Boston

Since Jason spent the entire week in Tennessee and didn't get back until Saturday afternoon, we decided to have a family day today and go to the Boston Childrens' Museum. We had a great time (if you ever get to Boston, don't skip the Childrens' Museum).

After the museum we walked to Quincy Market for dessert. Think Luke has had enough?
With the Hendersons in town, no pigeon was safe.

Easter

Luke started the Holiday weekend by attending a party with some friends where he made an Easter Bunny mask. He wore the mask around all weekend.


Dyeing eggs was as fun as ever.





The Easter Bunny came and left lots of fun stuff and too much candy. Callie got a new game for her Nintendo DS and Luke got a "backet hoop".


Despite the cold weather, the Easter Bunny hid about a million eggs in the back yard. Callie and Luke had a blast hunting for eggs all morning.



Ruth was the supervisor.

St. Patrick's Day Weekend

St. Patrick's day is a much celebrated holiday in Connecticut. We began the weekend by attending the annual St. Patrick's day parade in downtown Hartford. It was a great parade. They threw tons of candy and beads for the kids. We learned that Luke is as competitive as his Dad as he fought with even the biggest kids for the candy. Luke also loves people dressed up as different characters. It doesn't matter who the character is, Luke is thrilled to see them. Needless to say, with Leprechauns and local sports team mascots galore, Luke was in heaven. Callie and Luke also had their first real experience with bag pipes and loved them. Callie couldn't quite figure out why all the men were wearing skirts though.





Luke was convinced that this woman who was across the street from us at the parade was Santa Claus. She provided entertainment during the lulls in the action (she didn't know she was entertaining us). The video below is a taste of why we enjoyed her so much.

Jason ran in the O'Hartford 5K on Sunday; his first race. (Race Results) The race course was two loops around and through downtown Hartford. He finished 249th out of 1150 racers with a time of 24:43 (that is a pace of 7:58 per mile). Although he beat almost 900 other runners, Jason, as you can imagine, is very disappointed that he was out run by 248 other runners.

Dr. Seuss's Birthday Party

We recently celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday. Callie's class has a party to which the parents came to read Dr. Seuss books to the kids. Callie took her stuffed Cat in the Hat ("Cattie") that Aunt Brenda gave her a few years ago. Cattie has become a big hit with the kids at school and often makes the trip to school with Callie now.

We had to throw a picture of Luke eating his breakfast on this post. There is never a dull moment when Luke is around.

February 2008

February was a great month. We celebrated Valentine's day by attending Japan night at Callie's school, Morely Elementary. All of the second graders have been studying Japan for the past couple of months. At the end of their studies they put on a Japan night for the parents. Luke was luck enough to stay home with his favorite babysitter and girlfriend, Bridget. Japan night started with a gathering in Mrs. Vannie's classroom where the kids donned their kimonos and headbands (I can't remember what they are called). Callie and her friends, Collin and Andrew then led us around the school to various activities. We really enjoyed the Japanese games (Jason was awesome at the blindfold games) and the signing and dancing (Jason wasn't quite so awesome at that). After our visit to the activities everyone gathered in the auditorium for the program portion of the evening. Callie had a special part reading part of a story in front of everyone. She did a great job and managed to read the entire passage without taking a breath. Finally we gathered in the courtyard for Japanese food. Ruth discovered that she really like Sushi, but only if there no fish in it (if that's even possible). It was a great evening, we are so proud of Callie.

Ruth celebrated her birthday this month. We had a great evening of pizza and cake. We also had a huge snowstorm to make the day even better. She begged not too have so many candles on her cake, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, albeit a little smokey.

Luke is growng up fast. He loves to talk. In fact, there are very few monents we he isn't chatting about something. He discovered this month that he really likes lotion on his body and he has managed to hide out and cover himself in lotion (or Vasiline or diaper rash cream) more than once this month.

We have taken up ice skating. Callie has been taking lessons and Luke is even brave enough to get out and try it without the help of mom or dad.

New Blog

Welcome to our new family blog. After much debate (due to Jason's dislike of blogs), we have decided to create, and hopefully maintain, a blog of our family activities. We hope this will provide a good opportunity for our family to feel like they are more involved in our lives. As we have turned out to be very poor communicators and do a horrible job of keeping in touch, even with close family members, we thought that this would be a good way to quickly update everyone on the most recent events in our lives. We anticipate that most of the posts will include many pictures and videos of our children as they grow up. We are excited for this undertaking and hope you enjoy it.