Summer Fun

Here are some random pictures from the Summer:

Calvin LOVED the park - he was all over it.





Mia and her best friend loved the swings. Mia learned how to
do them "superman" style.


Calvin is growing like a weed!


If you can believed it, he has WAY more hair than Mia did at this age.


Mia is at that stage where she needs a friend to have fun at the park.


Some of those hot days we did this on our own balcony:


We had a trip or two to the beautiful Longwood Gardens:










Mia's swim lesson this year were a HUGE success. I had taken her to our community pool and she was SO timid in the water. But, after her two weeks of everyday swimming lessons - she was loving the water. She was jumping in, putting her face in by herself etc. etc. It was awesome.








At the beginning of each session they would blow a whistle and all the students would come running to the group. It was really funny to watch Mia run off - she seemed so grown up.




More pictures of our summer vacation to come.

Electronic Woes

I need to do a real blog update one of these days, but for now - I just have to list our electronic woes.

1. Calvin stuffed the DVD player with lots of DVDs. I extracted them with my tweezers this morning, but the DVD player still doesn't work.

2. A few weeks ago I was busily making dinner with a recipe that was on the computer. Well, in my rush I went to reach into the cupboard for a glass pyrex measuring cup and accidentally dropped it on the computer screen. While the measuring cup survived, our computer screen cracked....and we haven't fixed it yet. Even as I write this I am working around the giant black and white spider web across the screen.....

3. I accidentally dropped our digital camera the other day, and now it doesn't turn on.

4. And finally, my cell phone (which is only 2 months old) died this morning. The battery got really hot and then refused to hold a charge. And now I have no cell phone.

Besides all of our electronic woes, life is good around here though!! One of these days I'll do some updates....

In April....

We had a lot of Easter fun - we pretty much celebrated Easter for the first two weeks. First we had an awesome ward activity (no pictures, but Mia had a blast). Next, we had a great time hunting for eggs at Bell Tavern Park. It was really cold that morning! Mia was one of the big kids in her age group this year - and her basket was loaded! She was nice and shared with her little brother and another little girl. :)



Look at all those eggs!



The next week we had great weather - hence the shorts and tee shirts. We had our own little egg hunt with some friends.





Love those pigtails.



And of course we had to dye eggs. Although he's not pictured here, my Dad was in town for a few days right before Easter. We had our Easter dinner with him :) and were glad that he could color eggs with us. Mia and I were looking at old pictures recently and I realized that we've got pictures of us dying Easter eggs with her every year! This year technically we "painted" the eggs because Mia chose the glitter eggs:



Poor Mia had a terrible cold in this picture and her nose was literally cracked and bleeding....at least the boys were healthy and happy though!





Here's a pic with grandpa! We had fun playing outside while he was visiting :) Too bad it was just before all the trees got their leaves, but doesn't the grass look wonderful? (Did you see the pictures of the snow? We are sooo thankful for SPRING!)



And of course - in April we celebrated ONE YEAR WITH CALVIN!!! It's true, my baby boy is one year old!!!



He hated the hat:



But he loved the balloons.



And the toys were interesting.


Mia was very involved in the cake process. I'm no whiz when it comes to fancy cakes, but we had a good time faking it. Calvin just wanted to play with the fire....boys will be boys.




We love our little guy. I'll have to post some video of him walking - he started walking a week before his birthday and he's been running around ever since!

Catch Up

It's catch up time. In March...

Calvin had his first hair cut. He wiggled all over, but wasn't too terrified of the clippers:

BEFORE


AFTER


We visited Ryan's brother and family in Phoenix. I absolutely Loved, LOVED Arizona. I know, I know, it gets really hot - but in March it was dreamy. Especially coming from the deep freeze of Pennsylvania. Even after enjoying two years in the forest, I'm still a desert girl at heart. Back to the trip though, it was awesome. We had a great time visiting Uncle Tyler, Aunt Jessica, and Cousin Makayla:

The boys enjoyed several rounds of golf:




The little girls enjoyed the zoo:





So did the rest of us.





Calvin was just along for the ride:



The cousins had fun playing together.

They loved romping around on the blow up air mattress every morning.


We had a good time playing at a local farm:












Calvin had a little run-in with a rooster. They were staring each other down, and one of them was reduced to tears. I'll leave it to you to decide which contender was left crying...




We enjoyed visiting the Mesa temple grounds - and the cool cacti garden. Ryan and Mia plucked a grapefruit from one of the fruit trees, which probably seals their fate. I mean come on, that's double whammy - stealing on temple grounds...they're toast for sure.





We had so much fun in AZ - thanks Tyler & Jessica!

BURIED!

We are getting buried alive out here! It is unbelievable. I was walking in snow up to my WAIST this afternoon.

It all started last weekend. I think Mother Nature overhead that the Paces were going to move, and she decided to rain on our parade - well snow on it. We had it all scheduled, booked, and planned for Saturday morning. Well, the forecasters kept saying that we were going to have a monster snow storm starting on Friday evening resulting in several feet of snow. Soooo, we got our poop in a group and moved it all on Friday as fast as humanly possible. The first flakes started to fall just as we pulled the door down on the back of the moving truck. And the next morning we woke up to this:





Being snowed in last weekend had its benefits, we got all the boxes unpacked. But, imagine our surprise when we heard that ANOTHER big storm was headed our way - the last snow hadn't even started melting. So, yesterday I braved the crazy grocery stores and even hunted for a snow shovel (didn't find one, there aren't any in the entire town). It started snowing Tuesday night around 6 and it is now Wednesday 9:30 - and it is STILL snowing. Hence the waist deep snow.

Let's see some snow!



View from our front door:



The back deck (early in the afternoon before the serious snow):



A bench in the park across the street:



The snow on top of the trash can back there was as of 5pm - it's been snowing for another almost 5 hours.





Piles of snow in the street in front of us:



Mia's had enough, she's walking home.