Updating the blog

We are going to start blogging again.  We think...

A Few Pictures

I always try to catch up, and I always fail at it. So, I'm just going to try to post when I can, and I may or may not catch up on everything.

For today, I at least wanted to post about two important milestones in our family that happened recently.


Clayton turned 4 in November, he was so excited for his birthday. He really loves cars and wanted a "super long race track cake", so that's what he got.

 As one might have guessed by this picture, after Clayton blew spit out the candles, that was his section of the cake, good thing it was long so there was plenty for everyone else.

I was hoping to write about Sarah turning 2 in January, but realized those pictures were not on my computer yet. And if I waited to finish this post until I could get them downloaded, it would be another few months. 

However, I found a few other pictures that I thought would be fun to share. 

In October Clarissa finished her fall season of soccer. She really loved it, and got a few more kicks by the end of the season. Most of the time she just watched the other players. She was always so worried about her teammates when they fell or got hurt. She really loved the social part of it. 

We had our 2nd Annual Bake Sale to raise money for JDRF in October. We had a lot of people donate food, and were able to raise a bunch of money.  The follow weekend we participated in a JDRF walk in Boston.

                                                               Happy Meal Hats!

Halloween--this was trick or treating at some businesses in our town. I think it was the 3rd out of 4 times our kids got to dress up for something. Clarissa and Clayton were something different each time, luckily they just raided our dress up box or borrowed a costume.  Sarah was a marshmallow every time, and she loved her costume. Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of the other times they dressed up.

Something we're passionate about...The Sequel

Last year we posted about our commitment to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) in this post.  Thanks to the support and kindness of many of our friends and family, we were able to raise over $3500 for diabetes research in 2011.  We know this money will help JDRF with their goal of supporting research towards a cure for type 1 diabetes.  If you made a contribution during 2011, we thank you for your support.

But we're not done yet.  There is still much to be done towards finding a cure for diabetes.  We are walking again with JDRF in Boston on October 13th.  We hope to be able to match our contributions from last year.  Please consider donating again or for the first time.  We've updated our walk blog with all kinds of information about Clarissa, diabetes, and what we're up to with JDRF.  If you'd like to donate you can do it online--right from our walk blog.

www.ClarissasCrew.blogspot.com

Lastly, if any Boston area folks want to walk with us on October 13th, please let us know.  We'd love to have you join us.

A Quick Update

Since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I would just quickly post a quick update about what each of our kids has been up to lately. I hope these pictures work since they were ones that I took on my phone and just copied into this post, so sorry if they are small.


Clarissa started her first day of first grade last week. She loves it, and is excited to study butterflies this year, unfortunately, she has to wait until spring!



Our 2nd little princess is just growing up so fast. She is 20 months, and loves to play with the older kids. The other day Clayton was wearing his Superman costume, and Sarah insisted on dressing up too. Even though she kept  tripping on this dress, she wore it for at least 30 minutes. She is also talking so much, which has been a lot of fun.




That same day I found her by herself with a few markers!  She did a wonderful job coloring herself, (and all over the wood floor, luckily they were washable), she even used multiple colors, colored underneath her shirt, and the bottoms of her feet!




Clayton enjoys just being a silly kids, and wearing paper bags around the house. He started Joy School yesterday, and he starts his speech class tomorrow. He loves having his school to go to, and asks every day if he can go. It's going to be a long two years until he goes to kindergarten.

Clarissa Lost Her First Tooth

On Friday, April 20th, Clarissa lost her first tooth. She was so excited! (She has actually been wishing for months that she could lose a tooth, especially when she would have friends that had lost one.)  The Wednesday before I looked at Clarissa and her tooth looked a little crooked, so I asked her about it. She was surprised to find out that it was loose, her new tooth was already poking up. So, she wiggled it for a couple of days, and on Friday evening, Quinn helped her pull it out. He said it was pretty loose that he didn't have to pull that hard.

She wanted to wait to put it under her pillow because she wanted to take it to school to show her friends. We convinced her that it would be just as exciting to show them the hole, and she put it under her pillow that night for the Tooth Fairy. 

April Fool's

I know I've posted a lot today, and hopefully you'll have time to check them all out. This is my last post for the day.

So, this is how we celebrated April Fool's at our house yesterday.

We invited some friends over to have a nice Sunday dinner with us, little did they know what they were getting into!



We started out with some jello juice, which everyone seemed to prefer to eat with a spoon once they got their straw un-stuck.  We poured a little juice on top of the jello, which, next time, I will leave the straw out. Everyone seems to want to play with their straw, so it was a dead give away right off. Although, later that night we fooled our nieces and nephew with the juice, we had pulled out the straw, and it was really fun to watch them try to get more "juice" out of their cup. 



We all sat down at the table, and explained that dinner was still cooking, so we would start with cake. All of the kids were very excited to eat cake first, especially the cherry candies on top!  They were very surprised when it didn't look quite right, and then the 12 year old asked to have his cake warmed up. Weird request, but Quinn was happy to grant it. The younger kids took a few minutes to figure it out and didn't really understand why it looked weird, and why we put mashed potatoes on the cake. So, it was really meatloaf, with mashed potatoes and cherry tomatoes on top.  I have seen these cakes with the potatoes dyed different colors, but Quinn really hates when food is not the right color it should be, so I kept it all white. This cake was especially convincing to our guests at first, especially since they know I decorate cakes, so they didn't think it was too weird that I had decorated a cake for "dessert".

They thought it was a lot of fun, and kept wondering and guessing what we might serve them for their real dessert.



This is the best turkey I have ever made! (Quinn makes our Thanksgiving turkeys)

 

The turkey was complete with white meat, dark meat, and even some stuffing. I made a spice cake, and a white cake. I cute up the left over cake pieces from trimming it to make the stuffing. I needed some more oranges, and some parsley to decorate the platter better, maybe next time.

They were all very excited when we brought out an entire meal for dessert. Roast turkey, peas and carrots, and mashed potatoes and gravy. The peas and carrots were Sixlets and quarted orange Starbursts, and then ice cream with caramel sauce and yellow Starbursts for butter.

One of the boys even took some extra peas and carrots home so that when his mom asked him the next day to eat his vegetables, he'd be ready!

Clarissa is already trying to plan some April Fool's tricks for next year.

Quinn's Birthday

Quinn's Birthday was on St. Patrick's Day again this year!  (Clarissa has been very interested in holidays, and trying to understand why some holidays are always on the same date, like St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, birthdays, etc., and why some are always on a Sunday like Easter and Father's Day.) 



As tradtion goes in our family, we had breakfast in bed for the birthday boy, Clarissa was very excited to make breakfast for Quinn. We made sure to pour him a big bowl of Lucky Charms that a Leprechaun left at our house. This is everyone enjoying Quinn's apple-cinnamon milkshake. Sarah enjoyed it too, she was just crawling around at the other end of the bed.

We celebrated Quinn's Birthday the next Monday with his brother's family.  We had corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes.  And a green mint chocolate chip/Oreo/ganache/whipped cream covered ice cream cake.

Quinn prefers that I make him a yummy tasting cake over a creative cake shaped as something, which is ok with me, it's much easier to make. 

Clayton's Preschool

This year I have been doing a little preschool with Clayton and some other kids his age, 4 other boys, and 1 girl. We just do it once a week, for about 2 hours. We each take a turn teaching, so we teach one week, and have about 4 weeks off. It has been so nice for Clayton, and for me to have some time with just Sarah. It's a pretty basic preschool, it's mostly just play time. We have snack and one little craft or activity, but there attention spans are still pretty short.

This is just a couple of pictures of them having snack and coloring a leprechaun.

 

The hardest part has been that every single morning Clayton asks if it's his school that day, and is very disappointed when 6 out of the 7 days it is not his school. 

Sarah

As many kids do, Sarah loves wearing other peoples shoes.  Her favorite pick has been, at least until I put the away, Clarissa or Clayton's winter boots. She would just put one on, and stomp around the house. It was so fun to watch her try to keep her balance, and go around picking up toys.


 

With the weather starting to get nicer, we have been doing a lot more playing outside. Sarah fell and scraped up her forhead, as seen in the picture above.  She still has a little scar, but hopefully it will go way.

It's fun to watch Sarah at this stage, she is exploring and learning so many knew things. Just this week she has learned what her "nose" is, and loves to find hers and point to other peoples noses. 

Braving the Boston Winters!

We were prepared to have a big winter this year. Last year Boston got so much snow, so we were expecting the same.


Clarissa was very dissappointed in the snow this year, I think we all were. Although, I did not miss driving in it, cleaning off the car, and walking Clarissa to school in tons of snow. I think the entire season, we got less than 10 inches of snow. We didn't even have any snow days, which Clarissa was also sad about.

Since there was very little snow, I made sure that the kids went out to play in it, even when there was very little, and it turned to mud by walking on it.

Here's our little snowman that Clarissa and I built. Maybe next year there will be enough snow to build a bigger one. I didn't know what to use for the eyes and mouth, so we dug through our old Halloween candy and found some suckers and some licorice. Later Clarissa put a hat, mittens, and a scarf on the little snowman so he wouldn't get cold.