Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful thanksgiving here in CT. Well there were a few moments of unhappiness, like when Jack fell and bit his tongue. Oh the hazards of learning to walk...But all in all it was a fabulous Thanksgiving. We had a few visitors including Aunt Danielle.
And Bailey. And there was lots of doggy love.

And brotherly love.



and Mommy love (the best kind of love of all).

The whole family. (minus Everett who won't slow down long enough for a picture)And Everett actually made this year's awesome centerpiece.

And another quote for the history books.

Me: Everett, what are you thankful for?

Everett: Ummm, I just thankful with cake!

Well at least he is grateful for something.



And last but not least it seems that Jack would like to make a liar of me. As soon as I posted last week about him refusing to crawl, he decided it was time. So the first video is the before: wounded soldier, I am being fired upon in the combat zone belly crawl. And below that is his new big boy crawl.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Boys to Men

The boys are growing up so fast I can hardly keep up, and I see them 24 hours a day. Jack is eating semi-solid food and teething crackers. He can also crawl, pull himself up and walk a bit while holding on. He spends his entire day pulling himself up on various pieces of furniture to check out the new view. Everett has learned how to stall, how to tell jokes and play pranks, and most of all that he is his own person and he does not need to listen to anyone at anytime. His new view is from the time out chair. But he is still adorable and has the best one-liners ever. Example, "Oh no mamma, the democrats are coming!"


Some good Photos of the guys hanging out.

Jack is getting so big - he is catching up with me.

And Here is Jack standing up and walking a bit.



Various pieces of furniture that he stands up with. He does still refuse to crawl most of the time, instead opting for the wounded soldier combat belly scoot.



Here is Ev "helping" rake the leaves. I guess he did help more than Mommy...


And here is one of Everett's great pranks. Daddy fell asleep and Everett put stickers on him. Daddy deserved it because he decorated a van in much the same manner in his earlier years (20s).

Quick Update

We got through Halloween and Everett had a great time. This past weekend we had some friends over to Essex, CT where Thomas the Tank Engine was Visiting. Here you can see him in the backgroud (he is in the background because they wanted to charge us $20 a person to see him up close).

After that quick photo opp we headed downtown to the dock to feed some ducks.

Jack is now 7 months old. He is sitting up very well, can kneel up and is just starting to pull himself up to standing. He has also taken to making faces at us. His favorite is one where he scrunches up his whole face. It is pretty funny.

Where did the time go? Lets catch up!

Well we seem to be a bit behind in our posts, so I will catch up in one random blog entry.

We had a visit from the Millers. We had a good time spending time with them, especially since we got a reprieve from reading the same bedtime stories over and over for a few days. We took a hike at Devil's Hopyard.

And threw some rocks in the river. Jack has been working on his reading skills with mommy.

And Ev has been working on his painting skills with Daddy.

And just recently we attended the town Halloween party. Everett was a rock star and stole the show. He is dressed as a "good lion".

Notice the circle of girls around him...

And last but not least, a few videos of Jack eating.

The coming of the Lion

The Miller family took a trip to build-a-bear today to get Everett a new good night protector. He seems to have learned that the dark is scary and for some reason he thinks a lion is going to get him. He cries and tell us "I just soooo scared the lion coming". So we got a new bear to scare the lion away and recorded our voices so he could hear them when he was scared. We shall see if it works...

Take Me Home Country Roads (i.e. West Virginia)

So we made a trip down South to West Virginia for Laurie and Tony's wedding. Here is a pic of me shoved in between the two car seats on our Journey down. Luckily for us, Auntie Katie bought a new car and we got to ride in luxury for the 12 hours each way. Amazingly it wasn't a bad ride.The Heymans also made the trip and the kids had a blast playing in the hotel room. Here are the little ones.





And here are the big ones.
I don't think life gets much cuter than this.

As you can see, the boys clean up pretty nicely.

Even the big one.

Everett didn't find the ceremony very interesting, but did wake up in time for some serious dancing.

Jack was a party animal.

All the Cheshire girls and our kids.

Auntie Katie and Auntie Cindy.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.....

It was a lot of fun, but we had to say good-bye. Good-bye Heymans!

Jack can Crawl

Here it is, just before his 6 month birthday Jack has pulled it off. He can now pull himself across the floor in a combat crawl. This video is pretty bad quality, but we were excited to get it on here. We will keep trying to capture a better video in the next few days.

Bronx Zoo, Part Two

Yesterday we packed up the boys and took them down to New York again to see the Bronx Zoo. It was a fun day.

The zoo has been around for more than a century, this is one of the original zoo building that used to house the lions.

We posed in front of the Buffalo when we first got there hoping we could get a smile from the boys before they were too worn out. No luck.

After that we stopped off to see the lions before heading to the Monorail ride. You can see the lions off of Everett's left shoulder. There are still 3 and the cub is getting quite a bit bigger than the last time we were there.

Once we got on the monorail we decided to take another family picture just like the last time we were at the zoo. It is funny to hold this one up to the last one and see the difference in Jack's growth. When I get some time I will edit this page and put the older picture up as well.

...and here is a picture from the last trip we took:

We were able to catch quite a few of the animals being fed, including the giraffes.

Our favorite exhibit was the gorillas where a small one decided to pound on the glass at me.

The Eagle

After we left the zoo and I took us on an unplanned car tour of the Bronx we ended at Arthur Ave, the Italian section of the borough. There we picked up 2 gallons of Olive Oil, had a great meal, and Everett met some NYC Fire Fighters.