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!

Why I love my kids

Because they're so stinking cute!

Meet Sandy

So I already mentioned that we fared well during Hurricane Sandy. These are a few pics I pulled off of Jesse's phone of when we went down to the river. This was on Tuesday afternoon. That is supposed to be the boat ramp. I think that the water level rose several more feet. At one point when we drove by, the parking lot appeared to be covered in dirt and sediment, so I think that eventually the parking lot was covered. Crazy! However, in the past I guess PoR has actually had flooding into town, like past the canal, and railroad station. That was a long time ago though. Glad that there was no serious damage where we were. However, as we were standing there, you just saw tree after tree floating down the river. Like, not just little things here and there, whole tree trunks.

October Overview

So October was a busy month for us. I had stuff going on every single weekend. It was crazy. We started with General Conference, and the kids did pretty well with that. There were so many great talks about love and discipleship.
The following weekend I had the Baltimore Running Festival. This year we did the relay. I have now done the Marathon, Half marathon and Relay. All that is left for me is the 5K. The night before my friends Colleen, Cindi, and Jalene went down to Baltimore to stay at a hotel. It really is a great way to do things! :) We had so much fun the night before. Lots of laughs. I didn't really train for this race, but not many other people did either. It was still fun. Baltimore puts on a great race.
Then the next weekend was our ward trunk or treat as well as a baby shower for my friend Lindy. I did a lot of baking and cooking for that. When I got home from that we all wen to the pumpkin patch together with Grammy and Grandad, and then out to dinner.
After that, a very sad thing happened, my BFF Jana moved to Pittsburgh. It was sad. It still is sad. We had a little going away party for her that week, and that was a riot. It made me especially sad that she was leaving. Then on Friday night we had a primary program practice. Jesse took the kids to that, and had to stay because he is a teacher, so I found myself without kids that night. So Colleen, Jana and I went to dinner, and then to see Pitch Perfect. (Hilarious, btw.) Jana was leaving the following morning, so this really was it. (well, except that she is coming back down next week for the Breaking Dawn premier) I was the only one who cried that night. I guess Colleen doesn't like Jana as much as I do, and Jana doesn't care for either of us.
That Saturday I was supposed to go to a Stake training meeting, but I was just tired of being away from home, so I decided to skip it so that I could be with the family, and also so we could get the yard taken care of while the weather was still nice. We got a lot of things taken care of while we were preparing for the Hurricane to come. That evening, Graham had a birthday party to attend, and then we went to the corn maze after that.
Hurricane Sandy started to hit us on Monday. School was cancelled, although there was just rain for most of the day. There was a little flooding, and later in the day the winds did start to pick up. We however, were able to keep power for most of the day, and even were able to venture out for a bit. The Government was also closed, so Jesse didn't have to go into work. It really hit us on Monday night. At about 7pm we lost power. We were prepared this time. I had frozen 6 gallons of water in our chest freezer, so when the power went out, we transferred everything from inside to that freezer in the garage. We filled it so full that I had to take 4 gallons out, which I was then able to put in the refrigerator, which in turn kept the fridge cold.  On Tuesday morning we woke up expecting to be in it for the long haul, so we were pretty surprised when there was only a little rain and wind, and the power came back on by about 9:30. However, School and work were cancelled again, so we just hung out that day as well. We went down to the river, and it was as high as we've ever seen it. So when it comes down to it, we got off very easy from this storm. No damage or flooding in the house, and minimal power loss.
And that pretty much gets us through the month of October. It was busy one! Unfortunately, that's just life these days, I always look at a month and think, oh wow, this is a busy month. I'm just glad that we are not as busy as some other families!