Virginia Keller Family's photostream

Virginia Keller Family's photostream on Flickr.

Enjoy our November photo gallery!

November 2012

The holiday season has arrived!

November was a mix of family drama and wonderful family time!   Much of the month was marked by trips to the doctor and the hospital.  Katharine had a rare infection that took a week to identify, and then another week to treat in the hospital.  While she had a lot of not-so-fun tests and procedures, she is thankfully walking and playing normally again.  And by the first week of November, she’ll be finished with her daily antibiotics.

Many medical visits this month at gave us more opportunities to have some more one-on-one time than usual (i.e. Mommy-Son; Daddy-Daughter, Daddy-Son, Mommy-Daughter time).  Daddy and Christopher got to do a night hike to check out the lights at Meadowlark, while Mommy and Katharine had lots of time to make turkeys with all the craft supplies and time on hand in the hospital “child-life” playroom; and ride the escalators (“alligators”) with glee.  Daddy and Katharine got lots of cuddling in during some of her more procedure filled days, as well as some playing in the child life room and outdoor play area.  And Mommy and Christopher got to go on some fun trips to the grocery store, and to get some fun new toys to take to Katharine; his first rides in a grocery cart!

This extra one-on-one time gave us an opportunity to tell Mom and Dad exactly what we think about things. Katharine showed off her expanding vocabulary and sentence-building skills “No, I want that door open, Mommy”.  And Christopher began to share his ideas more, “I see sun”, “I see kids”, “I want this one”, or "No, THIS milk".

We also discovered how much we rely on one another. While Katharine was focused on getting better and had lots of time to spend with Mommy or Daddy at the hospital, Christopher had to deal with everyday life without her.  Going to school, eating dinner, even going to bed at night was much harder without Katharine to share in it.  And we were very thankful to be back together when we woke up together again one morning.  What fun we had that day, playing, chasing, and giggling!  It was a few days before we again realized the frustration of sharing toys and games.  :)

For Thanksgiving, we had several wonderfully quiet days at home together.  We played with our new toys (mostly new blocks and stuffed friends that Katharine brought home from the hospital), and lots of fun new books from our Grandmas and Grandpas.  We colored and played with stickers, went to the Meadowlark Walk Of Lights, and went out to dinner at Clyde’s and saw the Reston Chorale at the Christmas tree lighting.  We also had lots of fun together on a family outing to Target to pick out lights for the house and soft ornaments for the tree. We pulled up our chairs to watch Daddy decorate the deck and porch - SO neat! And we had lots of fun helping Mommy hang our cute new ornaments on the tree.

 We hope you enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving, and can't wait to see our loved ones in Ohio at Christmas time!

Enjoy our November photo gallery from Flickr!

Love, 

Katharine and Christopher

October 2012

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October seems to have flown by as well!

We are starting to get into a natural rhythm with our school schedule, sort of.  It seems we see the doctor, and sometimes miss school about once a week, for one sort of illness or another.  Thankfully, we have mostly just had colds or slight fevers this month.  The last weekend of the month, Christopher had two trips to the ER for breathing treatments for a nasty case of croup, but he was all better by Halloween! But we’ve had lots of fun on our extra days at home with Mommy and Daddy!   

We have enjoyed going to the farmer’s market, the park, and Meadowlark Gardens on the weekends, and getting to know our friends in our new Sunday School class.  We got to play with our playgroup friends and enjoy a music class at Colton’s birthday party, and then saw everyone again for play group on Columbus Day.  Toward the end of the month, we went to the multiples Halloween party, where we watched a concert, enjoyed snacks, ran around, and made a sticker Halloween scene.  And the weekend before Halloween, we got to decorate pumpkins and play with neighbors at a fun party on our street.

At school, we are getting to know our new teacher, Ms. Mayosha, and a lot of new classmates this month. We're practicing colors, numbers, and shapes.  And we had a really fun field trip to the pumpkin patch!  Our class walked to the farm next to our school. We went on a hayride, got to see the vegetables and animals, and picked out our very own pumpkins to take home with us!

We are doing a LOT of talking!  We are using two and three word phrases a lot, and Katharine is even stringing several word phrases together, which she is finding very effective for getting what she wants – sometimes.  Now our communication is sounding more like “I want my milk”, “I’ll get it”, and “I want this one” (and sometimes even “please”!).  And we are both really enjoying singing along to our favorite songs, counting, and naming colors and sound we hear.  Car trips and meals are frequently accompanied by sections of songs.  We both surprised Mommy and Daddy this week with spontaneous segments of “Starlight, Starbright” and “Happy Birthday”.  We’re also becoming really good runners!  Christopher keeps Mommy and Daddy on their toes when we explore at Meadowlark Gardens, as he loves to run down the hills.  And Katharine is doing a really great power-walking-almost-run now too!

At the end of the month, we had a beautiful day to take family photos at Meadowlark Gardens.  We were thankful for the ten-day forecast, and for our photographer’s flexibility – we had been scheduled for photos on the day Hurricane Sandy arrived!  Fortunately, we were able to move it up a few days, and had a perfect day, with just enough color and leaves left to get some beautiful fall photos.  And as always, we had a great time running around at Meadowlark in the process! 

We got two extra days off to play at home with Mommy and Daddy during Hurricane Sandy.  We were very thankful for only a 16 hour power outage this time!  While all the storm and power outage preparation and cleanup is a lot of work, a couple of extra days at home together are exactly what we needed! 

And the rain and sogginess dried up just in time for a fun Halloween!  Katharine was Raggedy Ann, and Christopher was a brave lion.  We visited our neighborhood kick-off party, and then went home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters.  We had so much fun snacking and playing while we waited, then running to the door to see all the neat visitors we had.  Even after we turned our lights off for bath time, we enjoyed hearing the kids playing outside, and saying “ding-dong”.  :)

We hope you enjoy the photos we took this month!   

We’re also sharing a link for the proof gallery from our fall photo session below. Enjoy! 

Your online proof gallery is ready and can be viewed at:

http://www.veralana.com/proofs/2012/102612proofs/slideshow/

user: client
pwd: myportraits

With Love,

Christopher and Katharine

October 2012

October 2012, a set on Flickr.

August September 2012 KLK CLK Highlights

September 2012

Wow, September has flown by! 

We enjoyed a long Labor Day Weekend as a family.  We saw the planes at the Air and Space Museum and had a fun trip to the park!

Our new school schedule is busy and sometimes tiring, but we have enjoyed lots of fun, and are getting to know our new friends better too.  We have a neat art gallery started in our kitchen at home with our favorite projects from school.  We got to dress up for picture day at school, and can’t wait to see our photos.  Christopher did not want to sit on the tricycle for his photo, but he was willing to try it out the next day for class photos.  So we hope to have some nice photos from that.  And our family got to explore and race toy cars at the family social event after school one Friday!

After our first real week of school, we were ready to celebrate Mommy’s birthday.  (We have switched to saying “Mommy” more now, because that’s what most of the kids at school say, when they are picked up,  “Mommeeeeee!”)  We enjoyed a fun walk to the farmer’s market, where we got some super cool fire hats at the firefighter’s booth, and some really pretty flowers for Mommy’s birthday.  Later that day, we had a fun adventure in our basement, while there were tornado warnings in Vienna.  And afterward, we were still able to go out for dinner, and run around at the mall, which was lots of fun.

The next day, we got to see the new America Trail exhibit at the zoo, with grey wolves, and sea lions.    We also saw the lions, elephants, zebras and lots of other really neat animals.  When we saw the cheetah, he was perched high on a large branch, making loud, sharp barking sounds, which was really exciting.

For Daddy’s birthday, we went on a beautiful three-hour hike down the Cross County Trail, near our house, and Mommy and Daddy remembered when they once hiked it all the way to Great Falls and back.  We may get to try that with them one day!  And we enjoyed blowing out a candle on Daddy’s strawberry rhubarb birthday pie. Various illnesses have cancelled our plans for Daddy’s birthday dinner, but we look forward to going soon!

In the evenings after school, we’ve been playing at home and at the park, exploring and watching the geese, fish, and turtles at Meadowlark Gardens, and we even got to help “supervise” the building of our new deck, which was SO interesting!  We’ve enjoyed some fun hikes, walks, and bikes with Mommy and Daddy in the stroller too!

And we’re talking so much! We’ve started to pick up conversational phrases such as “OK”, and “I’m coming”, and we’re getting really good at getting our point across with “No want it” and “I need help!”  A recent car trip went something like this (while listening to a favorite dinosaur song)  “No, my dinosaurs”, “No My dinosaurs,”  NO MY dinosaurs,” “NO MY DINOSAURS”… you get the idea!  We’re even starting to sing along with favorite songs with lots of the right words, and name colors and numbers correctly (sometimes).  Mommy and Daddy are sometimes surprised to hear what we know how to say! 

We can’t wait for all the fall fun of October!  We hope you enjoy our pictures from this month!

Love,

Katharine and Christopher

September 2012 Photos

September 2012, a set on Flickr.