Clear Heads

Emily's pre-k class was visited by a dentist, last week, to discuss the importance of taking care of their teeth. Em came home with the "tooth" seen below...we all thought the color it was "painted" was very strange.

Then we noticed that it was painted with toothpaste!

Summer 2010...so far

We've been busy doing fun stuff this summer...here's a photo journal of what we've been up to, so far...

Putting some color into the pizzeria.

We're spending lots of time at Greenwood Lake Beach.

6/27

Trying to keep cool .

Ice Cream at Bellvale Creamery.

(Mikey says, and he's right, "people don't go for the ice cream, they go for the view!")

6/30

We saw Elvis perform at the beach.

7/2

We watched fireworks at the beach, too.

7/3

We watched the Greenwood Lake Fourth of July parade in front of the pizzeria.

Lucy makes time to be silly.

Visiting the Greenwood Lake Library.

More fireworks at Veterans Park (aka Goose Crap Park).

7/10

And blueberry picking with Grandma and Papa.

7/11

We can't wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store for us!

Last Day of School

We didn't celebrate the last day of school with as much pomp and circumstance as we did last year. We took the monsters out for celebratory Happy Meals.

I can't believe Maria is going into Fifth grade and Michael into third...they're my BABIES!!!

Super Emily

It's tiring work being so bad...

Emily had just gotten into trouble and was sent to "the chair", but, as usual, she had to go to the bathroom first. This is what I found when I went in to check on her a little while later...

Photography by Emily

This past Christmas Emily got a Fisher Price Digital Camera. She LOVES taking pictures.

Every once in a while, when I'm checking pictures on my camera, I'll find a bunch of Emily pictures and I laugh and laugh. It's never one or two shots, but dozens! She takes after her Mommy in that respect.

Here's what I found last night...

UPDATE: School Projects

This is what Michael looked like while I worked out what his Boa Constrictor/Rainforest vest was going to look like.
Once Michael came to life I put him to work on the vest.

I think the finished product is pretty darn cool!

School Projects

I remember, when I was a kid, feeling tortured by the projects I was assigned in school. To me, it seemed as though I always had a diorama, book report, science project or posterboard project due, but it was probably no more than two or three projects throughout the year. I also remember BEGGING my mother for more help (read: DO THIS FOR ME!)

I regularly kid my mother about my seventh grade autobiography...if I wrote ONE SENTENCE in that masterpiece, it was a lot! My mother, however, gives me full credit for it. That's the one school project I have no problem admitting that I had little to no participation in.

Now that I'm a mother, as I reflect back to those torturous days, I probably did the least amount of work on those projects while my mother did the bulk of it. That is certainly the case with my own kids.

As I sit here typing this "confession", I am also trying to work-out in my head how "we" are going to depict a rainforest (the natural habitat of a boa constrictor) on a vest made out of a Shop Rite brown paper bag. My co-creator, Michael, isn't even home from his Boy Scout camp-out yet.

WE have written succesful reports on dinosaurs, Juliette Lowe and Judy Moody to name a few. WE'VE made paper likenesses of the kids, recreated scenes, on a grand scale, of dinosaurs from the Triassic era, made kites, decorated umbrellas, created collections of 100 items for the 100th day of school and made instruments out of household items. I'm sure there's much more but my Momnesia is acting up.

Years from now when my kids say I never helped them with their school projects, I'll have this blog to show to them and then they'll remember...just like I did.

Festival of the Arts

Hi this is Maria. Mom is letting me write the blog today.

Today we went to The Festival of the Arts! The festival was fun. Emily and I made figures that looked like us. Well, kinda looked like us?!

After that Em, mom and I went to the movies to see ''Diary of a Wimpy Kid".

I hope you like the pictures. Bye.

Artwork by Michael

Artwork by Maria

Artwork by Michael

Boo Boos

Nothing makes a parent feel more helpless than when their child gets hurt.

Yesterday, our town was a declared a "state of emergency" because of the blizzard we were in the midst of and after Emily the daredevil fell and put a tooth through her lip our house was in a state of emergency as well.

There was lots of yelling, crying and blood and even though Nick and I wanted to cry with her, we had to pull ourselves together and tend to our boo boo girl. The blood, and there was lots of it, is what scared us the most.

A couple hours later, when she had finally stopped crying she put a band-aid on the boo boo, because that's what you do with boo-boos, and went on with her day.

Two hours later

The following day
("Don't take my picture Mommy, I look freaky!")

"It's not so bad!"

Pinewood Derby WINNER!!!

Yesterday was Michael's Boy Scouts Troop's Pinewood Derby Race. Nick and Michael together made a replica of the Massa mobile and named it "Mikey's Meanie Van."

After not winning a single race last year at their first Pinewood Derby, Nick researched the making of Pinewood Derby cars, determined not to repeat last years defeats.

We were all pleasantly surprised when we heard that Michael won every race the Meanie Van raced in in the Wolf Division. Papa, Nick and Michael went to the finals later on and we were all shocked to learn that the Meanie Van swept the finals and Michael was the 2010 Pinewood Derby Champion!

UNTrimming the Tree

O Christmas Tree

We headed out yesterday, to the Christmas Tree farm, in the hopes of chopping down our tree. The first farm didn't have anything we were looking for and the second farm had too big a hill to schlep for us to even get a good look at what they had. No one was happy about returning home without a tree. We never thought we'd find what we were looking for at Home Depot!
This morning after Daddy trimmed the base and set it into the stand, Maria and I put on the lights and Emily and I decorated while Lucy and Daddy took a nap.
Lucy was so excited when she saw the decorated tree...so excited, I guess, that she felt compelled to UNDECORATE!
It's doubtful that the bottom half of the tree will remain decorated until Christmas morning.

First Snow of 2009

Grandma treated Maria, Michael, Emily and I to a live performance of "A Christmas Story" yesterday. When we left the house a light, pretty snow was falling. The kind of snow that looks pretty as it's coming down but is mixed with rain so you know it will be gone by tomorrow.

Two and a half hours later, the rain had stopped during the preformance and the flakes got bigger and were coming down hard and fast. Still pretty, but not fun to drive in. Thankfully, we got home without incident.

When we woke up this morning the snow still covered the ground, the trees and everything else not moving.

I wonder if the season of snow, ice, pulled back muscles, school delays and school closures has officially begun?

'Tis the season!