Clarissa's Birthday part 2

I just realized I never posted the rest of the pictures from Clarissa's birthday party. I still can't find the pictures of her finished birthday cake.

All the princesses dressed up ready to party, and the handsome prince!

Clayton insisted on playing all of the games too.

We played kiss the frog! We also played a game where they had to find Cinderella's shoe.

Sitting on the couch while Quinn told them the story of the "Princess and the Pea".

Waiting to go sit on little pillows (all different colors) that I had made for the princess and the pea game. I hid a ball underneath one and they had to find it. I thought this was a great idea, since I decided that the pillows would be a great little party favor for them to take home, that is until I realized that they all wanted the pink one!

Just a few more weeks until Clayton's birthday. Clarissa and Clayton have already planned his party. He wants a Blue Diego Choo Choo Train cake! I hope I don't dissapoint him.

Clarissa Explains it All!

The other day we were at the grocery store and Clarissa said to me:
"When I'm a mom, I'm going to let my children do whatever they want to do!"

I just had to smile and laugh, and so did the lady that was shopping next to us. No doubt, Clarissa was frustrated at me because I either told her she needed to stop what she was doing, or we couldn't buy something that she wanted. I can't remember what triggered this comment, but I want her to remember that when she is a mom!

I'm sure I had similar thoughts when I was a child, and always thought I knew better than my parents. It's amazing how when you are an adult/parent yourself, you realize that your parents weren't actually being mean or trying to ruin your life. They are constantly doing what is best for you, even though at times they may make mistakes, they truly are doing everything with love.

I am glad that Clarissa desires to be a mother, and always talks about her children and how she is going to be a wonderful mother. It is so fun to hear her talk about it. Today in the car she said "Mom, I see a humungous house. When I'm an adult I'm going to have a humungous house for all of my kids. I'm going to have hundreds of kids!"

I think it'll be fun for her to read about the things she said when she is a mother, and see if she still feels the same way.

Pictures

For some reason the pictures that I posted yesterday don't seem to be working now, so I thought I would try again. And since I'm awful with computers, I'm just putting them in a new post rather than trying to fix it.

Swimming with Cousins

The weekend before we moved to Boston, Quinn's brother moved from Boston to Washington state. We crossed paths in Chicago for a couple days. We went swimming, and had a great time playing with cousins. We are sad that we are so far away from them now, and that we didn't live in Boston at the same time. This is Clayton and Burke, they are a month a part in age, so they had fun playing together, and fighting together! They constantly wanted the same things, but that's life with 3 year olds.

Luckily, Isaac (8 years old), practiced his life saving skills and saved Clayton in the first 5 minutes we had been there. I had just put sun screen on Clayton, and started paying more attention to Clarissa. I had told him not to go in, but what little boy can resist a big pool of water. I hadn't noticed that he climbed in. He was walking along a ledge in the water that had suddenly ended and he fell in. Luckily, Isaac was right there, and knew what to do. He grabbed a hold of Clayton and yelled "I'm saving Clayton". Well, something along those lines, it's kind of a blur now. I was just so grateful that Isaac noticed Clayton go under, and didn't just watch him sink. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if Isaac wasn't right there. For the rest of the day Isaac was known as the hero and the life gaurd. Clarissa thought it was pretty cool that her cousin is a life gaurd!

After that episode, we made sure Clayton had plenty of floaties on, and I was right next to him the rest of the time. It's amazing how quick things can happen in the water.

The kids had a great time jumping off the diving board, pretending to be different animals, and just enjoying some fun swim time with each other. After swimming, we went to Portillo's for lunch to get some delicious hot dogs. This was over a month ago, and I can't remember what else we did, other than having a wonderful time visiting together, and wishing that it didn't have to be so short.

Mt. Auburn Cemetary

Just a few miles from where we live is Mt. Auburn Cemetary. It was started in 1831, and it is the oldest landscaped cemetary in the U.S. If I remember correctly, it is 175 acres. It is beautiful, it is fun to drive around, and even walk. There are many trails to walk on, and see old gravestones. We saw several from people that were born in the 1700's. While walking around, another visitor there told us about this tower in the cemetary that we should go see. We drove around and found it, just in time to walk up to the top before it closed for the evening. I don't remember all the history behind it, but the tower is a memorial to George Washington.

Clarissa and Clayton standing on a bench looking out over Boston.


All of us on top of the tower. It was a little scary to be up that high with 3 young kids, I got nervous whenever the kids held on to the railings and looked over.

It was such a beautiful view from the top of the tower. You could see all of downtown Boston, and all the surounding cities. We could even see the temple way off in the distance.

We are just waiting for people to come visit us, and we will take you to the tower and tour the cemetary, it is such a peaceful place to visit.

1st Day of Kindergarten

Clarissa is happily sitting in her Kindergarten class right now. She has been so excited to go, and I'm hoping she is having a wonderful time.

There are 5 kindergarten classes in her school, and she is a Brown Bear. Each class is a different animal from the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Eric Carle. On the first day they were asked to bring a small stuff animal, she of course chose her brown bear, and they were asked to wear brown. She was going to wear a brown dress that her Grandma Judy had given her for school, but decided that she didn't want to wear it with her new school shoes, she thought kids would laugh at her. I can't believe we are already getting to this stage. She really wanted to wear her shoes, so we chose a brown shirt, jeans, and her monkey socks since they were brown too.

Clayton wanted to wear his new shirt too, and was happy to smile for the camera. He was very, very sad that he did not get to stay at school. I'm going to have to do a lot of fun things with him at home, other wise it's going to be a sad morning every day Clarissa goes to school.

Already to walk to school! Unfortunately our first day included a lot of rain, so we were all soaked by the time we got up there. We live right down the street from the school, so we will be walking every day. I think we might need to invest in some rain boots, and make sure we have good snow boots for the winter.

Clarissa's first day of school picture with her back pack. Unfortunately the card on the camera was full after this shot, so I didn't get one with her rain coat on and walking up to school. I would have also loved to take one of Clayton. The poor little guy was drenched by the time we got up there, and he fell on some muddy grass. We are going to figure out a new routine for getting up there on rainy days.

It was sad to leave her, but I know she will love it. I'm excited to hear all about her first day. I've started the tradition of having cookies ready to eat on a "first day occasion" for everyone in our family when they get home from their big first day. I did it last week for Quinn's first day of work, but unfortunately he got home really late, so we ate them without him, but don't worry, we did save him some. I better go bake them, I have to pick her up in an hour.

Boston Temple

A week after we moved to Boston, Quinn left on a trip to Brazil for a conference, he was gone just over a week. The day before he came home, Clarissa insisted on going to the temple to take some pictures for Quinn as a surprise for him. I thought I would share a few, even though they aren't that great, we aren't all looking at the camera.

We feel so blessed to be able to live this close to a temple now. We can get there in about 10 minutes, whereas when we lived in Illinois it took us 3 hours.

You probably can't see Clarissa in this picture, but she wanted to stand right next to it, and have me take a picture of the whole temple. It was really fun to spend some time with my kids on the temple grounds on a Sunday afternoon.

I think this is the cutest little smile from Sarah, I couldn't resist sharing it. Sarah is now 8 months old, I can't believe how big she is getting!

Quinn's Defense

I know I'm behind on blogging, but what else is new? We have had a crazy month. We moved to Boston a month ago, and have been trying to get settled. I'll try to post what we have been up to, especially the big event that is happening this coming Thursday, Clarissa starts Kindergarten!

For starters, here are some pictures of Quinn's defense, and his "graduation".


Just before Quinn defended. In case you haven't heard, he did awesome and passed!

Clarissa made this yellow "graduation" necklace for Quinn in her preschool class back in April. It wasn't an actual project that the class did, Clarissa just made it one day with some scraps from another art project. She excitedly brought it home and told Quinn it was for his graduation day. It had been hanging on our bulletin board since then. When Quinn got home from defending, he told Clarissa there was something special he had to do. He asked her to put his "graduation" necklace on him. She was so excited, and I'm glad Quinn remembered, it was so special for her to have him wear it. Even though that day wasn't Quinn's real graduation, it worked for her, and we didn't want to worry about having to keep it around until he walks next April.

Quinn's lab always celebrates with treats on the day they defend, so he requested that I make a periodic table of cupcakes like I did in February for our friends Tom and Becca. I only made 110 this time, instead of 116, I got tired of baking cupcakes. Plus, this was all done in a kitchen that had mostly been packed up, I had to borrow a bunch of stuff. It was fun to do again, and luckily Quinn helped me write the numbers on them. Unfortunately the heat got to some of them and melted the frosting, and they didn't look very appetizing.

That night Quinn's professor took his lab out to Papa Del's for pizza to celebrate. We had a lot of fun, and were grateful to celebrate such a special day with everyone he worked with. Since Quinn's parents live in Chicago, they were able to come down for the day, which was so wonderful to be able to share it with them. We really enjoyed living so close to them for the last 5 years, and that was one of the hardest parts about moving so far away, we will miss seeing them regularly.