Soccer time

Here's Owen modeling his British schoolboy soccer look...

 

 

 

 

 

Camp Grandma & Grandpa

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

Yesterday we went to the park and climbed on the climbing wall.  Then we went to Walmart.  We bought Tangled sun glasses for Emma.  The sun is very bright here. Aunt Melissa, Uncle Israel, Mikey and baby Mark came over for teriyaki chicken, rice, corn on the cob, green beans.  For dessert we had ice cream cones on the back deck. We went to bed nicely.

We are earning peacemaker quarters. Right now we each have $1.27 in our red England banks.  Owen's bank is a red mail box.  Emma's is a red telephone booth.  She calls it a telephone porter.

Today we went to the farm at Thanksgiving Point. Emma rode a pony and Owen rode a horse.  We rode in a wagon and played in the jail and in a play place.  We like computer games.

We miss you and we love you.

Love,

owen and emma

Cousins

The kids are having a fantastic time in AK with their cousins.  It has been a great summer and we are looking forward to their return.

In loving memory of Todd

Todd, James, Melissa and Owen sledding at Christmas

James created a website in memory of his little brother Todd who passed away on July 19, 2010.
Please take a minute to check it out and if you knew Todd please share your memories of him on the memory blog.

Thank you

Owen's keyboard recital

Owen played "Akiwowo" a Nigerian song for his recital.

 

To help the kids keep their wiggles under control after a few children preformed the teacher would take a break and sing songs with them. I didn't record the first few songs but they were all really sweet. Their rendition of "What a Wonderful World" was so sweet i almost cried. I am looking forward to getting a good video of that at Owen's Kindergarten graduation.

This is one of Owen's favorites, he loves to sing it at home.

 Sorry the video's not the best quality i was holding my phone as steady as i could while trying not to get in the way of any other parents.

Emma's love songs

Sunday Pictures

Some cute pictures of the kids before and after church last week

This one is so sweet I made it the wallpaper on my phone.

Sleepy Hollow

A few weekends back we packed a lunch and caught a train up to Sleepy Hollow with our friends the Winstons to celebrate the 160th birthday of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  It was a beautiful day and a very fun outing.

 

Since Sleepy Hollow was made famous by Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" there was an appearance of The Headless Horseman himself.

  Emma was to scared of to join the kids in this picture and it was too sunny for me to realize that Owen had a weird shadow on his face.

The kids are on the bridge that Ichabod Crane rode across while being chased by the headless horseman.

This guy was doing reading of Washington Irving's works and answering questions.  I thought he looked charming.

 

This is Andrew Carnegie's grave.  I love the ornate the celtic cross.  There kids are checking out the money because there is a tradition of leaving a coin on his headstone.

 

They had a beautiful old church at the edge of the old graveyard.  Here are the children in an old pew pretending to sing.

Some of the sites were so over the top!  This one had a Christus and several angels.  One site had a bust of a man and an angel in flowing robes weeping below him.  Of course there were several mausoleum but i forgot to take any pictures of them.  Steven took an awesome picture of John siting in the lap of a sculpture of another weeping woman that was across from one of the mausoleums.

 I made the kids stop and pose by this tombstone because it had {almost} there three names on it. John, Rose and Olwen so I had Owen cover up the L.

Owen has been obsessed with the Metro-North train {of course} so I wanted to take a picture of him in front of the train but was completely unsuccessful.  This old lady is trying to scoot him out of the way so she can walk by. So I moved him to the other side of the platform and she walked in front of us right as I was trying to take that picture as well.

Then I tried to take a picture with Emma but she wanted to give her water bottle to Daddy. 

Because the train was about to leave and we had to hurry this was the last shot i was able to take. Not the best cropping job.  Oh well.

Religious and Racial Confusion

It is interesting being Mormon and sending our kids to Catholic school.  Emma has come to the point where she has absorbed a lot of catholic things.  Yesterday Emma left school singing the song "Yes Jesus Loves Me".  It was very cute.  She skipped out of the building and onto the bus singing with all of her heart "Yes Jesus loves Me, the bible tells me so!"  Then she said to me, "What to hear another Jesus loves me song?"  I said sure and she broke out singing, "Yes Jesus loves me the Priest tells me so!"  She sang that song the whole 20 blocks home.

Lately Emma has been mixing a lot of catholic in with her prayers.   Tonight while she was saying the prayer she was about to end the prayer in the name of the father and the son.  After i helped her finish her pray I thought I would try to clear things up.

C- Emma you go to a Catholic school but you are not catholic are you?

E- no

C- what are you?

emma looks at me unsure

C- What church do you belong to?

 nothing

C- you go to a Catholic School but you are Mormon

Owen pipes up.  Yeah and I go to Public school and we are New Yorkers and we are Dominican!

This of course lead to another discussion on ethnicity and genetics.

Dear Tooth Fairy...

I came across this letter that Owen wrote to the Tooth Fairy a couple of months ago. He had accidentally swallowed his tooth while I was pulling it out for him, and was extremely worried that: A) the tooth was going to somehow damage his stomach and B) the Tooth Fairy wouldn't be able to find it. We convinced him that he could write the Tooth Fairy a letter and that everything would work out.

The next morning he woke up late and had to rush out the door to catch the bus, completely forgetting to check under his pillow (thankfully). The Tooth Fairy had somehow forgotten to visit him that night (he/she was probably watching the latest episode of Lost or some other meaningless television program until really late at night). So Celeste stealthily texted him/her and a quarter magically appeared under Owen's pillow before he got home from school that evening. Nothing short of a miracle.