Great Way to Start A New Year!

After spending a fun evening with my sister and her husband on New Years Eve we spent the rest of the weekend with our immediate family. Saturday we went to our son and daughter in law's place. We had so much fun with the girls. I'll let the pictures tell the story.


This first one is of Punkin crawling around. She's only 5 months old.


Talk about arresting eyes. And I love the little curl on the top of her head.


Here's Muffin enjoying her new house :)


She thought it would be fun if I came inside with her. I love playing with her.



We'd done a little 'horsing' around on Christmas Eve and she remembered ;)


Her new 'M' needed a ride too lol.

We had lots of fun coloring, reading and playing with all of her new toys... trust me she has a LOT!!

On Sunday our daughter invited us over for dinner and more play time. While the adults played with the racing games we girls had fun dressing up in all the new costumes Peanut got for Christmas. When we started playing she whispered to her Mom "Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you and Daddy go out for dinner and I'll stay here with Mimi and Papa." She is such a stitch!!



With each new outfit she changed her shoes and we redid her hair. Think we have a modeling beauty in our future. She is adorable!!


She got this 'Belle' costume from Uncle and Auntie. Yup, she's stylin..


When we finished with her costumes she wasn't done posin so she did this get up with a nightgown, Hawaiian necklace and she was doing a hula dance lol

We had a lot of fun dressing up and then set up her table for some Play Doh time. She is such an imaginative child... just like her mommy was.

Grandpa T takes some amazing photos and shares them on Facebook. I nabbed a few for my own use :)

Punkin in her Christmas finery. Love that smile!


Muffin in her matching dress. She's so photogenic!


This beautiful dress I call the "rose dress" because she looks like she's enveloped in rose petals. Just beautiful!


And finally our smiling beauties.


If this is how our year is going to play out then I'm ready for the year to begin!! I love spending time with our kids and grandkids. They are all so lively and fun and there is never a dull moment. How's your year going so far?

Halloween Pictures

We have a tradition in our family - as new babies come along we get them in a pumpkin at Halloween time. We didn't get to see Punkin in October, but I saved a large pumpkin for when we did get to see her this past weekend. Isn't she a beautiful smily baby? Just love her.




This is Muffin in 2009

And here we have Peanut in 2007.


The two older girls wouldn't get in any pumpkin this year, but they posed behind it. We're still having a lot of difficulty getting them to look and smile at the same time lol.


There is not a doubt in my mind how Muffin got a bruise on her cheek.... She is such a climber and jumper. Always in motion.


While I was holding Punkin I thought we might be able to get the other two in a photo too. What a joke. Peanut might have cooperated, but Muffin is just too active at 19 months. She just laughs and runs lol


So there you have our weekend in a nutshell. I love spending time with all the girls. Just a barrel of fun and energy.

Great Weekend With Kids

This is my idea of a perfect weekend. We went to our son's on Saturday and I'm afraid I don't even visit with them much (my bad) I want to spend all my time with the girls. Muffin loves to dance with Barney.... is that cute or what? She really gets into it.



In this shot you'd think that she's sharing her soothie with Punkin.... lol nope, that's Punkin's soothie being tested by Muffin lol. Good thing Punkin doesn't care.


Not sure if she always wakes up this happy, but it was a lucky day for me :) Look at all those teeth lol


I think Muffin enjoyed the bag as much as her new quilt lol. She was playing peek-a-boo. The kids tell me that she has to have the quilt on the floor... if they pick it up when she's down for her nap she drags it down and puts it on the floor again. Glad she likes it so much.



Then on Sunday we were invited out to see my niece that is in from CA. On the left is my daughter with Peanut in front of her. Next to my daughter is my niece from CA holding her son whose twin is the little girl on the right side of the pool. The other two boys belong to my other niece who lives in the area.


My niece with her twins. They will be two on the 14th of this month.


Peanut showing the duck that she fished out of the pool with the bubble wand.


So that was my weekend. Smiling, dancing, fishing, peek-a-booing kids. Did you do anything this weekend?

Easter Update

Easter this year was a ton of fun. Peanut really gets what she's supposed to do and Muffin had fun gnawing on a plastic egg. Snagged a few of these pictures from my son's facebook and don't know why they are different sizes. He has a really terrific camera.

The girls on the porch....they aren't really into sitting for a picture.


Muffin loves exploring the outside and looking for eggs... or maybe just chewing on the plastic egg.


Peanut totally got into finding eggs this year.. think she knows there's something inside.


And daffodils are definitely a sign that Spring is here. Do these bulbs multiply? Hope so.


MM spent the better part of two days last week making this really cool horse out of a tire for Peanut to take home. Now he has to find another 'non-steel belted' tire to make another one. Although it's not easy to make, it's even harder finding the right kind of tire.

So that's it for here. How did you spend your Easter?

God and Dog by WJFrancisco

Hope you have a chance to listen to this great video clip. My dil brought it to my attention. Little Muffin wants to hear it over and over again. I can see why. I love the message and the melody.



What do you think? Is this not the best? Sorry the full screen doesn't show up, I need to learn how to adjust this kind of thing :(

My Girls In Action

Sorry I've been so busy lately, but I've been busy! lol I have a couple of videos clips to share with you. I have a third one, but I can't figure out how to do a quickmovie into youtube to then share :(

This first one is of Peanut running with the wii.



Yes, she speaks of herself in the third person.

This next one was taken this weekend when Papa had both girls for a couple of hours. I think he's a great Papa!!



They both had a great time together. I know they are my granddaughters because they have their tongues out when they are concentrating on something lol.

Muffin's First Steps

I can't believe it, but MM caught Muffins first steps on video.



Wish we had gotten her face, because she was very pleased with herself and so excited. It won't be long before she's running. She is a very busy lady and doesn't sit still for a minute. MM also gave her her first hair trim. Just enough to keep the stray hair out of her eyes. Here she is sporting her new look.



We also got to spend some time with Peanut this weekend and her new thing (that we failed to catch on video) is she comes up and shakes your hand and says "nice to meet you", then walks into the other room and grabs her backpack on wheels and waves over head saying "bye". It was so cute and she did it several time. LOL She just had us busy all evening. She's also sitting on the pot a lot, but we didn't get any action (if you know what I mean) lol.

Car Seat Ponchos

I've recently learned that children are safer in their car seats if they don't have on a fluffy winter coat. Evidently, the tighter the seat is on the child the safer it is for them. My friend at work bought her son one last year to the tune of $50.00. When my son mentioned that they were probably going to buy one I got motivated and made a couple for my granddaughters. I just googled it and went from there. No pattern was required and they were really quick and easy.



These two ponchos are practically identical. The color is more of a rose pink.



I used the same amount of fabric (42" squared) for both the infant and toddler car seats. Lil Peanut loves to wear it and twirl around. They are definitely cozy warm and it's easy to either cover their heads while you buckle them in or just work under the poncho. The ones I made happen to be two layers because the pretty kitty fabric didn't feel thick enough so I bought the same amount of a solid pink and made it reversible. I also figured out a little hat... don't know if they'll actually wear them, but I had the fabric. Some of the directions I found also had mittens made of the fleece that looked real simple.

Isn't the internet amazing?!

Cleaning up the Camera

Yep, just like it says. My camera had a bunch of pictures that I needed to get posted. Most recently we camped out and had a 'trick or treat' at the campground. Little Peanut is going to be a 'cow' this year.




In the recent past we had a lot of company in town from TX, CA and IN. I have a picture on the wall of these three cousins taken at Jen's graduation (the one on the left)and made them all line up the same again for this picture. Their hair dos aren't nearly as 'high' lol.



I wanted to grab a video off my son's facebook of Muffin standing, but I haven't figured it out yet. Okay, I wasn't able to figure that out, but I did snag this cute picture of Muffin in her duck costume.

Reading

With all these post of book reviews it looks like I'm doing a lot of reading. Actually I did all the reading in August when we went to the UP for a couple of weeks. I just positioned all the book reviews with a little time between them not knowing that I wouldn't get the time to do a regular post in between. Ah, the best laid plans lol.

Last weekend we went to Pymatuning Lake which is on the border between northern Ohio and PA. It was a beautiful weekend. There were two festivals going on in different local areas. We went to the Pumpkin Festival on Saturday at Conneaut Lake. They have a large amusement park on the lake, a midway with carnival rides and games, a band stand that had a dj and a perfectly sunny day. I reminded me a lot of when I was a teenager and went to Walled Lake Amusement Park or Edgewood Amusement Park. Just a great laid back kind of day.

Sunday we went to the Covered Bridge Festival in Ashtabula County. At the fairgrounds they had all the carnival rides and games again and in the animal barns they had crafts for sale. I love going through that kind of thing and usually don't make the time to do it. We bought a really cool 'tin man' made out of tin cans.

When we left the fairgrounds we went on a 67 mile tour of the countryside viewing 11 covered bridges. At most of the bridge sites they had little festivals going on selling hot dogs or chili, stuff like that to raise funds for different charities.

I didn't note which bridge is the top one, but you can see some of the color that I think was peak. The color was just amazing. This second bridge is the Root Road Covered Bridge. It's 114 ft town lattice built in 1868. Root Road crosses the Ashtabula River. The bridge was raised 18 inches during the rehabilitation in 1982-83 and new laminated girders and a center concrete pier were added.


While downloading these pictures I found a couple of my girls. The first is of Muffin in August or September. Does she not have the bluest eyes? She is always so interested or concerned looking. Just puts a smile on your face.

One weekend in September we watched Peanut for an evening. We took her to a local restaurant that has a mini train running around the top - she loved it. Then we went to the Mill Pond and watched the ducks. She wore herself out running on the boardwalk and feeding the ducks. Her and Papa finally sat down for a few seconds to just watch them.


That kind of brings things up to date, in a way, we had a lot of family in town last week from TX, CA and IN. Like I said, it's been busy. Get to see my girls this weekend as we go camping at a local park for their Halloween trick or treat event. I'm sure it'll be lots of fun.