April 2017

My parents came to visit in April. They stayed about a week while Levi was out of school for spring break. It was so good to see them. The kids really enjoyed it. 

Here's my dad turning over the dirt to plant our garden. First time we've done a garden. We have good soil. 

 

Making bridges for their cars. 

 

My parents hadn't seen the kids for about 10 months. Obviously Maya had changed the most. I thought it would take a few days for her to warm up, but it literally took just about an hour and she was fine leaving on a walk with my parents without me. 

 

Coloring Easter eggs. The last 3 years the kids have gotten to color eggs with my parents. 

 

Monster eggs!

 

Easter egg hunt!

We were shocked that in the hour between hiding the eggs and the kids going out to find them, there were squirrels that raided and ate the candy out of several eggs. 

Adrian took a day off work and took us all into the city. It was my first going in since we moved to NY. We tried to hit everything on my mom's NYC bucket list. We started off in Central Park. 

It was surprisingly quiet and peaceful.

Some trees were in blossom. 

We went to Times Square. 

Went to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty from across the bay. 

From there we went to the World Trade Center Memorial. 

Then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. 

It was fun having company. We don't get it that often. 

We also went to Fire Island and saw the light house. Went fishing. And my mom taught me how to make homemade bread and granola. 

Love this family of mine. 

My first attempt of making bread on my own. It was the best batch I made for a couple months. But, I think I've finally figured it out. 

We planted our garden the end of April. We intended just a couple varieties of vegetables, but when we went to the nursery Adrian got a bit excited and bought many more than anticipated :) Here he's planting celery. 

March 2017

This handsome boy had his 4th birthday March 12th. It was on a Sunday so we first went to church then had friends over for cake and ice cream. We love this little boy, especially this happy smile!

All dressed up for church.  

 

We had some good friends over from church to help us celebrate. Malachi was so excited for his cake. He initially wanted a superhero cake, but when we went to the store he saw some blue frosting with fish sprinkles and he wanted that. 

 

The kids table. Such happy faces and lots of laughter! 

 

Adrian had a week vacation in March that we timed around Malachi and Maya's birthday's. It was too cold to go out, but we still wanted to do something. We spontaneously decided to drive to the Pocono Mountains in PA to the Great Wolf Lodge where they have an indoor waterpark. We stayed there 2 nights and got to swim for 3 days. 

 

The Lodge is built for entertaining kids. It had so much stuff for the kids to do. We didn't do all the extra stuff there. Just kept it simple and played at the waterpark. 

 

The kids absolutely loved our time there. They had so much fun that they constantly talk about going back. 

 

We put the boys in their life vests and they went wild. The park had big and small water slides, a wave pool, lazy river a water playground and lily pads to jump across. 

Here's Maya on her birthday. I got her stuff to make a cake, but since we were not home on her birthday it didn't get made. Oh, well. She enjoyed the waterpark too.  I mostly took her around. We sat in the tubes on the lazy river a lot. 

 

 

Malachi kept running off on his own. Silly kid. 

 

Levi loved the "drain" water slide the best. We would sit on a tube and get swirled around then pushed out the middle "drain" hole, basically like a toilet. 

 

All the kids chillin in the lazy river. 

 

 

 

 

There was blizzard one day we were there. In fact, they even cancelled school here for a day. They got 18 inches overnight where we were at in the Pocono Mountains. It was so deep even on our truck. But Adrian dug us out so we could go find some food at a restaurant. Turned out all the restaurants were taking a snow day too. We were forced to eat at the Lodge paying a ridiculous amount. 

This sweet princess loves to snuggle her teddy bear. 

 

What brotherly love. Having your older brother pull you around in wagon. 

 

Maya got a bubble mower for her birthday. She likes pushing the on/off button and watching the. Bubbles float away. 

 

Malachi likes it too 

 

Adrian had several dermatology conferences he had to travel to in the spring. Here are his some of his colleagues. 

 

And he gets to check out some sites while he's away. 

 

Dec 2016-Feb 2017

Adrain had a week vacation in December. It was too cold to go out so we just snuggled in and relaxed at home. 

 

December was when Maya's hair was finally long enough to put in a little pigtail on top. 

We went to the Fire Island lighthouse to see Santa Claus. Every year Santa flies by in an airplane and drops presents. Then he is able to see the kids in the lighthouse. We've never been big at taking the kids to see Santa Claus. Malachi was excited and sat on his knee. Levi did not want to see Santa, so I waited outside with him.

 

Here's Maya all bundled up walking to the lighthouse. It's about a mile walk to get there. She never complains when she's out and about. 

 

In December we had our first snow!! The boys were beyond ecstatic. They hadn't seen or played in snow for 18 months. It was bedtime when it finally started snowing, but I couldn't resist letting the boys go out and play. They both ran out in just their underwear. It was all I could do to get Levi to just put on a pair of shorts and a shirt. Malachi drug out a blanket to wrap around him to keep warm. 

 

Decorating a gingerbread house. I basically forced them to decorate it, they just kept asking when they could start eating the candy. 

 

Silly poses for the camera. I often get a chuckle out of what photos and videos I find on my phone that the boys take on their own.

 

"Papa papa" it's definitely said more than mama in this house. At least from Maya. 

 

Levi's school class had the parents come in and decorate a gingerbread house with the kids. It was super fun. Levi got super messy with icing :)

 

We finally got a big enough snow storm that we had to go buy a snow shovel. We got rid of our other snow shovel when we moved to Florida. We got a kid size snow shovel and the boys were really good helpers at shoveling snow off the walk.

 

We had the boys in karate lessons for several months. They seemed to enjoy it. But we stopped so we could start piano lessons in the fall.

 

I clean up the kitchen and all the while Maya makes another mess.

 

Maya loves to snuggle stuffed animals. She also loves toys that make noises so this talking stuffed dog is a favorite. It sings songs, and Maya gets upset when she wants to hear her favorite song of Patty cakes and it doesn't play it right off the bat.

 

Levi is so good with Maya. He makes her laugh and cares for her so sweetly. They definitely have a connection. They are both just goofy and silly and love to laugh together.

 

Christmas time was great this year. We put the tree up right after Thanksgiving and soon after put up the lights on the house. I made some new felt tree ornaments to go with the wood ones I made a couple years back. They added some vibrant color to the tree and were great toys for the kids to play with. I also made Maya a stocking. I made it girly. It's the one on the far right in the picture. Benji, our elf on the shelf, was much loved this year. Every December morning Levi would wake up very first and excitedly rush around the house to find Benji. Then he would excitedly wake up Malachi and show him. It was so cute to see him so excited every morning :)

Here was our house Christmas morning. 

 

All the kids were spoiled with toys and treats. 

  

Poor Levi got sick Christmas Eve night. All the rest of us eventually caught it as well over the Christmas break.

 

 

 

Pretty girl all ready for church. 

 

I'm only posting a random selfie of me because I'm hardly ever in any pictures. Adrian is able to bring home many samples of skin care products from his work. He has my skin looking the best it ever has :)

 

Little Maya easily smiles :)

When Maya was crawling she would constantly crawl around the floor scrounging for crumbs to eat. Especially under the table where the boys eat. I got to thinking one day that I wasn't sweeping the kitchen floor as often as I used to. Then I realized it was due to Maya cleaning up the crumbs for me :)

Oh how we love this boy's smile. Notice the teddy bear in the corner of his bed. Kendi and Aydri sent that to us for Christmas. We named the bear Dandee because the tag on him said Dandee. Malachi slept with Dandee for the first few nights after he received him. But then one evening as we were getting ready for bed, he brought me Dandee and said "I don't want to sleep with him anymore." I said "how come?" Then Malachi said that every night while he slept, Dandee would mess up his blankets and he did not like it :)

Here is Maya walking outside for the first time. She is sporting the old shoes Malachi wore when he was that age. She likes to walk up all the walks to the doorways and also down the driveways and into the road. She picks up every little rock she finds and puts it in her mouth. 

This big snow storm caused the school to have two snow days. I'm just noticing that Levi has his tongue sticking out in most pictures :)

All the boys working hard. 

We played in the deep snow of course !!

 

 

I love this picture of the boys!

 

Maya was suspiciously quiet one evening. This is how I found her. I now keep all my cereal out of reach. 

 

Pretty girl waking up from her nap. 

She really likes playing patty cake. Here she is throwing "it" into the oven.  She'll just walk around marking it with  a "b" and throwing "it in the oven" randomly.

 

She also frequently initiates peekaboo. 

Here's Malachi reading her a book. 

I learned that if she has no clothes on, she will not keep her diaper on :)

 

 One other thing that happened in the winter was that Levi caught pinworms from school. It took us a week or so to figure out what was going on with him. But we treated him and the whole family because they are so contagious. We also had to deep clean everything a couple times. I hope we don't have to deal with pinworms ever again.