He is walking!!!

"Um can I walk now?"

Ben is walking! Yesterday while Cecilia, John Paul, and me were at practice, he started walking. today he walked all the way down the hall with out holding on to anything. He can run across the couch.(When he holds onto the couch.) So I am just posting this to let every one know that he is a walking boy! Last night right before dinner, he pushed one of the chairs all the way from the table to the counters. It was very cute!

One GIANT zucchini!

Every day John Paul and Max go out to our vegetable garden and pick all the ready vegetables. The other day John Paul found this GIANT zucchini! He is holding two to show the normal sized one(the one on the left) and the big one,( on the right). IT was pretty cool! (Another cool Vegetable story: We have a cucumber stuck in our gate. It grew in the gate and is now so big that it is stuck! It is very funny looking!)

Our little Ballerinas!

The other day Emily came over to play and I was going through Rose's clothes. I found these to leotards and at once the two girls begged to wear them. So I helped them get into them and then at their request I put their hair up in buns and pronounced them "ballerinas"! They then went downstairs and danced around telling every one that they were "ballerinas", it was very cute!

Driving Home!

The drive home went pretty well. We accidentally stopped for a whole hour, when we were planing on a fifteen minuet stop for lunch. But we got home and unloaded the car and then,(I know we a nut heads) , daddy ran off to work and Mommy took us(all the kids) to Dream Wrights so that John Paul, Cecilia and me could try out for the touring company. (We all made it in the touring company and are all excited. John Paul is in Rupert Meets Mrs. Tales and Cecilia and me are in Beany and the Meany!)

The beach IV

The last day on the beach was also lots of fun! Mommy took Max, John Paul, Rose and me on a walk. We went far out on the rocks and went on the trail through the sand dunes and rocks. AS you can see Ben had a blast too. He had lots of fun playing in the sand and watching the waves. The sand castle in the picture is the one I made. In the picture I am dumping water on it to have a 'flash flood' that ruins it! Max kept saying over and over, "Daddy! Mommy look! Look at the bridges! Look they stay up!" He was very excited about them. So our days on the beach and with Grandad and G were very fun! Thanks Grandad and G for having us at your house!

The Beach III

The pictures don't make the waves look very big, but they were. Not big compared to North Carolina, but, big for Connecticut. This was um...... Sunday. Yeah that's right. The waves were really nice! That was the only day Rose didn't really go near the water. It was a great day!

The Beach II

The Beach was really nice the second day too. I love this shot of the seagull that Mom took. It is a great picture!












There was a lot of jelly fish,(the only downer), so John Paul and Cecilia and Max were very busy digging holes and dumping in jelly fish!



























Ben enjoyed the beach too!











Rose loved playing in the sand and splashing in the waves.

The Beach I

Ok I have been rather busy so I have not had any time to post about the beach until now. So here goes!



As I said earlier, the tide was very high when we went crabbing. But it was a blast! We didn't even try to catch and crabs becasue we were having so much fun swimming and finding "cold" hot tub seats! There were flat rocks under water that you could sit on and then the waves would splash you all over. The water would go around your shoulders and down your back. It was very exciting!



















Grandad and G let us take this boat to the beach every day. We didn't get very far but it was fun trying!

Ben is ONE!!!!!!!!!!

Lollipop Boy!!! He LOVED the lollipops!



Ben turned one while we were at Grandad and G's! Happy Birthday Ben!!

Birthday boy! "That cake was yummy!"

More from Grandad's!

Well day two is just about complete! We went crabbing today, the tide was SO high! We didn't even try to catch any crabs because we were having so much fun sitting on rocks under the water and getting completely wet! We found several big boulders in the woods and have started to make a path. Tomorrow we look forward to another day at the beach!

We got to Grandad's House!

Well we arrived at Grandad's house! I don't have a long time to write and I don't have any pictures, but I'm going to tell you what has happened so far!

We were aiming to leave at 9:00 in the morning but that turned out to be 10:00 in the morning. Between stops and traffic it took a little over six hours but it was a good trip besides:
1: Ben not being a very good travler....
2: Rose flipping out a few times......
3: Some big traffic...........
4: and a few people feeling sick.

But now we are here and John Paul and Max have already, found a snake hole, almost caught a frog, took out lots of toys downstairs, started to explore the woods AND ran around playing with "panther" the stuffed panther that they love! Grandad and G have a stuffed Koala and Max has one too. Their stuffed has pink paws and so Max declared it a "girl"and his koala has gray paws so Max has declared that the two Koala's are "married". It is very cute to see him walking around with the two koala's.

G has prepared a wonderful mean for us so I must go, but I will keep you all updated!

P.S.
I almost forgot, in the car we gave Ben is very first dose of sugar, a lollipop, he LOVED it! It kept him happy for a while! Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!! Ben is now ONE!!!!! We will celebrate with cake and ice cream after dinner!

Camp OUT!

Since the beginning of June, John Paul and Max have been asking to camp out in our backyard. So last night after a fun afternoon at Pinchot State park we ate dinner, pulled down the tent from the crawl space and got ready to camp out!

Here is us sitting outside around our "campfire"(in reality, a camping lantern), we had paper lanterns up in the trees which set off a nice soft glow.







Daddy fired up the grill and we opened the marshmallow bag to find:
A gooey clump of what used to be marshmallows! Some how the outer coatings melted. Fortunately we were able to pull individual sticky balls which were sort of in the shape of a marshmallow. Daddy made a great point of how we had to be very careful and not drop any marshmallows in his grill. We were all careful until:
Mommy was doing her marshmallows and, "plop" a marshmallow dropped! It was very funny!







And then to top it off, five people managed to squeeze into a two person tent for the NIGHT!!!! That would be: me, Cecilia, John Paul, Max, and Daddy. We played games in the tent and then told ghost stories in which Daddy told a thrilling one that scarred Cecilia and John Paul a lot.





























It was an awesome night!! We even topped it off with waffles for breakfast!

I'm back!

Hi everyone! I got back from camp last night! My best friend's family picked me up in the morning and I stayed at their house all day. When the wedding was over, my family came and picked me up! Black Rock was awesome, (like always!) I think this was my favorite year for many reasons, one of the main: All week my cabin was at "war" with Bluebird. It started with us stealing their cheer; "What, what?" Then they stole our couch from our front porch! Then we put two picnic tables in front of their door and stole the Junior Counselor's cot that was on the back porch! IT was so fun doing pranks on each other back and forth! Well that's all for now.
~Mary Kate