Hot Days and a Road Trip

with 'Auntie' Caroline and Esme at the NICU Reunion

We took a road trip with grammie today for a visit with Caroline and Esme and to check out the annual NICU Reunion.  We had the chance to see the Mars Family, Carlene, Eddie, and Ty, and had a few moments with some special staff from the NICU.  A great time was had by all!

Children in the Corn! @ Shelburne Farms, VT

    Claire playing in the barn at Shelburne Farms.  She loved the horsey, and found a book and some play food to occupy herself after we pulled her away from the corn pool...

Stella in her new NICU Graduate tee

Stella got to cool off in our neighbors pool this week and she had lots of fun!   Thank you Lorri for inviting us over!  Claire-Bear loves to toddle around the yard with her new Mickey watering can (and Stella's Dora can when she can steal it away) and water the grass.  Here she's taking a little break from all the hard work!

Summerfest

This weekend the girls had fun at the Tri-Town Summer Festival.  They enjoyed having Aunt Mary Jane and cousin Logan and his step sister Alisa over to watch the parade.  This year we checked out the Carnival of Fun for the first time and other than some tears over waiting patiently for their turn the girls absolutely loved the games and bounce houses!  We didn't get any pics this time but it was a fun weekend!  We are looking forward to heading to Burlington next Sunday for a visit with Caroline, Caleb, and Esme and for the NICU Reunion.

July 2013 Photos

We are continuing to have a fun summer and are enjoying lots of family time.  It's sad to realize that summer is just about half over.  We plan to make the most of what's left during August.  We have a day trip to Burlington planned as well as a trip to Maine to see Stacy, Aaron, and Lily.  We can't wait!
(For those of you on Facebook sorry for the duplicate photo posts!)

Climbing at the playground!  Claire loved this too - she tried to climb onto the top so
taking a picture wasn't an option...

Helping sweep out Miss Katy's trailer

Stella's new shirt Pastor Gregg helped her make!

Passing some time on a rainy day

Enjoying the Sunshine!

The girls are enjoying the summer sunshine and spending lots of time at home with their dad.  Claire is getting so big and is starting to put sentences together with her growing vocabulary.  Here are a few pics from the last few weeks!

Their new slide is really fun!

Both girls love to swing super high!

New dolly - Claire picked Tiana

New dolly - Stella picked Sophia

Sleeping Beauties :)

Racing down the driveway is always fun!

Summer Fun!

 The past week was rather eventful...Stella attended princess camp every morning, and had a wonderful time!  She made crafts, played dress up and got to meet four disney princesses.










This created some quality time for Daddy and Claire to spend together with lots of funny moments like the one below...

With the warm weather we try to find some different ways to stay cool.  A small pool has been very enjoyable; as well as a slip and slide! 

Stella is a Diva!

It is also a great time of year to spend time with friends.  The girls were able to play with the Britton girls on a couple of different occasions.  They seem to truly enjoy each others company and look forward to our girls growing up together.

Old McDonald's Farm

Pony Rides!

 This week was lots of fun!  Mom had a nice long weekend so we planned a day trip to Old McDonald's Farm.  The girls had a great time!

Here are some fun pics from the day as well as a few others from this week!

Stella thought the tractor was really cool!  Both girls picked out a
toy tractor to bring home with them too!

The bounce houses were LOTS of fun! 
Possibly the highlight of the farm...

                                          Feeding the goats was also a treat both girls enjoyed!

  This week we also enjoyed a cool ice cream treat at Stewarts down the street and bought a new pool to splash around in!

Playset Under Construction!

Both girls love to be pushed high and tell us so frequently!

The girls are so excited about their new swing set!  The slide has been together all week but they were able to enjoy the swings for the first time this weekend.  They just LOVE having this in the backyard and we do too!  Once the roof is on it will be complete!
 

Splashing around on a hot day!

Todd's in NY & Todd's in OH

This weekend half of our family traveled to Ohio to be with the Hooley's.  Stella and Daddy ventured off on a trip to help with their church's 'Believe in Belize' golf tournament to raise money toward a mission trip Dan will be going on with several youth group members this summer.  Based on a few phone conversations it sounds like the tournament went great and that Stella is having a fun time with her cousins!  Mommy and Claire stayed home this weekend and they had fun too - at Bella's birthday party on Saturday and dinner with Aunt MJ and Uncle Neil on Sunday.  It's definitely different having just one little girl toddling after you rather than two, but having time one-on-one with the girls has also been a special treat.  Everyone's looking forward to seeing each other again tomorrow night though!

Earlier this week going for a walk on campus after Mommy finished work

Happy Father's Day 2013

As we've heard Dora sing over and over again this week 'Feliz dia de los padres' today is Father's Day!  Our girls are so fortunate to have a 'new school' dad! (at least that's what we call it)  Millennial dad's are involved with their children's lives in very different ways than previous generations and our house is no exception.  Stella and Claire are blessed with a lot of quality time with their dad - all summer vacation, the commute to and from daycare most days, at school events, shopping trips with the whole family - even if it's just to the grocery store, golf lessons (yes, they've already started!), story time, and bedtime snuggles.  There's no parenting task I do that Randy won't and for that I'm very grateful.  I know our girls are going to really look up to and appreciate their dad when they are older and all of this time they have together now will bring back such fond memories for them!

We want to give a big shout out to all of the people who helped us out this Saturday.  Although I wasn't home most of the day it was really productive around our house!  Thank you to Adam Britton and the McCarthy family for helping Randy start the huge project of putting together the girls new swing set.  The rain put off any hope of continuing work on it today but we have a great start thanks to everyone's help.  Thank you to Aunt Mary Jane and 'Niece for looking after the girls while everyone was preoccupied.   And lastly but certainly not least, thank you to cousin Logan for putting together Claire's new dresser.   We are so blessed to have such great family and friends in our lives who continually support us!

Cousins!

Cousins, from left to right: Haley, Skye, Stella, Claire, Cailin, Dana, and Logan!

 
We had a terrific week spending time with all of our cousins.  We are so glad everyone was able to visit NY and that we could spend time with family and friends.  We finished off the week with a surprise celebration for papa's 60th birthday - great fun was had by all!

Parade Week

Claire-Bear snuggling with Papa before bed

This week the girls were able to enjoy not one but two parades!  Spending time with Grammie and Pa in Canton for both made them all the more fun!

Claire's Memorial Day T-Shirt

On Monday we watched the Memorial Day Parade.  Grammie was in the parade as usual and Stella thought seeing her march by was pretty neat!  Neither of the girls seemed bothered by the volleys of shots in memory and honor of our fallen soldiers.  The Boyscouts were handing out flags and the girls caught on to waiving the red white and blue pretty quickly.While the girls are a little young to truly understand the meaning of this important day we hope the parade will become an annual tradition for them just as it was for us when we were growing up.  For this year we made some fun t-shirts and just watched the groups pass by. 

Waiting on the street for the Memorial Day Parade

This weekend was the Dairy Princess Festival in Canton.  On Friday night Grammie and I took the girls to the park to see the Big Wheel Race.  Stella will be old enough for this next year so we thought it would fun for her to see it.  There was a lot of excitement in the park.  We had some dinner there and the girls played in the bounce house for the little kids.  Claire loved it so much it was hard to pull her away from it!  On Saturday Aunt Mary Jane and Grammie came along with us to the parade.  (I really enjoyed their company but I was also so very grateful for their help because Daddy's out of town coaching golf).

The girls completely wiped out after a fun day
at the Dairy Princess Parade.

Stella hanging out waiting for Claire
to come out of the van after a quick trip to the store.

The girls are getting really exited for another fun week.  The Perrin's will be visiting from Hawaii this week so we'll be spending more time at Grammie and Pa's house.  The Hooley's will be coming in for the weekend too so it should be lots of fun!

Happy Birthday Gigi!

This weekend the girls helped Gigi celebrate her 4th birthday.  It was lots of fun!  Claire was busy as ever running around the Britton's new house and stealing fairies off the birthday cake!  Unfortunately I didn't get any good pics of Claire-Bear but she really did enjoy herself.  She loved the cake, and even told us she wanted chocolate when we were given the choice, and she especially thought the pinata was super cool when Adam let her try to hit it!  We had some teachable moments with Stella when we allowed her to pick out Gigi's birthday presents - she chose markers, bubbles, and Dora pajamas, and when we explained that it was Gigi's special day so she couldn't wear a tiara at the party.  Hopefully we are getting through to her! 

Caring and Sharing

Stella tells us all the time that Gigi is her best friend.  When she tell us "I love you" she often says "do you know who else I love?  I love my sissy and I love Gigi too!".  So needless to say she was super excited to have Gigi and her sister Cambria over for a play date this weekend while their mommy and daddy started moving to their new house.  All the girls had fun but the growing pains of learning how to share was a challenge for Stella the whole day.  She does love Gigi, but not enough to share her dresses, shopping cart, and Princess castle, or to let her choose which show to watch at quiet time!  She got through the tears though and is already looking forward to next weekend when she'll get to see Gigi again.

The last few nights Stella has slept in her own room in her own bed but lately more often than not she asks to sleep in the play yard in the guest room.  She's really too big for it, but she goes to bed so well each night we just go with it! 

Claire is as busy as ever!  She's still getting into everything, trying to race around at church, and demanding our full attention at bed time.  She's a sweet little girl though who loves to cuddle, read books, eat, and go to the playground - she especially loves to swing!  Her curiosity could pay off in the potty training front - she's been asking to go 'potty' a lot lately and while we know at 19 months this probably won't turn into anything we humor her and let her try it out! 

A quick shout out to Aunt Mary Jane for cutting Stella's hair today - thanks so much!  We went with daddy to the salon yesterday, but it was just too long of a wait for everyone.  Turns out it didn't matter because Stella was happy to have MJ do it for her instead!

Mother's Day 2013

Thinking of special moments with Mom Todd

We had a fun weekend at home this week together as a family which hasn't happened in a while.  We took dinner over to Grammie and Pa's today to celebrate Mother's Day.  It was nice having some quiet to just enjoy each others company and not have a lot of plans for a change.

Other news: Randy had a lipoma removed from the back of his head this week.  The surgery went great but it has required that he rest for several days which is hard to do when you have little people to take care of!    Between Claire's fall last week and Randy's surgery half of our family has a head injury - now that's something we'll hopefully never say again!

As the month of May quickly passes us by we are looking forward to the Perrin's visit from Hawaii at the beginning of June.  It's going to be so great for the girls to be with all of their cousins!

Bumps and Bruises

Poor little Claire-Bear fell on Saturday and hit her head.  We had to take her to the ER so they could glue the cut shut.  She was a little trooper nearly the entire time but it was sad to see how easily she can get hurt.  She challenges us in different ways than Stella does and is sometimes hard to keep up with.

Claire resting on daddy after seeing the ER Doc

A huge thanks to Aunt Mary Jane for coming over to get Stella.  A 4-hour ER trip wouldn't have been enjoyable for her and we are so grateful to MJ for dropping what she was doing and helping us out! 

Other news: Claire has learned how to count to ten and tries to sing along to both Twinkle-Twinkle and the ABC's.  We recently ordered a swing set for the girls and are looking forward to when it arrives so we can have lots of fun outdoors this summer!  Both girls visited the golf course with their dad on Friday afternoon and they had a great time - Stella especially loved the golf cart!