Sam's 1st Birthday Party

For Sam's 1st birthday party, we threw him a "Very Hungry Caterpillar" family party.











We served all of the food from the book. Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, ice cream cones, pickles, swiss cheese, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausage, cupcakes, watermelon, and a nice big green leaf salad.

Sam's first year of growth

The guests










Sam's gifts

The goody bags

Sam got some really great presents.
Cathy & Ben's handmade gift may need some closer inspection:

It's Sam's Baby Walker. Patent Pending.



And now, the cake.

Happy birthday Sam!

Sam's First Year

Luckily, It Wasn't Sprained

Last week, Sophie decided to perform an amazing feat of athleticism for her uncle just 10 minutes before her bedtime. She claimed that she was "trying to do a somersault off the chair" but what it looked like was a dive from an arm chair to the carpet.

Accompanied by a "POP".

And then a screaming 3-year-old.

We consoled her as best we could and sent her to bed. She had obviously hurt her wrist really bad, and could not calm down or sleep. I wrapped up her wrist and forearm in an Ace bandage, and that seemed to help the pain a little, but she was still up every 30-45 minutes all night that night.

The next evening we took the bandage off and she had no swelling, no bruising, and had full rotation in her wrist. She exclaimed "I think I'm all better now!" And she felt great all week, with just the occasional mention of her arm still hurting a little.

Well, by Sunday, we noticed that she was still really favoring that arm. She wouldn't put any weight on it and didn't use it to do normal things like climb into bed. We decided it must be a pretty bad sprain and an x-ray was in order.


Yeah. It's broken. So this afternoon it was off to the pediatric orthopedist.


Doll in tow. Elo (the doll) was allowed to go everywhere today. Sophie was super brave and very calm the whole time. She got to pick her cast color too. Any guesses?



It hasn't seemed to phase her at all. On the ride home, she said "My arm is locked!" And the only time she got sad was this evening during dinner when she realized that she wouldn't be going swimming for a while.

The day exhausted her, and she fell asleep on our way from the doctor to Yodipity. We'll have to save that for another day I guess.

Construction Sophie

First Day of School!

Today is Sophie's first day of school! She was totally excited to go. I drove her today, and she was too shy to go in by herself so Sam and I tagged along for a bit, but I'm hoping she did better after I left (I'll find out in an hour).


Her new car seat arrived this week (this one that I talked about here), so the ride to school was her first time using it, and Sam's first time in his big boy chair. Boy was he happy to be out of that infant seat. It was just too reclined for his taste, and he enjoyed this seat much more. And Sophie loved her chair "that looks like Ellie's". She liked how it was lower than her other one and I like that it's still nice and padded for her.


Also, it being the first time in 3 months I've been without 2 kids, poor Sammy Boy had to endure a chain of errands with me. I have a list of places I've been putting off going to until school started up again.

He didn't quite make it home conscious.

Yay for Monsoons!

Here in Arizona, we tolerate the ridiculous summer weather for a couple months anticipating the relief that monsoon storms bring in. They're a nice half-way point to our summer.

This week, we were even lucky enough to have some daytime showers. Here's hoping we get more this weekend!

The Boy is Turning One Soon

Sometimes we pretend that our neighbor's front lawn is our yard. Thanks Mimi!

Sam will be one this month (!), which puts me on the hunt for a car seat (Happy Birthday Son! Here's your new car seat!). Actually, we're giving him Sophie's convertible seat and we're planning on switching her to a 5-point booster. I think I'm going to go with CSN stores again since they were so good to me before (remember, they have baby stuff, dining room sets, shipping supplies, you name it). Also, a lot of their more expensive items come with free shipping.

I'll let you know how it goes.

New England Part VII: Boston

And finally, our last full day in New England was spent in Boston. We drove to a train station about 20 miles from where we were staying, took the train in to town and then the subway into downtown.

When we emerged, we found ourselves right near Boston Common and a downtown art fair. It was lunch time, so we started looking around for lunch. I knew I had found my meal when I spotted a street cart with a line of about 10 people waiting. It turned out to be an Armenian chicken kebab place and it was DELICIOUS. As in Jake-regretted-his-meal-choice-and-also-wanted-to-go-there-for-dinner delicious.


We ate our lunch in the park and then headed to the playground to let the kids run around. Unfortunately, it was sprinkling on us, so we didn't change them into their suits to play on the splash pad or in the frog pond. The rain was a nice relief from the humidity though, so we were glad to have it.

After the playground, we walked over to the Public Garden and rode the swan boats.

Sophie and me making silly faces at Jake

Well, two of us rode the swan boats. The boys stayed ashore because of this:

Afterward, we tried to follow the Freedom Trail for a bit, but then changed our minds and walked over to the historic Beacon Hill neighborhood. It's full of beautiful brick and brownstone homes and brick sidewalks. This is Acorn Street. It's a working cobblestone street and it was quite lovely.


Our vacation was just awesome. Every day we did something new and exiting. We're so lucky to have been able to go on this trip. Thank you Mom & Dad for being so generous and for letting our whole family have this experience. We'll never forget it!

New England Part VI: The Beach

We decided to spend one afternoon at the beach. Sam was sleeping as we were getting ready, so we didn't get a chance to change him into his swimming suit before we arrived. He woke up just as we set everything down on the sand, so I stripped him down to get him ready. Before I could stop him, he was in the sand testing it out. Apparently it's delicious because the next several minutes had him doing this:

Hand over hand sand eating. Crawl a little, grab a handful of sand to eat, crawl some more, eat some more. There was no stopping the kid.

Eventually Jake took him down to the water to get rinsed off and we were able to get a suit on him.

Some exciting local news took place the day we played in the ocean. 150 people were simultaneously stung by a gigantic jellyfish just down the street from where we were.

Luckily we were all safe and didn't even hear about the incident until we were safely back home. After we had been at the beach for a while, Sam decided to get some alone time. He crawled away from me all on his own, and then just sat watching the water for a while. He frequently likes to be by himself, so I just let him enjoy it.

New England Part V: Canobie Lake Park

Our funnest day of the trip was our day at Canobie Lake Park. It's an amusement/water park in New Hampshire, and it was just FILLED with things that Sophie loved to do. There's an entire Kiddieland section with rides only for kids 48" and under. She loved going on those, telling us that we were too big for her rides.

Kiddie Cars

Dune Buggy









Flying Rooster (Sophie yelled out
"This ride is TOO FAST!" the whole time)

Spinning Cars

Caterpillar
(Sophie & Jake appear at about 14 seconds)

We spent several hours in the early afternoon riding all the rides, and then changed into our swimming suits to go on all the wet rides and into the water park area.

Can you spot Sophie in this picture?

We were so glad we decided to go. Both kids were fast asleep the second we got on the road home (one may or may not be asleep in this family picture). It was a great day!

New England Part IV: Candlepin Bowling

On Monday, all of my siblings and their kids went candlepin bowling. It's different from regular bowling in that the pins are thinner, the balls are smaller, and you get 3 chances to knock down your pins instead of 2. Oh, and it's awesomer in that with my high score of 82, I beat everyone else there.

We Interrupt this Vacation Recap . . .

. . . to give you a hair cut.

Sam Before:
Sam Now:

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

New England Part III: Reunions

While in New Hampshire, we got to attend family reunions from both sides of my dad's family. We met new people, got reacquainted with our cousins, and just enjoyed socializing.

And these girls couldn't have been happier together.

This was Sophie's favorite part of the reunion:

She somehow convinced Granddad to come into our cottage, sat him down, and read an entire book to him. Luckily, I think Granddad enjoyed it too.