Christmas concert

The kids looked great and sang even better. Our two were dressed as stockings and Cady was a Snowflake princess. Please excuse the bad pictures...the lighting in the gym was playing havoc with my camera.

Nathan jamming away....


Amelia being very serious...

Advent Calenders

This was today's chocolate from our Advent calenders. The magic Christmas mushroom! How very, very odd.

4th of July, Engagement and Sears Party

The day dawned grey and rainy. Can it really "dawn" if it is grey and rainy? Well, anyway, I got up early to take a shower and enjoy a few minutes of quiet before the ruckus began. I got everyone up and we got ready to head to Turner for the Festival on the Green!!! "Hey, kids! Are you excited to see the parade and the family and have a PAR-TAY?"
I think that you could say that they were a little on the hyper side!

We got to Turner and got a great parking spot up near the middle school in the shade. That is right...shade. Because the sun came out with a vengence! Speaking of shades, Reed decided that Auntie's shades looked better on him!

First stop, after the family meet and greet, was the library basement, for the massive, incredible, over-the-top book sale! We got a box of books, mostly for the kids for $7 bucks!!! The kids were so excited! Pokemon and Transformers and bed-time books, OH MY!!!
The parade was so much fun!! It was really long. Some of the high points for the kids were the little ponies, the big horses with the braids, fire trucks (that didn't blow their horns...THANK YOU, Town of Turner). Their favorite part, you may ask? Well, THAT would be the candy! Tons and tons of candy thrown from every float that went by, every vehicle, every kid riding his decorated bike. They hit the motherlode! They were stuffing their faces and having a blast!
We got to go into the Turner Natural History rooms. We saw sea shells and birds, bird eggs, petrified snakes (or snakes that petrified....depended on who you were!) and all sorts of neat things!
And, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know who it is in this picture who found a catapillar (or cap-i-tiller as he is so fond of calling them). This ones name is...yup! You guessed it...Marching Bull 2 (see the blog about Memorial Day if you don't understand that).

The Turner Ridge Riders parked their truck with tracks that they use to groom the snowmobile trails. Nathan thought that it was cool, but not as cool as the capitillar....you can see that he still has it in his hand.
And what can be better than candy at a parade? If you answered cotton candy, you would be right! It would be remiss of me in my role as caretaker if I did not buy them each a bag of cotton candy and make sure that they did not share it with anyone! So they each got a bag and Chris and I shared one. Mmmmm!!! Cotton candy for breakfast! Who is the best mom-like-person around? That's right! I am!
We were the first group down at camp and the kids hopped in the water right away. They hopped right back out pretty quickly too. A month of rain does not a warm pond make. So they chilled (hehehe) on the dock and blew bubbles.
Evvie and the giant ice cube. It was meant for the soup, because the microwave that mommy and daddy donated to camp is a lot stronger than the 20 year old one that had been down there before.
This is the gorgeous fruit spread that my man made. I helped (sort of...I scraped out one of the watermelon aligators). Can you believe his talent? Amazing!


And.....drum roll please....CHRIS PROPOSED!!! In front of my whole family!! Everyone was laughing and crying and hugging! I was as high as a kite! I don't know who was happier, the kids, my parents, his parents, or us!!! It was so amazing and so romantic and the ring is just GORGEOUS!!!!! Check out this bling!!!!!!!

This picture was taken in the car on the 5th while we were driving to Zach's graduation party. The sun was shining through the window and the ring was blasting rainbows all over the car. Okay, so yes, I am a tomboy....and yes, I love my blue jeans WAY more than skirts, but I AM girly enough to also love shiny gold baubles for my finger!! (high pitched squeeling noise...was that me? Yes! Yes, it was!!)
We had a blast at Zach's party. The food was amazing, the weather was beautiful, and Nathan had fun with blueberries....

Ava and Amelia had fun in the stream. They found a dead crayfish body and searched for live crayfish.


My big guy and my nephew...he's 3 months old already...can you believe it??
A beautiful end to a beautiful day....

Video..kids at camp

This is what happens when you let them out after they have been stuck in a car for 4 hours.

Sno-Cone Fun

Nathan is REALLY excited about the sno-cone maker....
Amelia....did you eat it to fast? Is that a brain-freeze I see?
Pineapple and Cotton Candy flavors mixed....YUM!!!!

Boothbay Harbor/Aquarium/Botanical Gardens

Saturday Chris got to try out his Fathers Day present, a GPS navigation unit, as we headed to Boothbay Harbor to visit the Aquarium and the Botanical Gardens. The weather wasn't bad, despite the look of the following pictures. The weather was warm enough that we never really needed our sweatshirts.
Once there, the first thing the kids did was check out the ocean...
Then into the Aquarium we went. No one warned us that this was a one-room Aquarium. We got to see some lobsters, anenomes and trout in the fish tanks, and then pet some Dog Sharks in one touch tank. The far wall had a tide pool touch tank with a Nazi docent who would snatch things away from you if you got to close to actually touching them. (In her defence, she looked about 800 years old. Oh, am I not defending her? Sorry. So that I don't say anything more rude about her, I will end this section.)
After playing with the sharks and the tide pool touch tank, the kids went outside to watch the lobster presentation. We learned lots of cool things about lobster traps (did you know that the place where they put the food is the kitchen and the place where the lobsters crawl into is called the parlor? And that all lobsters have one huge claw, called the crusher and one smaller claw called the pincer? Really!) Nathan got to help with the presentation by putting the bands on a (fake) lobster.
We also got to see a blue lobster. Blue lobsters are very rare. Only one in every one million lobsters is blue!!
After the presentation, we headed back inside for a few more minutes with the touch tank. Nathan really liked the starfish...
Amelia and I checked out the area while Nathan and Dad washed their hands. Amelia found some friends and went swimming while we waited...
We then headed over to the Botanical Gardens. The Garden of the 5 Senses was one of our favorite parts...

Note to self, I want a stone labyrinth pathway when we buy a house....Really cool basin in the meditation garden...
Can you tell by this picture that Nathan is really sick of "all this stinking walking"?
We ate at The Lobster Shack in Boothbay Harbor. You can get a grilled cheese sandwich, lobster and/or a bottle of Dom Perignon. It is a strange mix of basic, order-at-the-window "restaurant', and high class, $35/lobster establishment. They were featured on the Food Network. Crab Cake Throwdown with Bobby Flay. The food and prices were above average, but not spectacular.
We were going to stop and get ice cream on the way home, but we would have had to contend with waking up Nathan...which is NEVER a good idea. Not even for ice cream.

We stopped for a bit of perusing at the Christmas Tree Shop in Augusta on our way back home. I picked up a sno-cone maker for $15.00!!!!!
Once we got home, the heat and the humidity overwhelmed us. I called up to camp to see if Jason and Hallie were there yet...no answer. Called up mom, they weren't coming up this weekend. Guess what? Fifteen minutes worth of racing around and throwing things in bags, and we were ready to spend the night down at camp! We hopped into the Xterra and off we went. The fresh air revived the boy...

We had a great night at camp. We saw two adult loons and one baby loon when we first got down there. We swam, had sno-cones for snacks, Chris BBQ'd some fabulous chicken for dinner, and we ended the evening by the fire pit with two s'mores each and plenty of time poking sticks in the fire. Ah! Camp!

Dinner

He cooks, he cleans, he makes art from food!
I came home from work, hot sweaty and feeling blechy and this is what was for dinner!!!!
Can you believe what a lucky woman I am?!? Chris can apparently do anything and everything that he sets his mind to!!!

Father's Day and Elecia's Birthday

We spent the morning of Fathers Day down at camp. I cleaned inside and Chris cleaned the porch.
2 gallons of deck wash = $10.00
2 deck brushes= $40.00
A deck that is not slimy green and slipperier than greased monkey snot? Priceless!!
We came back and cleaned up and headed over to his parents for a Fathers Day/Elecia Birthday party. The kids helped make the pizzas.... Nathan made sure that I got a picture of the one that he made...
Once they were done making pizzas, they took our drink orders....
Then we opened presents...Elecia's had a heartbeat!!!

Amelia's 10th Birthday Party at Camp, Part 1

So Amelia's birthday is really in January. January is not a good time to have a birthday party where people can swim. So we pushed off her party until today so that she could have a camp party. She invited a couple of her friends and down we went . We managed to get a day where it didn't rain (much) and we couldn't keep the girls out of the water (we did manage to bribe them with lunch and dancing, and then cake).
First we stopped at Grammie and Pops and said hello to the chipmunk that Pop caught in his Have-a-heart trap (this was one of 4 caught today)...
dropped off Nathan and picked up the cake that Grammie made for Amelia (thanks Mom!)

Grammie proved to us that it rained 3.5 inches yesterday!
Then it was off to camp. Time to PAR-TAY!!
They Limbo'd.....


This is Amelia's way to limbo when the bar is to low...on her hands and knees. I don't think that is quite legal, but it is her party, so we will let it slide.
Chris even got in on the Limbo action...

They did the Hokey-Pokey, because that IS what it is all about...

They had their cake and ate it too...
This is what happens when you leave a bunch of 10 year old girls to their own devices with a knife and a dead fish...

I found a friend..
More to come....