Holding Hands

Last July we went out to Utah for a Rogers family reunion (Jesse's mother's family.) I never blogged about it because I was in a bit of a funk after the miscarriage. But this picture of Graham and Grandad will always be one of my favorites.

President's Day fun

 Over President's Day weekend we went with the Markham family out to Deep Creek Lake for a little mini-vacation. It was a pretty good time. I didn't get any pictures before the last day, but here are a few from then. We spent a lot of the time just hanging out around the house. The farm house that we rented was on a large piece of land, so there were some sledding hills nearby. Luckily we got about 4 inches of snow soon after we got there. There was also some snow shoeing, snow hiking,a sleigh ride, and tubing over at Wisp.

 Here are the 8 East coast cousins. Only missing Uncle Derek's family.

 Playing around the property while Daddy was loading up the car. There was a little creek that they enjoyed throwing snow into.

 This boasted to be the best sledding hill in MD. I mean, it was pretty good, but I don't know about the "best." But the boys did have fun, and Jesse even got his snowboard out and was able to go down the hill a few times.

So it was a fun little get away, and now we're totally ready for winter to be over. I even washed the snow suits in hopes that I can just put them away. Of course, March in MD is always a wild card, so we shall see, but I am really hoping that silly groundhog was right this year! let's hear it for an early spring!

Celebrating Super Mario Style

For Graham's birthday this year we had a Super Mario Style party. He invited some of his friends from preschool, and we set off to have a great time.

Some of the decorations that we had included coin banners.

 And a lovely "G" on the front door.

We had lots of games and activities. One of the games was this Memory game. It worked out perfectly to do this since this is actually something that you would do in the Super Mario brothers game.

The kids also painted their own Mario Karts.

Then we played a paddle ball game where they needed to knock down a cup tower.

I made a Mario head, and we played pin the moustache on Mario.

Can you see where Olivia and Graham helped out? 

 We had a pinata.

 I made a Mario cake. I did this by putting a piece of waxed paper over a coloring sheet, and then piping onto the waxed paper I was able to get it all in the right places. Then after a bit in the freezer to firm up, I was able to just put the design onto the cake, and peel the waxed paper off. It worked out pretty well.

 I found these adorable little candies at the party store.

 I also made these little chocolate power ups.

 And thse marshmallow pops were a sinch to put together.

 I had bought little mustache stick-ons for each of the kids to have, but then at the start of the party, I couldn't find them anywhere. They showed up literally 10 minutes after the last kid left. :)

So there was Graham's party. It was a success, and all of the kids had a great time!

In case you were wondering

 So just in case you were wondering what we have been up to in the past 3 months: Graham learned how to fly.

We spent our Thanksgiving at Deep Creek Lake with Jesse's parents. It was a lovely quiet weekend. We went to dinner at a fancy schmancy restaurant, and all enjoyed not having any sort of mess to clean up.

 We learned that Olivia has developed a fear of Santa, and would not sit on his lap any of the times we happened to come across him this season.

 An Elf on the Shelf came to our house, and brought the kids their new Christmas pajamas. I'm not sure if he helped at all, but the kids enjoyed having him around.

 Graham celebrated his birthday Super Mario style. (And I may do a whole post on that, because I went all out!)

 We all grew Mustaches.

 Olivia just kept on getting cuter, (and got potty trained over Christmas break!)

I went through the trouble of getting us a nice family picture, so that I could send out a Christmas email, I wrote up a whole thing and got it all ready to send out, and then I didn't send it out, and it just got so late that I was kind of embarrassed to send it out at all. (So Merry Christmas from the Markham's!)

Some things that we didn't get pictures of: Christmas! (I didn't pull out the camera once the entire time apparently!) It was our first Christmas in our new home, and we celebrated by not leaving the house, and making everyone come to us. It was wonderful. We had Jesse's parents and sister come for a nice Christmas Eve dinner, and then they all came back the next day to hang out for a bit.

My brother Tim and his family finally moved to Virginia! So we were able to hang out with them on New Year's Eve. We had a great time, and look forward to many awesome get togethers for many years to come!

And that's pretty much it. We have had a pretty low key winter this year, which is just fine with me!