Happy Birthday, Adrianna!!

Yesterday was Adrianna's 1st birthday!! We can't believe that a whole year has passed so quickly. She is growing into a wonderful little girl. She loves following after Abby and tries to do whatever her big sister does. She is such a sweetheart and loves to give kisses. If she kisses one person in the family, she has to kiss everyone, even if you aren't in the room she will find you to give you a kiss!

Her birthday was pretty low-key, but still lots of fun. I ordered a small cake for her and one for the rest of us but received a call from the decorator saying she had a flat tire and wouldn't be able to make our cakes! After calling around and not having much luck finding small individual cakes, we decided to just make it at home. I found a large muffin tin that made just the right size.

She liked the icing, but also wanted Abby to have some so she kept putting her finger in her cake and sharing with her sister! She didn't really like having the icing on her hand, but liked the cake.










Abby has wanted to get her a "ball popper" as she calls it since Adrianna was born, so we found this cute giraffe one for her.



Happy Birthday, Adri!!

Boston Children's Museum

Here is the cute hat that Aunt Dolores gave Adrianna. She likes wearing hats and this one is super cute!




Today we went to the children's museum in Boston. It is three stories and had a lot of great exhibits. I asked Abby what her favorite part was and she said, "The whole place- I liked it all!"
They even had a baby play area that Adrianna could crawl around in. She liked going down the "slide." We will definitely be heading back there and next time Q wants to see Harvard, which is close to the museum.

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Abby came and woke us up at about 1:30 in the morning saying it was time to open up presents!! Thankfully we were able to coax her back to bed until a more reasonable hour- 5:45. Quintin and I were up before the girls so we got the camcorder set up and he had some coffee. It was Adrianna's first Christmas and she didn't really know what to think about all of it. She wasn't much for ripping the paper off her gifts, and was more interested in what Abby was doing.










Abigail said she really liked her portable vtech game and her Woody doll. She recently saw Toy Story and likes Woody and decided to ask Santa for him. Adrianna liked her ice cream truck ride on toy and her piano from Auntie Tosha. We got a great shot of Adrianna standing up by herself. She gets the biggest kick out of doing this and giggles the whole time!





Sadly, it rained a lot overnight and most of the snow melted away. When we looked on the balcony this was all that was left of our snowman.



Abby almost started crying when she saw it but I told her we would have more snow and could build another snowman soon....hopefully the winter won't let her down!

I have another week off before I start class up here and we are looking forward to Adrianna's birthday on Monday! We might not make it to NYC this week like we hoped because we checked and it is about 4 hours from here. We might have to have some fun a little closer to Newport. Abby wants to see the mansions, so we might try that- we'll see.

Christmas Eve

We are fortunate to be close to family up here in Rhode Island. Q's great Aunt Dolores lives in a nearby town and invited us for lunch on Christmas Eve. The food was wonderful and we all had a fabulous time. It is always nice to talk with family and hear all of the great stories about the family history. She knits and crochets beautifully and always manages to make things that fit the girls perfectly. We look forward to seeing her a lot during our time here.

The pros and cons of snowy weather

This weekend we got about 7 inches of snow on our balcony, but Q said that it was about a foot out front. Last night we had a hard freeze, so we were glad that we played in it before it got too hard.




One of the cons of snow is that you have to get it off of your cars before you can go anywhere. As Abby said, "Daddy is so brave for going out there in that snow!" Here he is cleaning off our cars. We are also thankful for AWD because we watched someone else trying unsuccessfully to get out of the parking lot, but we didn't have any problems.





The best part of having snow is getting to play in it. Abigail and I aren't professional snowman-makers yet, but we managed to make this cute little guy! The snow was really soft and hard to mold.

Santa's Helpers

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

It's still snowing!

Here are some pictures from our romp in the snow on our balcony. It is 9 p.m. and still snowing- looks like we have gotten about 7 inches so far. Abby had fun playing in it and Adrianna didn't know what to think. She really liked her snowsuit- she kept clapping her hands and looked so snuggly. We had some yummy hot chocolate with holiday marshmallows when we came inside.

Fun in the sun?

As the snow flurries start to fall, Adrianna is thinking about lounging in the sun!

She has also started standing up in the middle of the floor so we think those first steps will happen soon!

Settled in

We are finally pretty settled here in Newport. We still have a couple of boxes left to unpack, but for the most part we are done. We even have our tree up and decorated! The place we are in is nice and the girls have a separate playroom which they really love. The only thing we have to get used to is baseboard heat, which we have never had before. I start Department Head school on January 5th, so we have a little time to sightsee before then. We are going to try to go to NYC to see the Christmas tree and also visit Santaland at Macy's. They also have a huge toys-r-us that we have to see! We also hear Boston has a great children's museum that is only about an hour from here. We are going to also try to get some snow tubing in and this weekend should really help because a big storm is headed our way.

As a way of welcoming us to New England we are supposed to get 6-12 inches of snow today and then some more on Sunday!! We have been keeping our eye out for hills because we have our sled ready- you know Abby loves to go sledding!! Stay tuned for some great snow pictures!

Change of plans

We had a little bit of a schedule change. The moving company could deliver our stuff on either Dec 12th or Dec 19th and we didn't really want to live in a hotel for another week so Quintin and the girls left early this morning and drove up to Newport. They made it around 4 this afternoon and I was so thankful because the weather is bad right now. I should get to leave tomorrow around noon, once my class lets out. It looks like the storm should move out of the area around 4 or 5 tomorrow, so I should only have to deal with the traffic especially through NYC! At least I am driving Quintin's truck so I won't have to fill up thanks to the 44 gallon tank!! Our next post will be from Newport, Rhode Island!!

Weekend Getaway

This past weekend we headed down to Williamsburg, VA to stay at Great Wolf Lodge. We booked the trip a while ago once we knew I would be here for this school because we knew we would need a little break from this small town. Auntie Tosha met us there and we had so much fun. Technology is great because now they have wristbands that also work as your room key, which is a great thing because you don't have to worry about holding on to your key while you are there. It is pretty cold out now so it was great to get to walk around in our swimsuits and flip-flops. It was also the first weekend that they were celebrating "Snowland" where Santa and Rudolph made an appearance. Abby couldn't wait to tell Santa what she wants for Christmas, but Adrianna didn't want to get too close, so I had to sit with her. They also have bedtime stories by the fireplace- that is why the girls were in their pajamas. Abigail got a wand the last time we were there and we were surprised it still worked. This time we added a game to it, so she was able to run all around the lodge finding special clues. The wand allows the kids to interact with things like paintings, treasure chests, lanterns, and even bear-skins hanging on the walls and when they point their wands at them they light up and talk adding clues to help them on their adventure. Abby had a great time with that!

We had our gorilla tripod and remote for our camera so we were able to take a lot of family pictures. The picture of Abby in the large wooden bear chair makes us feel old because she looks like such a big kid! The weekend went by so fast and it is back to small town life for us- at least only for the rest of the week.