Good Morning Ladies

Every morning (actually many times a day), rain or shine, I am up early to take the puppy out. Lately, these ladies have been greeting me in the mornings, so I decided to take their pictures. Let me introduce you:

I have a prolific bed of purple coneflowers (echinacea) and they spread like crazy around my house. In the fall, if you 'd like some, please let me know and you can come get a bunch!

New York City Trip

A couple of weeks ago, Dennis and I celebrated our 12th anniversary. For the past couple of years, we have enjoyed planning a weekend trip to celebrate. This year we took the Amtrak to NYC. It was a different change of pace for us country folk, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! We went to see this play and were pleasantly surprised with how funny it was. We took the subway to as many places as we could stand and got around quite a bit for 2 days in the city. Below are some highlights from the weekend.

Leaving the Baltimore Penn Station at 7:00 am on Saturday. It is a beautiful, old station in the heart of Baltimore. Very easy to get to. Of course, we were there at 6:00 in the morning!

We took the regional train on the way up, and the Acela Express on the way back. This is a picture of the inside. We discovered something great about train travel compared to air travel...for a comparable price, the seats are more comfortable, walking around is easier, and the trains leave and arrive on time. Plus there is no security to go through, and you can actually arrive no earlier than 30 minutes before your train leaves and have plenty of time. Very easy. The Acela traveled very quickly...it seemed at times that we were going at least 100mph, but I don't have any evidence to back that up. But our trip time went from 2 hr 45 min on the way up on the regional, to 2 hr 10 min on the way back on Acela. Fun either way!

Typical times square photos!

We tried to do as many free things as possible, since everything costs so much in the city. So we did a lot of sightseeing on Saturday...one of the places we saw was St. Patrick's cathedral. It was a beautiful cathedral and reminded me of some of the cathedrals I remember from visiting Spain many years ago.

We went to China town for dinner Saturday night looking for some authentic Chinese food. Above is my plate...do you think it is authentic enough? Care to guess what it is? It was delicious, but only if you like squid!

Evidently something new they have done in Times Square in the summer is to close off the through streets to traffic. They have set up lawn chairs all over the place, 100's of them, and people just hang out, sitting around, looking at all of the flashing billboards and talking. It seems silly, but it was actually pretty nice and the atmosphere was not obnoxious or party-like, it was very calm. It gives all those people something to do. So we sat out at night and joined them!

On Sunday we decided to go down to the Financial district and see the World Trade center site. They have started work on the permanent memorial, which apparently they are building right on the orginal sites of the towers. From the walkway, I was able to zoom in to a piece of wall that was left standing after the collapse. It was very surreal, and gave an excellent perspective on the enormity of the 9/11 disaster. We were disappointed, however, that the temporary memorial in the old fire station was charging $10 a person to go in. I'm not sure what that's called, but it sounds to me like making money off of someone else's misfortune. Pitiful.
After the 9/11 site, we took the subway all the way down to Coney Island. It was an hour-long train ride! But for $2 a person, that's pretty cheap transportation! We got a hot-dog at Nathan's and walked down to the beach and saw the carnival rides.

All-in-all, we had a great time. Wonder what we'll do next year???

Elsa Honigbraun

German translation "Honey-brown princess"

Here is our newest addition to the family. She is now 11 weeks old and has been with us for 2 weeks now. She is adapting quite well. Full of energetic bursts and lots of puppy naps! The kids are enjoying her as well, though she is very aware of who is in charge...and it is not the kids! She takes full advantage of them when either Dennis or I are not in sight. What a stinker :) More on puppy training later if you are so inclined...

Pool Deck Project

This week, Dennis took off from work to complete a pool deck around half of our pool. When we originally put the pool in, we built the narrow gangplank out to the pool as a temporary, budget friendly fix. This year we were able to put on half of projected plan for decking. What a huge difference it makes!

Before

Eric, being a HUGE help to Dennis this week. He worked out there with Dennis for 3 days straight, all day. And cut the grass in between :)Partway finished

Completely finished, except for the deck stain.

Lego Star Wars 6th Birthday Party

Bay turnedd 6 two weeks ago. He grew 1 1/2 inches in 4 months! He's getting ready to lose his first tooth. Just too much to take in. All of my babies are growing up :(

He requested a lego star wars party this year. It was 9 kids his age, plus many older siblings and Eric and Leah. It was controlled chaos!

The lego cake. Covered with square fondant lego bricks.
Lego tower building contest. We made iron-on yoda shirts for the boys and ahsoka shirts for the girls.

Lego playing at the lego table. we had a starfighter build session.

Knocking candy and legos out of the Death Star pinata

a hord of young jedis chasing after darth vader (aka Eric-he shed his vader mask very quickly since he couldn't see who he was up against!)

For the birds!

This morning we woke to a beautiful spring day. The birds all seemed to be out, in every tree and bush, singing, twittering and making the morning known to all. The kids noticed at breakfast the beautiful music, so we decided to write some poetry this morning. Hopefully you can click on the picture and it will enlarge, but just in case it doesnn't I have written the poem out for you below the picture for clarity.

The Morning Choir by Eric

The morning chorus sings the best in the spring

The mother blue jay twitters to her heart's delight

The sun says to the morning dove, "I cannot sing as you do,

Please sing for me". So it does, it awakens all the animals

the mockingbirds, cardinals and sparrows sing the harmony

while the babies join the choir, the sun shines its brightest

All for the glory of the Lord.

Bird Songs by Bay

Birds sing songs

in the morning

mommies sing to babies

get worms

make nests

birds tweet

birds twitter

joyful sounds

And Leah, well you may need some help interpreting. Read from bottom left to right, then go up one line and read from right to left, and then go upu again for the last letter. It reads, "Birds B Birds sing in the morning"

We're Getting a Dog

Okay, so it's been a long long time in the "talk about it stage", actually about as long as Dennis and I have been married, maybe even before that. A few things put us over the edge to make the plunge: the kids are old enough now (no more babies in the house for me to take care of) and can all help out in some way AND Bay is an extreme dog afficionado, and by that I mean that he could be the dog whisperer. Every dog he meets acts like he and it have been best friends all of their lives!

Anyways, we have always wanted a boxer, so it didn't take us long to find one. We went and saw her and the breeder last weekend and will be bringing her home in a couple of weeks. She'll be just a little more than 8 weeks. Here she is at 6 weeks.

Of course the kids are super excited. We are too! We have been reading books, and the questions have been pouring out of the kids...where will her food bowls be? where will she go to the bathroom? will we give her people food? where will she sleep?... We haven't 100% decided on a name yet, so we'll save that for you to find out once we bring her home! Hint... it will be something of German origin since the Boxer breed originated in Germany!