I thought this was neat!

Laughing upside down Summer

Laughing upside down River

A little Summer and River time

This was taken outside earlier today.

Meet Clayton's present

This is Clayton's present. Its a 16' Old Town Guide. Its a great family canoe and would allow us a third adult with both kids for weight capacity. We're very excited about it and can't wait for the weather to warm to try it out. We have convinced Summer that canoeing isn't so bad by getting her her own kid paddle and a Scooby-Doo life jacket is on its way to us. She's said she'll like it once she's 5-- we'll see...


Summer is an expert land paddler!

Clayton's 31st Birthday!

Clayton had a great birthday this year! We had a wonderfully relaxing day playing baseball and frisbee outside. We ate out at a nice restuarant in Easthampton and played a few rounds of Cribbage and Blockus once the kids were in bed and topped it all off with a personal performance by Gabe!

Present time!
Summer displays the fish poster for us! (thanks again, Sue!)
Summer helped me make Clayton's favorite dessert for his 'cake.' Its my mom's special recipe and Clayton feel in love with it the first time he had it. Summer did most of the work and it was delicious! (thanks mom!)

A visit from Gabriel

Our friend, Gabriel, came out for an extended weekend to help celebrate Clayton's 31st Birthday. We had a great time and both kids loved having him here. River gave him a ton of smiles and Summer got to play all her favorite games with him! He even gave them a little exclusive concert one afternoon-- Summer danced and River stared.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Meet our cool friend, Gabriel! He plays good too!

Some nice vocals from Gabriel

One of my favorites from Gabe-- I'm so proud of my friend!!

Some good fingertappin' from Gabriel

Mr. Gabey plays real good!

Summer and Daddy play baseball

Summer hits the ball!!

River figures out the Johnny Jump-up

The Baseball Hall of Fame

We went to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday as one of the many ways to celebrate Clayton's upcoming birthday THIS Sunday! Here he is standing next to the locker that Babe Ruth used during his career. The locker has some of the equipment and jersey Babe wore.
The girls were excited to see each other! Here they are hanging out and chomping down some food.
Little Clayton is getting bigger and bigger! He turned three just before christmas! Here he is holding his little "Baby Ear" (his name for River) on his lap.
Clayton or Jed will correct me if I'm worng, but I believe that is a picture of Roger Marris when he hit his 61st homerun, tying with Babe Ruth's record of most homeruns in a season.
You'll notice the baseball decor in the background at this diner.
This is the most valuable baseball card that exists, theres something like 20 of them in total. This one is worth something like 2 million dollars!
This is Miss Abigail standing next to the World Series trophy the New York Yankees won in 1996. My husband was VERY excited to see it!
The children amused themselves throughout the Hall of Fame. This is the only time they sat still, good thing we got a picture of it!


Summer loves her cousin, Clayton. And she looks so very grown up in this picture to me. The look on her face is one I've not seen before!

teeth, teeth and more teeth!

So, I noticed about 2 days ago that little man River has a tooth beginning to pop through those gums of his. Its on the bottom. Poor boy has been having a rough time with it. Its gotta hurt! Well, much to my surprise, about an hour ago I looked in the little boy's mouth and saw not 1, but 2 bottom teeth attempting to emerge! The one has broken through the gum, the other is almost about to! Poor baby! At least he's getting all the discomfort over at once!

some more...

Here's our kittie, New Boy enjoying the warm weather as well.
Tessie too!
I was trying to get a grumpy/sad River picture.
A little seen sad face of a boy, poor thing!
This is how he prefers to play when his boppy pillow is out. He'll bang his head on the floor like this for fun as well-- he's a strange one!

Visitors and some fun in the sun

This is our new friend, Angela! She's the 9 month old little girl who lives next door to us. We had her and her parents over for dinner last Sunday. They are great people and I can see us becoming very good friends. River TOTALLY loves her!
This was on our first nice day where the weather was about 60*
River liked it!
This is all that remains of our snow family.

River's first taste of food!

We decided Mr. boy was ready to taste some organic rice cereal the day after he spent an entire lunch grumping and yelling at me for not sharing any of my veggie corn dog or chips with him. He smacked at my hands and tried very hard to steal the food from them. I did my best to appease him by offering him small amounts of water from the water bottle. He took these willingly, but knew he had somehow gotten screwed and wanted a taste of "the real stuff."
He was just as willing as Summer had been to try food, but made some pretty awful looks while trying it! This was on Monday, I have given him a small amount every day and he seems to be understanding the process more and more with each day. He even got himself in trouble today, because little monster man decided it would be SO MUCH FUN to blow raspberries while eating. Needless to say, I was not impressed and he was interested in the new sound in my voice while I told him "NO!" and explained why that was unacceptable behavior. He thought it was completely acceptable and continued for another 3 bites before I decided it wasn't worth the effort and stopped feeding him. Something tells me this boy will be far more trouble than his sister ever was at this age and on-- until she learned how to talk. anyway! He's a mischievious one and what a temper! Learning how not to hit will be one of the first things on the list of things to teach him once he's understanding things better!

It's always good to have a little playing with toes times after some seriously hard work like learnin' how to eat! A favorite River pasttime, as well as eating them. He also has found himself-- Summer calls it a 'thingy.' I don't know if he's a bit young to be so involved with having a 'thingy,' but its the first thing he does every time you take off a diaper-- he finds it to be great fun and plays with himself whenever given the opportunity. Clayton and I have told him this is just the beginning for him in this favorite pasttime. But, I thought I'd document that he is perhaps one of the youngest men ever to find himself.

family

Daddy plays double duty-- they often both want to be carried down the stairs at the same time!

River helps his dad out with some work.
Summer practices her balancing act on her father.

A little snuggle time with a little hippy boy.