Thursday, June 30, 2011

Enjoying the End of June

Yes we have a giant party at our house on Monday. And no, our house is nowhere near ready, but despite that we went to our favorite library today (we've been going to this library since I was a baby). For two hours. For the past two days my mom has been working on our school portfolios (which were due today) and I was watching kids and today when she finished she decided we should go to the library.

While I was watching the little kiddos...

...we played outside...


Joey got the cut under his nose at Chris's party when he fell off the picnic table bench. How the dirt got on his face? I don't konw.



...made decorations...
Hopefully these turn out. Tomorrow morning we pop the balloons and hope the yarn stays in the nice round shape. If all goes as planned they will be hanging somewhere around our house on July 4th. (See the white one in the front, yeah the balloon popped on it's own. :( and just for the record these are NOT as easy as they seem.)

...watered flowers...
The vegetable garden with vegetables planted.


...read books...

...and taken baths.

While we were at our favorite library...

...we played with the toys...

 ...smiled and had fun...

...picked out lots of books...

...made messes (Joey with books and Benny with the craft)...

...and made crafts (little paper dolls with glued on clothing).

While we were in the car on the ride home from the library...

...we read our new books...

...cried and laughed...
In the left picture his eyes are watery and there are tear tracks on his cheeks.
...and fell asleep (well Benny did).

I hope you've been enjoying the end of June as much as we have!
Love,
Mary Kate

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Chris's Surprise Party

On Sunday we were able to go to Chris McDonnell's surprise 30th birthday party. It was a lot of fun! Ania had Chris blindfolded when they pulled up and I managed to capture his surprise face:
Turning Chris in the right direction. :)

Ready...set...

...SURPRISE!

After Chris made his way down the line of party goers he looked around and asked "Where are we?" Ania had driven in some circles after blindfolding him to get him confused. :)

We had delicious meatball subs and a large variety of sides. Max (our pickiest eater) ended up having chips, brownies and cake for dinner. That wasn't the plan of course, but oh well. It wasn't a huge crowd, but a nice sized one. Of the McDonnell family the Brown's, Aunt Lorrie and Uncle Fred, Ali and our family were able to come (and of course Chris's whole family, Aunt Linda, Uncle Jim, Kimmie, Amy and Dustin and Hadley, David and Cheryl).
A bunch of the McDonnell's there
Chris is Max's godfather but he is also (I think) one of Max's idols. Max LOVES playing with Chris. Actually being the wild monkey that he is, Max probably needs to settle down quite a bit when around Chris. :) For large chunks of the party all the kids were at one of the two playgrounds, but whenever Max was in the pavilion he was usually hanging off of Chris in some way or another. Sorry Chris :) We have pictures from back when Max was only 1 and 2 years old, when Chris's family would come to our house for Thanksgiving, and Max is tackling Chris then too!


Notice Joey in the left hand corner watching?
So cute! Everybody was laughing at Uncle Jim in the pictures. You can't tell in this picture but he looks hilarious in a couple of the pictures!
The cake was so cute! It had the cutest picture of Chris on it. I didn't get a good picture of the cake so this will have to do:
Wondering about the fingermark in the top righthand corner of the picture on the cake? That was Ben of course. He also removed a candle, licked it, put it back in the cake, took it out and licked it again and was going for a third dip before someone next to him realized it and took the candle away. lol...needless to say, that became a piece of cake for Ben.
Getting ready to cut the cake. Notice the knife in Kimmie's hand? lol

Kimmie was cutting the cake and she cut huge pieces. Of course all the kids were like "woah! This is so big! I get to eat all of this?"

Another one of the differences between the McDonnell and Anthony family. If my mom started to cut those size pieces at an Anthony family party all the adults would start teasing her and saying things like "really? Teresa those are WAY to big! ect." however McDonnell's are like "yeah! bring it on! dessert! yes! ect." lol, is it hard to figure out which is the sanguine dominated family?
Being fed cake by (I think) Kimmie.

Left: Ben and Hadley                        Right: Hadley
The balloons were a big hit with the little kids. They loved them!
Left: Joey watching the balloons while Haley Walsh ties his shoe    Right: One of the cutest pictures ever!
Cheryl!
Most of Chris and Ania's friends that were there. (Plus Cecilia)

About to open his stack of cards
It was a great afternoon spent with fun people. Happy Birthday Chris!

We're pretty busy getting ready for our own big party, our 4th of July McDonnell family party, with most of the elephantine McDonnell clan on the 4th this Monday.
Love,
Mary Kate

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Gardening

I meant to post this a few weeks ago - oh well. We were in a gardening mood around here about three weeks ago. My mom and John Paul made the beginning of our terraced vegetable garden. Eventually they want to make the entire side hill (the steep one right next to Grammy's house) a terraced vegetable garden, and they plan on adding to it each year. We also finally put some plants in my window well. Yay!
Enjoying a refreshing popsicle


Waiting to be planted...




My window well garden and one of the three pots on the front porch.



The front garden

In front of Grammy's apartment

The finished part of the vegetable garden prior vegetables planted


Nothing super elaborate, but everything super beautiful!
Love,
Mary Kate

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Our Little Rose is 6

Rose's birthday was June 13th. She had a joint pool party with our cousin Emily (who turned 6 on June 5th) at Emily's grandmother's house on June 11th. Sadly I was not able to be there (I was at the beach with the Pierce family, pics on that coming soon) so I don't know much of what happened. But my mom did manage to take a bunch of pictures so once again I'll let the pictures do the talking. :)

Left: Inspiration Right: Cake made our wonderful mother.


The two birthday girls.














And then on Rose's actual birthday (the 13th) our dear friend, Fr. Joe came over for a small family party. (I missed that too.)

Fr. Joe, Rose, Max and Dad.



Happy Birthday Rose! It's hard to believe that you're already 6 years old and starting 1st grade this fall! Wow! We love you.
Love,
Mary Kate