January - April 2014

March 2014

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March was a continuance of the Winter that would NEVER end!  Although, we must admit, we were sort of glad to celebrate each snow day as if it were our last; we were definitely getting ready to let go of the snow in favor of Spring buds

So, again, the snow gave us lots of opportunities to be together at home this month!  We shoveled and sledded.  We fed the birds.  We painted inside, AND OUT!!

It snowed on St. Patrick’s Day, which gave us lots of time to experiment with how many things we could make that were green (green eggs, green milk, green mac and cheese, kiwi, grapes, and avocado dip with broccoli, and rainbow-colored ice cubes for our water!)

We made birthday treats and cards for Alex and Emmie, whose birthdays were this month. And Ooooohhhhh, what a month for birthdays!  We celebrated birthdays for our friends from school, Sloane, Arya, and Vivienne at children’s gyms, with some fun “Frozen” and superhero themes.  And we made our very own special friends to take home with us with Emmie at Build-A-Bear for her birthday.  It was an exciting month, and now we wait for the last birthday in our class – OURS!!

And we enjoyed church on Saturdays, and swim classes on Saturdays, playing on the playground there when it was warm enough to.  We are getting really independent and more confident in the water; learning how to float, trying our faces in the water, jumping in to deeper water, practicing flutter kicks and scooping with our arms.  We even got to try a neat water train with our class by holding onto each other’s noodles and floating all the way into the deep end! 

That’s the story of our month!

Love,

Katharine and Christopher

February 2014

February was a month of indoor fun!

The snow gave us lots of opportunities to be together at home this month!

We had a puzzle day one morning, helping put together ALL of our puzzles. 

For Valentine’s Day we helped make chocolate covered strawberry hearts and pretzels, for our teachers and for Kristy’s family.

We had fun preparing and exchanging Valentines at school, and playing with our friends at church, and at swim class. 

We played outside in the snow together, helped shovel the driveway and sidewalk, fed the birds, and then enjoyed some well-earned hot chocolate and pumpkin pancake hearts inside!  J

One day was nice enough to head into DC to the Air and Space Museum to explore. We tried lots of experiments, listened to story time, and tried a new craft, and saw lots of really neat airplanes and space ships.

At the end of the month, we became enchanted with Mommy’s childhood teddy bear, who plays “Rockabye Baby”, and the story about how he lost one of his eyes.  We were so sad for him that he was missing an eye, that we helped mommy look for new bear eyes online.  We assisted in Teddy’s surgery, and decided it would be best to leave his existing eye in place, so as not to cause him additional distress.  We even made get well cards for him and made sure he was comfortable in his recovery.

That’s the story of our month!  We hope you enjoy the photos below!

Love

Christopher and Katharine

February 2014

February 2014, a set on Flickr.

January 2014

January has come and gone!  Here is an overview!

Christopher and Katharine are loving their big-kid bed setups, and are doing a great job.  They’re also enjoying their first big-kid swim class, where they get to swim without Mommy and Daddy. 

On a healthy weekend, we enjoyed going in to the Museum of Natural History to explore, and had a great time eating lunch out and riding the train.

Christopher’s constipation issues did find us indoors for several weekends, pursuing cleanout treatments. In the end, we finally received a fully successful result, and are now working with the GI specialist to get back on the road to consistently happy and healthy.  While it could take many months, he is back on the road to normal, and we are so grateful for this.  And both kids are happy that he’s back at school on a regular basis!

While health and weather caused several interruptions to our regular schedule and events, we enjoyed lots of extra family time together, either indoors or out.  We watched a lot of DVD’s on sick days, enjoyed playing together, working on Valentines surprises, and yes – playing in the snow!  And all this together time has resulted in lots of silly fun, and even stronger friendships between the best of buds.  So thankful for the way Mother Nature provides us time together! 

We hope you had a wonderful start to 2014, and can’t wait to share our February adventures.  Here are our photos from this month!

Love,

Christopher and Katharine

January 2014

January 2014, a set on Flickr.

New Year's Day Post - Catching Up!

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Happy New Year to all our friends and family!   

As I snuggle up to the laptop following all of our holiday festivities, I realize how very long it has been since I sat down to complete a post.

In reflection, I realize the era of detailed posts may behind us for the time being.  With this realization, I will at least plan to keep photos shared on a more regular basis!

Here is a synopsis of what you will enjoy in the September through December galleries (posted below):

We celebrated Mommy’s 40^th birthday with dinner out and biking at Clydes’ Willow Creek restaurant.  And we celebrated Mommy and Daddy’s birthdays by sharing special desserts at home!

We started going to our new school at Holy Comforter!  We love playing with our friends in our class, and are learning about the letters of the alphabet, sharing, baking, making crafts, science, chapel, show and share, and lots of fun songs.

We have also been enjoying getting to play with our friends Emmie, Jordan, and Alex (Kristy’s children).  We love some of the fun special activities we do together, like trips to play together; choosing, painting, and carving pumpkins; science experiments and art projects at home; creating our own stories, and going to a play.

We did lots of playing this fall at home and outside!  When it’s nice outside, we love hike, ride our bikes, swim, play at the park, and play in the yard.  As the weather got colder, we did lots more helping Mommy in the kitchen and crafts at home, as well as trying out some “indoor camping” fun with Daddy.  We also like taking trips to the library, the store, and to Mommy’s school.

We enjoyed lots of special outings this fall to concerts, Cox Farms Fall Festival, the Fire Station Open House, the Fall For Fairfax festival, and leaf and light peeping at Meadowlark Gardens.

Halloween was lots of fun this year!  We had a great time helping decorate the house with pumpkins and spiders, and dressing up and going out for our first Trick-Or-Treat!  We had so much fun dressing up as Rock Stars, with our blow-up guitars.  We even got to wear them for the multiples Halloween Party, and for our school’s costume parade!

We celebrated giving thanks the entire month of November by remembering all of our friends and family members, using the “Giving Thanks” calendar we helped Mommy make.  And we took an extra special family trip to Sesame Place in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving weekend.  We were amazed to see our Sesame Street friends in shows, in a parade, and on the street.  We thought it was fabulous to visit Elmo in Elmo’s World – we got to play his piano and say Hi to Dorothy!  And we even got to meet and take pictures with some of our favorite characters!

This Christmas was also extra special!  We enjoyed helping decorate our home with lights, nativity, Christmas Trees, and watching new greeting cards from family and friends go up each day.  Each morning, we loved seeing where “Advent” the elf had moved to, talking about the daily ornament from our church for our Advent tree, and advancing the date on our Advent calendar.  We enjoyed seeing Santa on his fire truck at the Church Street Holiday Stroll, and having dinner with Santa at Meadowlark Gardens, where we also got to explore the lights with our friends Emmie, Jordan, and Alex.   We went with Emmie to a gingerbread house decorating party which was SO much fun!  And we had a great time helping Mommy make ornaments for our tree, stockings and gingerbread for our teachers, cookies for exchange, “Snow Dough”, and lots of other fun crafts at home.  We had some extra fun time together at home during our snow and ice days – we sledded, made snow angels, and a great big snowman!

For Mommy’s school Winter Concert, we got to sit front and center, and loved singing the songs around our home.  And we were very proud to be in our very own first Christmas concert at school, where we sang “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Reindeer,” and “Have You Ever Seen A Reindeer?”, with our friends.

The best part of all, of course, was our visit with our families in Ohio!  We loved celebrating Christmas, and seeing Grandma and Grandpa Sturgeon and Grandma and Grandpa Keller, and playing with our cousins, Katie, Sam, Clara, and Joseph!  We love them so much and look forward to seeing everyone again soon!

Back at home, we ended 2013 by spending our very first night in our big kids beds on New Year’s Eve!  We did great and are so proud and excited about a new big kids year ahead of us!

Welcome 2014!  Sending love and hugs from the VA Kellers to all our family and friends!

Love,

Christopher and Katharine