Picture Overload

Basically I just loaded up a few hundred pictures from my mom's camera and I am waiting for the pictures from my camera to load up. I am not planning on actually posting several hundred pictures, so no worries! However this will be a random jumbled post with pictures and stories in no particular order. :)

The Second Budding Photographer

Yes, yes, John Paul, the kid that wants to be the professional chef, and an architect and who wants to own a 5-star fancy restaurant (where the waiters are in tuxes) and he also wants to own a mega resort down in the Bahamas (he has actually drawn plans for it, going into great detail), oh and did I forget to mention that he drew the blueprints for the castle he is planning on building for himself?

He also loves my mom's camera and fills up her memory card with tons of ridiculous photos that he and Max take in their bedroom. His style is quite different from mine as you will see in the following photos:

Not really sure what JP is doing here...


Or Max...


Dinosaur heads? Really? lol!!!


Now this picture is cool. John Paul set up his four inch high AT-AT with white blankets in my parents bedroom. The bad lighting and the grain on the photo add to the photo's appeal in my oppion. It really does look like the AT-AT is outside in the snow in the 5th Star Wars movie. :)


Oh and little plastic men from the game "Risk" which my brothers use to set up elaborate armies and wars.


And of course, they have to have pictures of monsters eating airplanes, (probably inspired by Rampage.)

So there you have it. Boys + a camera + lots of free time = crazy pictures!

Side Note: Rose was in here watching me and asked me what I was doing, when I told her, she begged me to post this one picture that she took all by herself. I'm posting it because we will all have a good laugh over it when Rose is older!


A Valentine from God
Valentine's day was a Monday this year which meant Cecilia and I had to wake up before the sun to go to school. Usually we hardly notice the sun rise because it's not that spectacular. However this Feb. 14th God sent down a Valentine's Day surprise for us. It was the most stunning sunrise I have ever seen. Usually I edit my pictures a little bit. Espescially sunrise/sunset pictures, normally I just tweak the colors a bit to bring them out more. However I did not edit these at all (They are a little blurry but it was very cold and my hand was shaking.):

Look, all the colors you use on Valentine's day, hot pink, red, orange, purple!!!


The whole sky was literally pink and purple and red!

Playing in the Snow
You remember all that snow we had a few weeks ago? I think I mentioned in the last post that I had pictures to post. Well here they are:




Look at that huge icicle.


Mom went outside with Max, Rose and Ben and they built a Dominican Snowman! (See the rosary?)






Mom and Max also decided that it was a good time to climb the tree!

Playing in the Sun

Oh ironic, going from snow to warm sunshine. :) We have seriously enjoyed the past few days which have been so incredibly warm. (Well yesterday and today haven't been as warm...)
Mud of course was part of the deal:


As well as mud pies:






And biking:




And open windows:


And it was Joey's first time walking outside (he loved it of course):




Are they cute or what?



And just for the record, Rose chose to dress herself in the shorts and t-shirt and bare feet, and Benny just stayed in his pj's (the shirt is one of JP's old ones).




Isn't he just absolutely adorable?


Playing at the Park
On Friday, my parents took Max, Rose and Ben to the park:











One more Random Picture
Brotherly Love:


That's all for now.
Love,

The Little Things

There are a ton of things I could be blogging about but instead I'm blogging about the little things going on right now, the things that will be forgotten in a few years.

1.) Rose's 1st Job
Yesterday John Paul and Max decided once again to make a homemade paper fan store. They first created a "Fan Store" in the summer but this time around they decided to make it a little more elaborate and "professional". So they set up a whole store in our basement using the ironing board and two chairs.

Not the best picture of their little arrangement, but still...

They hired Rose to be a sales person and since then Rose has said about a million times "I have a real job!" She is soooo excited! It is so cute. Last night at dinner she announced to everyone that John Paul had made her the Employee of the Week, and tonight at dinner she proudly showed us all her first earnings, (I believe it was 10 cents). The most adorable thing is she totally believes this is all real and that this really is her first "real" job. :)

Rose's "Employee of the Week" picture that John Paul wanted to print out and tape to the wall. (Key word = wanted, mom didn't let him.)

Either Rose or Max walk around all the time with a box filled with fans calling "Fans! Fans for sale! Come get your fans! Only 2 cents a fan!" All three of them were jubilant when my mom bought 18 fans she proudly displayed on our living room mantle. I must have been told at least 7-8 different times that they had sold 18 fans.




2.) Good Night Word *

*Yes, it should say "Good Night World" read on for an explanation.

On Tuesday Max came downstairs and asked my mom if he could take some computer paper to make a book. After obtaining permission and working for awhile he came back downstairs to show off his new creation. I found his book so cute that I had to share it.

The cover. Hence why I wrote "Good Night Word". He meant to say "world".

The picture on the left is an zoomed in on the house to show you all the details Max added.



It reads "Max sleepy".

So cute!


3.) Benny's Prayer

At dinner every night we all go around and pray individually. Recently Benny's pray has included thanking God for all his family members (he lists each one in name usually) thanking God that Daddy is home safely and my personal favorite "Thank you Jesus I hate monsters and bad guys." (Not really sure why he thanks Jesus about that but there you have it. :D)
However tonight his prayer was a little different and it made us all laugh. Here is how it went:

Benny: "Thank you Jesus that it's hopeful."

Everybody looks up at Ben. There's a long pause as we wait for an explanation. Finally Dad asks tentatively:

Dad: "What's hopeful Benny?"

Ben looks at Dad questioningly as if it's obvious what is hopeful and then he says:

Benny: "Monster's don't think it's hopeful, only good people think it's hopeful and -"

Here Dad cuts him off as he has a tendency to ramble on and on and on and on and - you get the point.

Dad: "Okay Benny, it's Max's turn now."

4. Joey Turns 1

Okay so technically this isn't "little" but I don't have any pictures from Joey's birthday on the computer yet (they are all on my mom's camera because I ran out of battery and she hasn't loaded all her pictures up yet). This means I will probably be doing another post on Joey's birthday at some point in the future.
Joey turned 1 on Feb. 5th. It's hard to believe that it's been a whole year since I was announcing his birth!
I decided to go back and load up 1-2 pictures per month of Joey's first year:

The picture I put on this blog. Feb. 2010 ~ A few days old.


March 2010 ~ 1 month old


April 2010 ~ 2 months old (At Longwood Gardens during our trip in April.)


May 2010 ~ 3 months old (His Baptism)


June 2010 ~4 months old (Doesn't he look like John Paul in this picture? At least he looks like John Paul's baby pictures!)


July 2010 ~ 5 months old


August 2010 ~ 6 months old (at Hershey Park, laughing at the prize my dad won at a game.)


Sept. 2010 ~ 7 months old (I couldn't resist two. These two pictures are soo cute!)



Oct. 2010 ~ 8 months old



Nov. 2010 ~ 9 months old (Ignore the blurriness of the photo.)


Dec. 2010 ~ 10 months old (I had to put up all three of these, taken with Chris' 5D the night Chris and Ania came over for dinner.) (Click on any one of them to see them bigger!)



Jan. 2011 ~ 11 months old (He is definitely a McDonnell! He loves his chocolate!)


Feb. 2011 ~ 12 months = 1 year old! (I should have a birthday picture, I know, but this is all I have loaded up to our computer so far!)

Wow, that took awhile. You know how I said I wanted to write a post about the best of '10 but never did. Well as I went through all our photos to get these ones I saw many, many, many pictures that I never loaded onto this blog! I'll admit, I'm tempted to still do a "Best of 2010" sometime in the near future. Should I?

5. 2 1/2 Years Makes a Big Difference!
And just for fun I decided to put up our family picture which was taken June 2008 and the one we just got in Dec. 2010. Now you can all see the difference!

The Girls 2008:

Mary Kate ~ 12; Cecilia ~ 10; Rose ~3

The Girls 2010:

Mary Kate ~ 15; Cecilia ~ 12 (just about 13); Rose ~ 5

The Boys 2008:

John Paul ~ 7; Max ~ 5; Ben ~ 10 months

The Boys 2010:

John Paul ~ 10; Max ~ 8; Ben ~ 3; Joey ~ 10 months

All the kids 2008:

Only 6 kids!

All the kids 2010:

Now 7!

The whole family 2008:


The whole family 2010:


I was amazed at how much older we all look. (Ben of course being the biggest difference.) This proves how much of a difference 2 1/2 years makes!

Love,