Aubree Is a Two-wheeler Now

The Sisters took some Family Pictures

Road trip with the Sisters

 The Boston Temple (which is really in Belmont) was open on Memorial Day and the missionaries were given permission to go to the Temple. They were encouraged to get rides with members to keep their mileage down. Aaron and I were planning on going to the Temple some time that weekend, so we decided to go on Memorial Day and take Sister States and Sister Johnson along for a road trip. (We also brought Flat Stanley along. He is a visitor from Katie Parson's first grade classroom who we are hosting for a couple weeks.)

We sure love our Sister Missionaries! We're lucky that we get to see them a lot - dinners, using our internet, doing laundry, going out on visits, etc. - I think we saw them every single day last week. They are such positive examples for our girls.

Waiting for Aaron and the Sisters to come out of the Temple.

 This is our favorite park to visit when we go to the Temple - Robbins Farm Park in Arlington.

 This is our favorite swimming spot in the area (actually the only beach we've visited in the Boston area). But it's super cool because it's Walden Pond!!!! The ACTUAL Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau lived for two years. I absolutely love visiting historical sites. I feel like I'm going back in time or something - almost the same feeling as when I'm reading a good historical fiction - but I get to be there and see it in real life. Also, I feel like we're having an educational experience while having a ton of fun.

This is the very site where Thoreau built his cabin with his own hands and lived there for two years as an experiment in simple living. There was a wonderful talk giving in General Conference by Elder Perry about living more simply and he uses Thoreau's experience as an example. It's a wonderful talk, here's the link: Let Him Do It with Simplicity

Such a great day in Massachusetts. We're so glad to have shared it with our missionaries too.

Aubree

Unfortunately Aubree can now pronounce her "r" sound - kind of bitter sweet. But she still says and does some pretty cute stuff. For example:

"My hands are yum." or "My bum's yum." (instead of numb)
"I have headache in my arm."

 Aubree loves sticks. Whether we're hiking in the woods or just walking around the block she has an eye for finding good walking sticks and will generally find several.

 Beginnings of Spring at Wilcox Park. Spring time just makes me feel so good. Aubree is just my little girlfriend - we're pretty much always together. I'm not too excited about all day kindergarten next year. :(

The other night at bedtime I saw Aubree walk into Carly's room/fort with an umbrella, a suitcase (dr. kit), a bag and straw hat. I guess she needed that stuff to move into Carly's room.

Spring Break

 Way back in the fall Ellie found a bunch of misplaced bulbs and planted them in the backyard by our lilac bush. We kinda forgot all about it until the end of March when we started to see little green shoots coming out of the ground. So Ellie made a nice rock border and a few weeks later we had beautiful daffodils. What a wonderful Spring surprise! Ellie loves the outdoors and gardening.

 As always, we LOVED General Conference. I saw this idea on Pinterest for making a Conference board where you can keep track of the speakers and their topics (and some other stuff), so I spent a lot of time making it (and even bought a laminator). The girls liked it, but we really didn't use it much. The thing we all really enjoyed, aside from the talks, was the bag of candy assigned to each apostle that we would open at the beginning of their talk. :) We consumed so much sugar within those two days!

 We spent our spring break at the West's house... house-, dog- and hamster-sitting. As with every other time we've done this, it was super fun for the girls, but by the end of the week I was SO ready to be back in my own home (even if it is 1/5 the size and 100+ years older)!

Ellie + Mommy = LOVE

 We went to a beach in Niantic after spending some time at the Book Barns and a fabulous 50's candy shop (where we spent WAY too much money on junk).

 We had the missionaries over for dinner and our Sister States (not pictured) was on splits with her sister trainer, Sister Jones (pictured above). Aaron asked Sister Jones where she was from and she said Wyoming. She is from a tiny little town called Otto right by Burlington, WY (the town that my parents grew up in). I told her we were probably related (because I'm related to most people in that little area), and lo and behold WE ARE!!! It was so cool to meet my (distant) cousin out here in CT!

 Carly loved practicing back flips and back handsprings on the West's trampoline. She's such a good little gymnast.

 Sandy + Aubree = nervous love

(We love Aubree's glamour smiles)

 We went to Devil's Hopyard, a state park just 40 minutes away, and enjoyed the waterfall and other beautiful scenery of new spring.

 I love the vibrant green of the moss that grows on everything!

Aaron + Camile = LOVE!

Sledding in Arlington, Mass. This is the park we play at when we go to the Temple. There is a beautiful view of Boston from this hill. 

 Carly got glasses in January. She was so amazed at the details she can now see.

 Aubree and I take playing house pretty seriously. I had a baby this day. I've never had such an easy (and short) pregnancy and delivery. Aubree is such a proud big sister.

Aubree is famous now. She was in the newspaper a few weeks ago. (Story time at the library)

Ellie was baptized by Aaron on March 1st. It was a beautiful service. There were several people from our little branch there and several friends and neighbors who aren't LDS. We were especially grateful that Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Leon, and Nanny Nette and Grandpa could be there.

This is the only picture I have of Leon and Kathy here with us. So sad! Aaron and Kathy are doing family history and Leon is reading scriptures (pretty typical).

 Also while the grandparents were here we went to Newport, RI to the National Museum of American Illustrators. We love Newport! My parents stayed in a hotel while Aaron's parents were here, so the girls got to spend a couple nights at the hotel and go swimming. After Aaron's parents left my parents moved in with us for the next week and a half. They cooked, cleaned, fixed up, did laundry, entertained and spent quality time with the girls.

We also went to Haverhill, Mass to see the statue of Hannah Dustin (my 11th great grandma on my Dad's side). I wrote a post about her here. We also got a little pamphlet that told us her story and also included a letter she wrote to her church when she was much older. It was so cool because she included some of her favorite scriptures in it, and specifically which scripture she had in her mind during her captivity - Psalm 43 and Psalm 118:7. She said, "… I am Thankful for my Captivity, twas the Comfortablest time that ever I had; In my Affliction God made his Word Comfortable to me…" We had a family home evening lesson a couple days after visiting her statue about how trials can bring us closer to Heavenly Father and he can comfort us during hard times.

One morning Grandpa saw Aubree sitting on this bench and she explained to him that she was in timeout. So Grandpa held her on his lap and told her about a time when he was a little boy and tried to carve something and ended up cutting his hand. He also told her about how life was sometimes hard for him too when he was a little boy and how he liked to have his Mom hold him close and she would bounce him on her leg. (Now I know why my Dad likes to bounce his grandkids on his lap.) It was so sweet to see my Dad hold her close and show her such love and sympathy.

The picture hanging above my Dad is a puzzle that Ellie sent to Nanny Nette and Grandpa for Christmas. After they put it all together, my Dad "engineered" it into about 8 pieces, plus edges, and sent it back to us to put together and keep. (They have no where to put it now that they're homeless.) So, we put it together and then I glued it and framed it for Ellie's birthday.


We LOVED having family here - we are so lucky to have such wonderful grandparents for our kids!

Winter Birthdays

We have three winter birthdays all within 2 weeks of each other - not bragging, just complaining ;) - Ellie, me and Aubree. And this year both Ellie and Aubree had birthday parties with friends. And guess what? I am not a party planner. At all. I get really stressed about all the little details AND the big picture. During all this planning I read the book "Heaven is Here" by Stephanie Clark Nielsen and it helped to remind me that everything that was stressing me out was actually a blessing. Ellie and Aubree are both alive to celebrate another birthday. I am alive and healthy enough to plan and carry out birthday parties for them. (Last year we all went through the flu during our birthday season.) Aaron has a job, so we can pay for presents and parties. Not to mention, these are parties I'm planning. PARTIES. Not PTO fundraisers or funerals or church lessons, but parties. So, really it shouldn't be that stressful. (But I still had to remind myself of that at least once a day for about three weeks.) Here are some pictures:

 This was Ellie's cake for our own family celebration. A cute little round ball… or is it?

 Surprise! Piñata cake!

Her birthday party was a cake decorating party. I made the aprons for each of the girls and a cake for each of them to decorate and take home.  The girls all had a lot of fun with the decorating - some of those cakes have more icing than cake.

Next came my birthday:
Aaron and the girls usually make me breakfast in bed for my birthday, but this year they decided to clean the entire downstairs (kitchen, dining, family rooms) before I came down in the morning. Such a great birthday surprise! It really got my day off to a great start. (In all my slobby childhood years I never dreamed that I would appreciate a clean house for my birthday. I'm becoming my mom. ha ha!)

Aubree and I had a cozy indoor picnic (notice the space heater behind us) for lunch. 

 Yummy Japanese take-out for dinner. 

And we ended the night with a few episodes of The Cosby Show. It was such a wonderful, low-key, happy birthday!

And last but not least, 

 This silly girl celebrated her GOLDEN birthday on February 5th!

 We had a tea party with a beautiful new (used) mismatched tea set. We had some cute finger foods and the girls made fascinators (the huge, fancy headbands). This party was especially stressful because there was a big storm on the day of the party. Oh the joys of winter birthdays! So, I cancelled the party, rescheduled the party, then switched it back (looking back it's doesn't seem like a big deal, but at the time I was a wreck.) Only one of her original guests was able to make it, but luckily school was canceled so we invited some neighbor friends over that normally would have been at school. In the end I'm glad it worked out the way it did. We had a wonderful time with some friends that we don't get to see very often.

And the night before Aubree's birthday the girls decided they really wanted to cut their hair. It was Aubree's first hair cut. *sniff* They look super cute, but I miss their long hair.