Anna Grows

At long last, after countless Sunday's spent going to open houses, Anna at last will be moving into a new house. Mom and Dad were anxiously awaiting this day and wasted no time preparing the house to move in. Today's preparation work involved painting and lots of it. Anna joined Mom and Dad for the painting adventure (and it was truly an adventure for Mom and Dad with a two-year old). Knowing that Anna likes to help with everything, Dad brought along a small paint brush and bucket for Anna to use. She even had her own paint clothes and painting hat. Dad set her up on a bedroom wall, where she helped for most of the morning. She did take a brake to watch a bit of Dora the Explorer as well as a nap, but returned to help in the afternoon with the dining room. As you can see from the photo, Dad gave her some early lessons on painting techniques, including graffiti. Tomorrow Mom and Dad will continue the painting. Anna gets to spend the day with Aunt Gayle (Mom and Dad are VERY gra...

It is Christmas time in the nation's capitol. While Christmas came early for some this year (the banks, the auto industry, the real estate industry....pretty much any other industry looking for handouts), there are still some more traditional holiday sites to see. One of the little known holiday gems in the Washington area is the U.S. Botanical Gardens, located on Capitol Hill. This facility was recently renovated and contains a breathtaking display of holiday flowers and decorations. The highlight of the display is the model train exhibit, which takes up one entire exhibit hall and is contructed using all sorts of flowers and foilage. The result is spectacular to kids of all ages. Anna enjoyed watching the trains and running through the "secret tunnel" in the display. If you are in the Washington area during the holidays, it is worth a visit. For more information, go to http://www.usbg.gov/

The holiday season is upon us beginning with the Thanksgiving feast. Anna and family decided to stay in town this year to host Thanksgiving. Aunt Mary, Uncle Joe, Cousin James, Aunt Loren, Aunt Gayle, Pauletta and Wil were all going to join us for our first attempt at making Thanksgiving dinner. Theresa had a detailed menu and set out with Anna to the supermarket early on Sunday to stock up for the feast. The first problem surfaced about 30 minutes after returning from the grocery store when we learned that Uncle Joe was in the emergency room and would be having heart surgery later in the week. We are happy to report that everything went well. While there is probably some medical term for his ailment, there is talk in the family that the heart problems were brought on by the recent success of the New York Jets this season with the addition of Bret Favre. Uncle Joe has served as a stalwart Jets fan since infancy and is so use to the loosing seasons that it is believed his heart ne...

We celebrated Thanksgiving early with a long weekend in Ohio. Anna was able to spend some quality time with her grandparents as well as hang out with her cousin, Aidyn. Actually, Anna was not that enthusiastic about Aidyn as she was forced to share the spotlight. At one point she decided that if she started crawling like Aidyn, she would get more attention. Since Aidyn only spent one night at Grandma and Grandpa's house, Anna had the rest of the time to herself. As always, there were plenty of activities including coloring, playing with Mom's kid dish set, playing on Grandma's xylophone (that's right....one of Grandma's childhood toys) and Grandpa building a house for her in the living room. Really, how much more entertainment could a kid want? There was also a large Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday with the Kent family where Anna was able to meet some of her extended cousins. She also spent some time with Great-Grandpa. Top it off with an airplane ride and you have on...

October 31 may have been the actual Halloween, but Anna celebrated all day on October 30. Ms. Be had a full-fledged Halloween party complete with costumes and trick-or-treating. Anna was dressed as an Ohio State University cheerleader, courtesy of her Uncle Rod and Uncle Tim with accessories provided by Grandma. There was some initial resistance to putting on the costume. Actually, there was A LOT of resistance, complete with crying and screaming "I don't want to wear the cheerleader." We are not sure why. At first, Mom thought it may have something to do with not wanting to be stereotyped as a cheerleader for the rest of her life. Then we thought it may have something to do with Ohio State's devastating loss to Penn State last weekend. Mom explained that it was o.k. to be a fan even when Ohio State loses. We finally realized that she just wanted to wear her pajamas, which is really no different from any other day. Dad picked up Anna from Ms. Be's a little early s...

Today was a lovely fall day. The leaves are about at their peak, the sun was shining....it seemed like the perfect day to head to the mountains for some apple picking. Mom packed some lunch and everyone loaded into the car to head back to McIntosh Fruit Farm in Berryville, VA. Since we had such a good time picking peaches, we thought we would have an even better time picking apples. Some of you are probably saying to yourself, "gee, isn't October 26 a little late to be picking apples?" This thought occurred to us; however, the brochure from the fruit farm clearly listed a couple of types of apples in October and November. When we got there, we found very few people and even fewer apples. It turned out that all the apples were picked, thus we resorted to "picking" apples out of the crates (hey, at least we could see the trees they came off of). The good news was that you could still pick pumpkins. We loaded Anna into the little red wagon and hiked across the farm...

Anna's 2nd birthday included the beginning of a major milestone - the move to a "big girl" bed. In this case, the bed is an antique rod iron twin bed which coincidently was found at an antique store in Columbus, Ohio. Of course it was not enough for Mom to simply remove the crib and install the bed. First, she got Dad to agree to repaint the green and white nursery to a cheerful buttercup yellow. With some help from Grandma, Anna's room was transformed with reds, yellows, greens, ladybugs, and flowers. There are still a few more things to do, but we are on our way. Anna took right to her bed. The downside for Mom and Dad is that now she can get out.