Kinder Farm Park

The fall weather was calling us yesterday so we made a trip to nearby Kinder Farm park.

Mary-Catherine was very excited to get out and run around.

Fall Festival 2010

We visited the local Fall Festival this afternoon. At a balmy 79 degrees it felt like autumn in California but it was still lots of fun.

The past couple years we've been to the pumpkin patch MC didn't show much interest in the pony rides. This year was a different story.

The Pumpkin Express was a big hit too!

A little face painting helped Mary decide what she wanted to be for Halloween.

I just can't believe how quickly she is growing. Here she is at the same pumpkin patch two years ago..

Ahhh, those were the days. She still ate fruits and vegetables, had never heard of time out and certainly didn't request Lady Gaga when we got in the car.

Thank goodness she still lets me put silly bows in her hair :)

Happily Ever After

Our niece Muffie got married to a fantastic man on September 25th. We were lucky enough to have a front row seat to all of the festivities as I was the Matron of Honor and Mary-Catherine was the flower girl.

Muffie is the oldest of eight children, six of which are boys which means this wedding was...... a BIG event.

I can't get enough of the vintage cake topper. The wedding had a late 1950's flare. Wedding crashers were welcome as long as they looked like Don Draper or Roger Sterling.

Heading into the church for the rehearsal. Muffie rarely takes a bad picture and I'm a brat. Sorry Muf.

The soon to be Groom, Bride and Mother of the Bride.

Nana, Mary-Catherine and my sister, Mother of the Bride. Half way through the rehearsal dinner MC asked my sister if she could be her other mother. Which seems weird unless you take into consideration her current mother is a cranky pregnant lady who doesn't allow her to have popsicles for breakfast.

The adorable bride was the picture of grace on her wedding day. Thank you Muffie and Dan for sharing your day with us.

iPhone Pictures

I just hooked up my phone to my macbook because it was acting a little weird and took the opportunity to upload these super duper random photos.

This was just the other day at the pool. When I tell you she refuses to look at the camera I'm not kidding.

Right after she finished this snack she asked some strangers at the pool to buy her something from the snack bar. Parenting can be so embarassing.

This is how the first half hour (ok more like hour) of Mary's day looks. Max and Ruby are STILL her favorite show.
When not watching too much tv and asking perfect strangers for treats she does learn cool things like how to write my name.

I realized I never documented Chris's running the Marine Corps Marathon on here. He ran it, even faster than his first marathon. Mary wanted to wear his cool medal to bed.

I took MC to a puppet show at the University of Maryland in April. She really took a liking to the campus. Fingers crossed UMD is an all girls school by 2025.

We are BIG Caps fans in this house. Sadly the they lost in Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs to the Habs just hours after this picture was taken.

Oh and these little Hello Kitty cupcakes? I just thought the interwebs should know I made them. They were covered in fondant so they tasted dreadful but look at the cuteness!

Time Warp

It's been about a year since I gave this blog any attention. Here is a photo synopsis of the past year...

Chris ran in the Parks Half Marathon at the end of the summer. He had a fantastic race but Mary seemed more impressed with her pink balloon. Go figure.

In the fall Chris and I went to New Orleans. We are still talking about the bread pudding at Brennan's and the Swizzle Stick cocktails at Commander's Palace.

Then came the holidays. We spent ten days in New Hampshire for Christmas. It was fantastic aside from a trip to Urgent Care for an ear infection. We got to enjoy the Christmas preparations with our "Up North Family". We went to see the Nutcracker. It's great every year but this year was extra special because my sister's youngest, Harrison was IN the ballet.

Then we got to have a grown up dinner in Muffie and Dan's new house. It was a great night.

Here are the lovebirds on Christmas morning. We can't wait for the big wedding in September!

I got to bake with my two sisters. This was like an early Christmas present. We made a fantastic gingerbread cake. While Yvonne and I finished the cake, Robin whipped up dinner for fifteen. Dinner for that many people would have taken my at least three days. It took her about an hour. She is truly a domestic goddess.

We waited way too long to take this picture. I love you ladies!

While we were in NH, Maryland got hit with a major snow storm. I was so bummed. I love a good blizzard. Mother Nature must of heard me and delivered not one but two blizzards in February. It was so fun. I can say that because I wasn't the one doing all the shoveling.

In April Mother Nature bestowed upon us a little "I'm Sorry About the 4 Feet of Snow" gift. Spring came early and everyone cheered!

We had great weather for Easter this year. Mimi was so excited to wear the beautiful dress Noni got her for Easter. She would have worn it to bed the night before if I let her.

After church we went to Noni and Pop-Pop's for an egg hunt and dinner.

Pop-Pop really went the extra mile. After MC found all of her eggs it was a little anticlimactic for her. Sensing this Ken grabbed her basket and hid all of the eggs all over again.

After a costume change we headed back outside to play some ball.

The next weekend my two sisters and my nephew Ben visited for my birthday. Yvonne's visit was planned but Robin and Ben were a BIG surprise orchestrated by Chris. Thank you honey!

Believe it or not, this is the only picture I have to commemorate their visit. Clearly the Nikon DSLR was money well spent.

That brings us to yesterday and the Memorial Day BBQ at Aunt Tammy and Uncle Timmy's house. She needs a haircut and nine times out of ten refuses to look straight at the camera. Also, she was wearing a pajama shirt.

I caught up with the family while she played with her cousins Brian, Daniel, Kevin and of course Little Uncle Dave (sorry David, she had to come up with something to delineate between her two uncle Dave's) in the Brooks's great backyard. Chris was at home with a 102 degree fever. He seems to be doing much better today and has already made breakfast, mowed the lawn and washed the cars in the 90 degree weather. You just can't keep a good man down.

So there you go, you're all caught up.

We do have one more tidbit to share with the interwebs.... Mimi is going to be a big sister! We are expecting the newest Parks' around Thanksgiving. Gobble gobble!

Benjamin's Graduation

So this post is just shy of a year old but because the main purpose of this blog is kind of a web based scrapbook I couldn't delete it.

It was a great day. My nephew and godson Benjamin graduated from high school (go Tide!). He and his friend Gordon, the son oldest of my sister's writing partner Suzanne from www.frugalfeasts.blogspot.com had a joint party. Every time I see Gordon I feel very old. He and his younger brother were some of my favorite little people to babysit when I was in high school. Now he's a sophomore in college. Oh heavens, my crow's feet are multiplying.

Ben had already made the decision to take a gap year and travel to Asia to work with disadvantaged children with the group Global Roots www.globalroots.org. After an exhaustive fund raising effort he made the trip and in the process made his family very proud.

Ben recently decided to go to St. John's College here in Annapolis in the fall. His mother will miss him but I am so excited about having one of my nephews living right down the street.

Ben is amazing with children. Might have something to do with coming from a family of eight children. I call him the Toddler Whisperer.

Mary-Catherine loved the pool.

Here's Big Uncle Dave (Ben's Dad) and Chris doing man stuff.

Congratulations Benny, the best is yet to come!

It's Only Fair

Seeing how I did all that complaining in the last post about our broken air conditioning, I thought I would share our happy news.

As of yesterday at 2:00pm our new air conditioning and air handling units are humming away and cooling our home to a delightful 70 degrees.

Mary announced this morning that she was freezing and demanded to snuggle under the down comforter for fifteen minutes before getting dressed. She had been clammy and miserable for so long her little body gave up on her parents providing conditioned air and just adjusted to 85 degrees and 90% humidity at 6:00am. Evolution at it's finest.

If you ever visit our home and find I am taking my central air for granted. Please slap me and direct me to yesterday's post.

And seeing how this is going to be one of those boring picture-less posts let's play catch up, shall we?

My nephew /Godson Benjamin is graduating from (my) high school next weekend (woo hoo, Go Crimson Tide!) I am so proud of this accomplishment and even more proud of the young man he has become.

Thanks to the recent severe thunderstorms we have experienced here in Maryland, Mary Catherine now has an irrational fear of thunder and lightening. If she hears the faintest rumble of thunder she leaps at me and says" Oh no, storm is coming! Save me, save me!". I try my hardest to hide my giggling.

Chris's grandmother Monica made the best brownies from scratch last weekend. After we raved about them she was sweet enough to send me the recipe. This got me thinking about how much I would love to put together a collection of family recipes for Mary Catherine. We have lots of great cooks and bakers in our families and I would love to make a culinary scrapbook for her. This way she doesn't have to covet and (kind of) steal her mothers box of recipes like I might have done in the past. If you are reading this and would like to share any recipes please send them our way and I will make sure they end up in her collection.


Some of MC's favorite things right now are:
*"Ipstick" - chapstick. We go through (secretly eat and smear on the hardwood floors) at least two tubes a week. What is wrong with me? I practically lose sleep over the amount high fructose corn syrup she eats but I let her EAT tubes of lip balm?

*"Owl Music" - The CD "If You Ever See an Owl" by the Terrible Twos. http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Ever-See-Owl/dp/B000NJISCK
(I have no idea why Amazon labeled these songs as explicit. They are about lady bugs, and turning eleven and chocolate birthday pies. Not explicit, I promise.)
Some of the band members are from The Get Up Kids, a band Chris and I love. This CD plays in our car all.the. time. When I pick her up from daycare her first request is to listen to "owl music".

* All things pink, sparkly and Disney princess related. ALL of it. I really didn't see this coming. Yes I love the color pink but have been an outspoken opponent to all things Disney since about 1990. Last night we were all in the living room singing along to the Little Mermaid. My how motherhood changes you.

*Running around in Noni and Pop Pop's back yard. Thank you Lynn and Ken for buying the perfect house for grandchildren :)

* Her make believe friends. She calls them "The Boys" and she carries them around in her hand. Stay tuned, I'm not sure about this one yet....

I have lots of pictures on our camera going as far back as Easter. I will stop being a slacker and download and post them this weekend.

Miscellanea

It's June in Maryland and our air conditioning is broken which means Mary Catherine and Mommy have been getting in lots of pool time.



We made our way to Pigtails and Crewcuts recently. Mary's hair grows like crazy (ok, just the back....mullet) and she was way overdue.




My sister, my cousin and some of their little darlings came to visit over Memorial Day weekend. Mary kept Ellie and Harry busy the entire weekend. They taught her how to get her own popsicles out of the freezer. Thanks guys :)

We spent one day in DC doing the tourist thing. Mary spent all her money on this tee shirt and sweet shades from one of the vendors outside of the Smithsonian. No buyers remorse on that face.

Note the fan in the background. Yeah we own a lot of those now. Thank goodness our visitors were from New Hampshire where central air is not the norm. Also they were way too nice to tell us how darn miserable they were.

And this gem is from Sunday afternoon. Sleeping baby in the car gets me every time!

(Yes, I know the car seat straps should be tighter. I'll double check them this afternoon, okay?)

In other news......

Our Accord went to the big parking lot in the sky last week. We replaced it with........a black Accord. We are SO unpredictable, aren't we?

Mary Catherine has been fully potty trained for about a month now. It was a pretty quick process as she is very motivated by M&Ms and fruit snacks.

Inspired by Chris's health kick, I've been getting up every morning at 5:00am to exercise. I've been doing lots of walking, pilates and an exercise video made by the devil, I mean Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser.

Chris is still running and is in a 100 mile cycling race on June 27th. He is also signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in October.

Did I mention we have no AC?