Look what I can do!

3 Points!

The food

For Zoë's party I pulled out all the stops and did some fun and fantastic cooking. Here are the highlights:

Table #1

Salad on a stick - very yummy. Tomato, mozzarella, basil from our garden, and french bread.

Table #2

Close up of my bruschetta - reminds me of my days in Rome!

Check out that cake!!!!! Amelia picked it out and has decided she wants the same one for her birthday next year.

Happy Anniversary

Amelia and Zoe,

This site is mainly about you but today it is about your mom. Happy Anniversary to Heidi!

We both have thought that you kids would read this one day and have a memory of what it was like when you were young. So here is a list of awesome attributes that your mom has.

• She puts up with my passive aggressive plans to hardly ever do bedtime.
• She lets me go away for a boys night from time to time.
• She lets me go fishing.
• When she goes for yoga or massage she leaves me with you both. This is amazing special time for the 3 of us even though it is also a relaxing time for Mom.
• She lets Amelia and I watch Reali (Around the Horn) together.
• She always is buying new clothes to look even more beautiful.
• She lets me go on bachelor party fishing trips even though she knows that it is not so much a bachelor party but a married man party.
• She appreciates when I clean the sink.
• She really appreciates when I clean the cat box. (Something I declared, like many men, that I would never do.)
• She doesn't get mad when I tell her that her makeup needs some adjustment or that the pants she has on (at 6:30am) have a huge spot of strawberry yogurt on the bum.
• She wakes up to talk with me about my anxiety even though I know that sleep is her most favorite thing in the world.
• When we go out to eat she straightens her hair and wears special makeup--that is really cute.
• She is a really great mom--strict enough to endure tantrums and kind enough to realize that a sip of Coke won't hurt.

I love her so, so, much.

Mommy - Baby pictures

Our Mommy - baby picture tradition continues with Zoe!

July 14, 2010

July 14, 2011

It has been a wonderful year with our Zoe-bear and we love her so much and can't imagine our family without her.

Award winner

Grandma Crumrine took this award winning picture - how awesome, eh?

A birthday sampling

I will post more, but Zoë had a fun birthday and so did we!


Who doesn't love birthday cake?!

Daddy and his girls

Our beautiful girls.

Sidenote: I woke up on Z's b-day and our camera had broken. I knew we couldn't miss her first birthday pictures, so I treated myself to a Canon Power Shot - aren't these pictures beautiful? I think so! :)

They say it's your birthday...

It's hard to believe, but a year ago today we were getting ready to meet our Zoë-bear...

...we drove Amelia & Yoda to Grammie's house. It seemed that every time I had a contraction Tom took a fast and wide turn and I groaned at him :)

I smiled while Tom took this picture...I started having a contraction while he took it and it felt like it took him FOREVER..

But it was all worth it in the end! :)

More pictures to come!

Lake George Fun

I have had a great family vacation at Lake George this summer. It is incredible to be here and to really take some time off of work. I have told Heidi that this is the most I have not worked in over 2 years. As much as I love education it is great to take a long and I hope well deserved break.

Some great memories from the last few days:

• Hiking Buck Mountain with Amelia, Yoda, and Seth. Amelia, Yoda, and I had hiked it 2 summers ago. It was great to recapture the moments where we got to the top and Amelia ate blue berries right off of the bushes. This year she tried out going pee on the top of the mountain. She found a good spot and didn't even get her under ware wet. She was very proud of herself.
• "I had a wonderful time with you!" This is a familiar refrain that Amelia has uttered in various formulations over the last week. She has had moments where Heidi and I had to re-evaluate if we could even be parents because she was behaving so bad. But she has, for most of the time, been a very cute and very good 3 year old.
• We were swimming with Caroline Safford over at the Safford Horton dock and Amelia decided that she needed a tube. At the time she was swimming naked and she ran through the woods to get the tube. It was touching to see her little naked bum running as fast as she could to get to the tube and then running back. What other level of happiness could there be? What other level of safety and fun could there be?

On the Zoe front she has been incredibly cute. She has become a ravenous eater and today at lunch ate a cheddarwurst, a cheese stick, about 50 blue berries, and a peanut butter sandwich. She becomes cuter and cuter by the day

Too cute.

Amelia has been a busy bee...

she's been swimming and playing and fighting bedtimes... and still hanging around in that spidey suit!

In case you were wondering, she still wears the spidey suit.

Super heroes ride tricycles, didn't you know?


Special pouty face...

We let her stay up late to watch fireworks and she loved it!

Mini-me

Zoë is turning into a little mini-me/Mommy. We found some of these pictures of me when I was almost exactly Zoë's age. When we showed them to some family members they actually thought they were pictures of Zoë...
Mommy - December 1979 (11 mos)

Zoë - April 2011 (10 mos)

Mommy - December 1979

Zoë - May 2011

Mommy - December 1979

Zoë - June 2011 - I think I have a better one but I'll have to keep looking...