Gingerbread Houses

Brendan has wanted to make gingerbread houses with the kids for years. This year he did it. They all had a lot of fun. Here are the finished products:

Jason's house

Jeremy's house

Meredith's house

Brendan's house for the Christmas party at work

Merry Christmas!

As I get ready to put the Christmas cards in the mail, I started looking back over this blog as a reminder of our year. I don't post consistently, but you can get a snapshot of our family by looking through.

This fall Meredith started 2nd grade; Jeremy started 1st grade. Jason stays home with me every day. The kids are no longer involved in karate or gymnastics, but seem content without those activities. The family schedule is a lot less hectic too.

Brendan works long hours as a Supervisor in Food & Nutrition Services at Christiana Health Care. But when he's home, the kids enjoy cooking with him, especially fried rice. So good! He recently made gingerbread houses with each of them, something he's wanted to do for years.

I'm involved with the handbell choir at church, which I'm really enjoying this year. I've started a couple of new quilts. Hopefully I will finish them soon.

It's been a good year for us. Nothing really exciting happened, but that can be good too. We have a couple of big trips to look forward to next year. One to Napa Valley for my brother's wedding in March, and another to Minnesota for the Byrne Family Vacation in August.

Meredith's 8th Birthday Party

Meredith had a party with 16 of her friends (including her brothers and a friend of Jeremy's) at Pump It Up. This is a place with 6 different inflatable playthings (moon bounces, etc.). A great time was had by all!

The group

The double slide with Jason (a little blurry)

The Hannah Montana guitar cake Brendan made

After the party, we took Meredith out to dinner at Don Pablo's where they sang to her and gave her a huge plate of sopaipillas. Delicious!

One of her favorite gifts was a Hannah Montana guitar from Grandad and Grandma.

Halloween, Part 2

Now for the "real" costumes. There would be no trick-or-treating as an ant or a tree.


Meredith was Hannah Montana, Jeremy, a soldier, and Jason, Curious George.

Halloween, Part 1

North Star Elementary School celebrates Halloween in an educational way. Each grade is assigned a category, and each child (parent) creates a costume that fits into that category. They need to label themselves appropriately. The second graders were insects; Meredith was an ant. She had to know the parts of an insect (antennae, thorax, abdomen, etc.).

The first graders were organisms - any living thing; Jeremy was a tree.

Uncle Kurt Visits

We enjoyed a short visit with Uncle Kurt and soon-to-be Aunt Jen. They came down from NYC to celebrate Mom's and Brendan's birthdays.

Spirit Day

Meredith and Jeremy's school has a spirit day every month. This was the first one of the year. They wear their school colors - lime green and royal blue - usually just their school tshirts. We also tried out some blue and green hairspray. Crazy!

No hairspray for Jeremy, though.

Jason Visits Thomas

For his birthday, we gave Jason tickets to see Thomas the Tank Engine in nearby Strasburg, PA.

Jason turns 3!

Today is Jason's 3rd birthday. Time really does fly. We celebrated with Grandma and Grandad last Saturday. Brendan made a fantastic monster truck cake and cooked pork ribs for dinner. Fabulous!

The First Day of School

Monday, August 25, brought the beginning of the 2008-09 school year. Meredith started 2nd grade; Jeremy started 1st grade. Now they are both in school for the full day!

They had a great day; they love their teachers. Jeremy was excited that he got to have lunch in the cafeteria. They rode the bus for the first time, which they are totally thrilled about.

A New Look

Meredith has been frustrated with her long hair and finally decided she was ready for a trim.

Before

After

She loves it! Still long enough for a ponytail, but much easier to manage.

The End of the School Year

Things got very busy since I last posted. There were all kinds of end of the year projects and activities and parties leading up to the last day of school, June 5.

Jeremy had a trip to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. He had 2 projects to research and create a poster for, one on frogs, one on an ocean creature (he chose the great white shark). Unbelievable what they're doing in kindergarten. He had a poetry celebration, where each student wrote their own poem and presented them to the class and parents. They had an end of the year celebration for all the kindergarten families, with hot dogs and such. Next year he will start 1st grade, which will be all day, a big change for him, but he's really excited about it.

Meredith had many activities too. She also had a poetry / Mother's Day party. She created a whole book of poetry and presented one of them to the class and parents. She had a big book report project she worked on for the last month of school. She had to decorate a bag and fill it with objects and pictures she drew to help retell the story for the class.

North Star Elementary had their annual field day May 30. It was a beautiful sunny day, hot, but not too hot. (Last year it was in the upper 90s!) Each class divided into two teams, blue and green (school colors), and competed in about 15 different stations. They had a lot of fun.

We celebrated with kids on the last day of school by taking them to Chuck E Cheese's for the afternoon. They love it, but we don't go often, so it was a special treat.

I have lots of pictures to share, too many to post here, so click on this link to check them out.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4291&l=7334d&id=1045605258

Happy Mother's Day from Jeremy

Mom and Me

Best friends forever, mom and me

Picking flowers and climbing trees

A shoulder to cry on, secrets to share

Warm hearts and hands that really care.

Author unknown

A poem from Jeremy.

Happy Mother's Day from Meredith

A piece of me

I give to you

I painted this flower

to say "I love you."

The heart is you.

The hand is me.

To show we are friends -

The best there can be.

I hope you will save it

And look back some day

At the flower we shared

On your special day.

Author Unknown

A poem from Meredith.

Zoo - Again

The kids had an inservice day off from school which was amazingly the same day as Brendan had off that week. It was a beautiful day, despite the forcast for rain, so we took a trip to the Philly Zoo. Unfortunately, this is the season for school field trips - the zoo was packed! We had a nice time anyway, and got some great pictures; I'll just share a few of my favorites.

A Visit with Uncle Kurt

Kurt and his fiancee, Jen, came to visit briefly at the end of April. It was our first visit with them since they got engaged in March. We're all really excited about the upcoming wedding!

Kurt took the kids to the pond near Mom and Dad's house to catch some tadpoles. (Jeremy's class was doing a unit on frogs.) Unfortunately, we didn't have a net, so they weren't able to catch any. But it was fun watching them swimming around.

Karate tests

Meredith and Jeremy are really enjoying their karate classes. Jeremy earned his yellow belt back in December. On April 15, he had a test for his first of three orange stripes towards his orange belt. He earned that stripe is practicing hard for his next stripe. On the same day, Meredith had her yellow belt test and passed. So they are both steadily moving forward and learning more each week.

Jeremy (the short one) sparring with his friend Sean (last month)

Meredith with her new yellow belt!

Home Improvement

We had to have our main sewer line replaced on April 15. Not how I really wanted to spend money on home improvements, especially after replacing the boiler in January, but we can't live without a sewer line. Jason loved the excavator that came to dig a trench through our yard.

Jeremy turns 6

April 9 was Jeremy's birthday. We celebrated the Saturday before that with my parents. We all went bowling. It was a lot of fun, but Jeremy scored better than I did! I don't have any pictures of bowling, because my camera died. But I have a few of the gift-opening:

A new webkinz pet "Ponytail"

A day this summer for the whole family at Dutch Wonderland!

Port Discovery

I took the kids and my parents to Port Discovery in Baltimore for a day during spring break. It's a children's museum full of hands on fun. There is a diner where the kids take your order and serve you the food (fake, of course). There's a whole exhibit about Egypt and the pyramids. The highlights for Meredith, Jeremy and Jason were the water-play area and the 3-story climbing/activity area. If you're within driving distance of Baltimore, you should really check it out. The website is http://www.portdiscovery.com/.

Easter

We had a lot of fun coloring eggs this year. Jason really got into it for the first time. Meredith was starting to be more creative with them, dipping them in several different colors.




We spent the afternoon with my parents, doing the traditional egg hunt, eating the ham dinner and playing games. Oh, and playing with Grandad's model train, which isn't finished yet, but has a bit of track to run on so far.

USS John F Kennedy

On March 22, the retired aircraft carrier traveled up the Delaware River to the Philadelphia Naval Yard. We were able to see it from the highway, but as we drove a bit further into Pennsylvania, we were able to get out and watch it. It was really thrilling to see a ship of that size on the river.

A Storm

We had a storm on March 8, lots of wind and rain. Our huge evergreen toppled over. We couldn't believe it! It didn't seem that windy; we've had worse. But we were very fortunate that it didn't fall on the house, cars or fence. Brendan was able to saw off all the branches, and then my dad brought a few friends from church with pickup trucks and a chainsaw to saw up the trunk and haul it all away.

Snow and Uncle Kurt

We had our last snow of the season February 22 and actually had a snow day off from school! There was only a half-day scheduled that day anyway, so they didn't miss much.

My brother, Kurt, and his girlfriend, Jen, came down to visit the next day. They did a lot of reading to Jason and playing with the kids. It had been quite a while, months, since we had seen them, so it was a great visit.

Boy, Am I Behind!

I'm about two months behind on this blog. Things just seem to get away from me. Lots has been going on since my last post, and I finally uploaded the pictures from my camera for all that time - more than 100!

I'll have to come back soon, but now it's time for lunch and then off to school for Jeremy.....

Birthday

Well, I am now 34 years old. My birthday was February 19. We had a nice family celebration on Sunday with my parents. Brendan and the kids gave me a new digital camera, so I'll be trying that out with lots of pictures. Meredith inherited my old one, so I'll have to post a few of her pictures too. She loves taking pictures. Brendan and the kids made a Chocolate Kahlua cake. Delicious!

On Monday, Mom and I went out for our traditional birthday "tea." This year we took Meredith along as well. She loved drinking tea and eating tea sandwiches and scones.

Jason helped with the cleanup!

Meredith's pic of Grandma and Jeremy

100 Day

February 8th was the 100th day of school at North Star. Both kindergarten and first grade had a big day of celebrating. Meredith's class made (and ate!) 100 pancakes. Jeremy's class had a 100-piece snack (10 pieces each of 10 different items). They both made 100 Day projects. Meredith collected household items and displayed them by tying them on a hanger. She had rubber bands, nuts, paper clips, washers, spools of thread, pencils, screws, buttons, safety pins, and keys. She also had a collection of 100 marbles. Jeremy made a poster of ten different food items: tic tacs, rice krispies, life cereal, marshmallows, craisins, chocolate chips, pretzels, m&ms, goldfish, and popcorn. They did a great job!

Winter Concert

North Star Elementary had their Kindergarten/1st Grade Winter Concert on February 7. Each grade sang several songs and also sang one together. The kids had a lot of fun preparing for the concert and also performing. It was an excellent concert. Great job guys!

Another Day at the Zoo

This weekend we got to spend another day at the Philadelphia Zoo.

They were having an Open House for members to see some behind-the-scenes areas. So we got to see the commissary (where they store and prepare all the animals' food), the health center, the inside of the big cat area (where they are fed, etc.). We learned about "enrichment" items they use for the animals, such as hiding different scents around their enclosure, like cinnamon or oregano. The kids even made some "toys" out of boxes, egg cartons and paper towel tubes, which the zookeepers will give to some of the smaller animals to knock around and tear apart. We got to visit up close (but still behind a half door) an Aldabra tortoise--Prickles--who was injured about 13 years ago, and is unable to walk. Zoo maintenance workers came up with a dolly for him to ride. They call hime the "skateboarding tortoise." Very interesting to see these others areas and learn more about the animals' care.

Prickles and Tweedledum

We did play in the Treehouse again, and visit the usual favorites: primates, big cats. Many animals were not out; it was really cold, only about 35 degrees, so we missed the hippos, elephants, giraffes and zebras. I think we'll wait until spring before we go again.

Playing in the Treehouse