'd never met her or her mom, she's made numerous attempts to include us in family things.  Last November, we were supposed to go for an early Thanksgiving/family reunion but thanks to our big winter storm we were powerless and crazy and didn't make it.

When Katie called and told us they would be having a big 1st birthday party for their foster daughter (soon to be adopted daughter), we jumped at the chance to come.  Uncle John and Aunt Carol (Clem's brother and his wife) came too along with their son Steven and his family.  It was so great seeing and meeting all these neat people.  Just a mere 2+ hours away for us to New Paltz--Uncle John and their crew came 2 hours from the opposite side.  A perfect meet in the middle.

 Here's Matt with Uncle John and Steven. Yes, Matt and Steven really have the 'Singer' look and yes we think Matt's brother Dan will grow up to be Uncle John--these family resemblances are crazy!

The kids made fast friends with their 'new' cousins.  Here are Whit and Ella!

Brenna and Wendy--such nice people.  We had met Steven once several years ago but never his wife and kids.  What a treat!

And here's Matt with Katie and her mom, Kathy, and Katie's husband Scott.

For privacy issues with baby Marie since adoption stuff isn't finalized and Katie has never posted a picture of her online, I won't be the first.  Needless to say, what a cute girl who is the love of her parents' life.

Here's one of Uncle John and Aunt Carol with the kids.  We got our kids and Ella in the picture and then a few other fast friends from the celebrations joined in.  I love how kids make such fast friends.

Looking forward to getting to see everyone again.

Hurricane Sandy

                  Meant to post these earlier but in my excitement to post Halloween pictures, I forgot.

Hurricane Sandy didn't effect us too much.  We had 24 hours with no power, missed 3 days of school and then life got back to normal.  We felt very prepared for the storm that wasn't.

This is the main road that our street is off of.  Our normal way out was blocked by this big tree.  2 of our other ways out were blocked too but all was clear after about 1 1/2 days.

Oh and our pumpkins.  We carved them while we still had power--the kids were happy with how they turned out.  Fun stuff

Unfortunately the Hurricane messed up the lives of a lot of people that aren't too far from us.  About 2 weeks after the storm, Matt and 2 friends headed down to New York to join with Mormon Helping Hands down there.  They boarded busses in Brooklyn and the drove to the Rockaways in Queens to help homeowners there.

Matt is pointing out the waterline on this garage at a home he helped at.

Matt and 2 other guys he ended up spending most of his day working with.  A good work day and he was glad he had a chance to go help out before his semester turned too crazy and he wasn't able to help.  Really gives you a reality check and makes you feel grateful for the things that matter most.

Halloween...it happened!!

Hurricane Sandy chose to really mess with us New Englanders.  Just one year ago, we had our horrid winter storm at the end of October, lost power for 8 days and had no Halloween.  The forecast for the Trunk or Treat party at church was looking good and we were feeling lucky.  We got the party in but then Sandy came on Monday and Tuesday.  Lost power in the night Monday night but fortunately for us, it came back just 24 hours later, the wee hours of Halloween morning.  Halloween was on!!

Here are our trick or treaters in all their glory.

Mary, or should I say "Athena" equipped with her shield of Medusa's head and all

Andrew--the Grim Reaper.  He was excited to look scary this year though wasn't a big fan of make-up removal

Whitney was our Dorothy--I love being able to use a costume over

Annie was our gumball machine which was perfect because she is obsessed with gumballs.  Really proud of how her costume turned out.

And here we all are.  I was a minion from Dispicable Me.  If people knew the movie, they loved my costume; if they didn't know the movie they were quite confused.  I was even asked if I was a bumblebee.  :)

Matt didn't dress up but was excited to make his famous chili for the chili cookoff.  Delicious!!

Art and Hospitals

2 quick school happenings:

Andrew got a letter in the mail from the Superintendent letting him know that a piece of his artwork was selected to be on display for the month at the Board of Ed office.  Obviously we had a to take a trip to see it.  It's his self portrait.

Way to go Andrew!!!

Whit had her kindergarten field trip to the hospital and I got to be a parent helper.  It was great watching her with her friends and seeing her in the classroom and on the trip.

They got to try out a lot of hospital-ly things like blood pressure, stethescopes, hospital beds, wheel chairs and crutches.  A happy happy day.

Rita and Clem visit--Avery's ,Danbury and Sleepy Hollow

My parents left town on a Tuesday morning and Rita and Clem arrived the same night.  They got to experience tons of real life with us--soccer, activity days, preschool, gymnastics, doctor's appointments, Halloween costume making, etc, etc.  On Saturday we filled the day up with a lot of fun.

After Andrew's soccer game we headed out.  First stop, Avery's Beverages in New Britain--one of the oldest soda bottling companies in New England.  It was fun touring the barn and choosing our soda flavors.

Crates of soda everywhere and tons of flavors to choose from.

Whit always makes the best faces!!

From there, we headed on west and stopped in Danbury.  Clem went to college for 1 1/2 years at what is now Western Connecticut State University (before he moved on to Brooklyn College and BYU).  He hadn't been back in 46ish years.

 A lot of campus had changed but "Old Main" was still the same.  It was a lot of fun watching him reminisce.

  

He even found the house where he rented out a room from an old Irish couple.  His room was the one right behind him on the right.  So cool!

From Danbury, we continued west toward the Hudson River Valley.  Our main destination was the big pumpkin Blaze but we got there a few hours early and headed first to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Scary!

The cemetery was huge and beautiful and had probaby 8 or 9 letterboxes hidden throughout.  It was only open for 1 more hour when we arrived, so we only managed to find 3.  Plus we learned how many famous people are buried there--who knew?  I only think of the headless horseman when I think of Sleepy Hollow.

  

Here's the bridge that goes with the tale of the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane. (not original to the cemetary of course but still fun).

After dinner, we headed to the Great Jack 'O Lantern BLAZE.  So cool.  Thousands of pumpins carved with many many different displays.  We walked through and it took over an hour.  Unfortunately something with our dinner must have been cooked in peanut oil or something and Mary felt sick to her stomach from the end of dinner til about 20 minutes into our tour.  Lucky for her, she got it out of her system--unlucky for me, I got to walk through our tour carrying a bag of puke--good times. 

All pumpkins--some real, some fake, all awesome.

Again, all pumpkins

I love these 2 shots below.  The flash went off on the first and it just looks stupid.  The 2nd is the same shot with no flash.  Suddenly it looks amazing.

Happy!

A tiger in the zoo section.  Check out the cute little monkey pumpkins--there were probably 50-100 of them.

There was a dinosaur section, a spider web, an under the sea section, and many more

What a great and full day!  We got home around 10:30 pm and were wiped out.

I failed miserably in taking any pictures the rest of Rita and Clem's trip but rest assured, we had a great time.