Intro.
Kris and Dave met 19 years ago while Kris was in college and Dave was on his first of several enlistments in the Navy. We have 4 beautiful kids. Lucas is 16 and he is the best big brother ever! He loves his brothers and sister. He has been waiting a very long time to be the "big brother".
William, Logan and Jessica were born Oct.25 2007 at 33 weeks and 5 days! They only spent 10 days in the NICU and came home on their big brother's birthday- Nov. 5 !! This blog will be about the ins and outs of our crazy life.
Lucas spent the first three weeks of July at a camp in East Hartland CT called the Wilderness School! They lived totally outdoors for the whole 20 days. He was in a crew of 11 kids and 3 counselors. They hiked 6-8 miles everyday to get to campsites. They canoed for a few days, hiked into MA, did rock wall climbing and rappelling, a zip line course, worked for a day at a soup kitchen, spent 36 hours on solo expeditions, and on the final day they ran a 8.45 mile marathon! It was a very intense program, but Lucas had a great time! He is even looking into going on a 30 day expedition next summer! He was also able to use some of the hours away as part of his Agri-Science Project for school! We missed him lots while he was gone, but it was a break that both Lucas and I needed!!
Here are a few pics from his graduation - it was 2 groups of kids - 16 in total. I hope to put some of the pics Lucas took on here as soon as I get his film back from the shop!
It was a great day for Dave's 45th birthday! Cousin Michele was here to celebrate with us. We all went to the aquarium for the morning/early afternoon and then I left to go get Dave's surprise - a special cake that Jolley Bakers made for him! He already knew that his b-day gift is some new motorcycle gear, so I wanted to really surprise him and planned a special cake! Anyone that knows Dave knows he is a huge Star Wars fan, so what better way then an R2D2 cake to celebrate! It is an awesome cake! Look at all the details and a real working light! Love it!!!!
As you can see, he was shocked!
a better posed pic for the blog and to throw up on facebook!
After the kids and I surprised him with his cake, Michele and I took him out for dinner and over to the casino to have fun! A big Thank You to Rachael Roach who came over and watch the crew for me so that I could celebrate with Dave!
What have we been up to you ask? The kids and I have been going to the Mystic Y twice a week! I have been exercizing and they have been taking swim and gym lessons! The kids have really been working hard at improving their swimming. I also take them once a week to open swim where they use their Puddle Jumpers and swim all be themselves.
Gymnastics class was fun, but mostly lots of running around to different stations. Can you tell which one the crew liked best?
The summer schedule at the Y has many classes cut , so we are excited to be starting a real gymanstics class in July at a gym in Niantic! It is for 3-4 year olds and is 40 minutes long. I talked with the owner and he gave me a discount on classes and only charged me 1 sign up fee! I hope it goes well and I think we may just stay with them for classes and use the Y just for swim class.
That picture is 12.5 pounds of strawberries! The crew had a blast picking them at Grant's Berry Patch in Lisbon. It takes about 30 minutes to ride up there and it took the crew about 30 minutes to pick all the berries.
I decided that besides making great strawberry shortcake, we were going to try our hand at making jam! I found a very simple recipe - basically just strawberries, pectin and sugar, so I thought why not. The kids had a great time helping me through the process. Here is Will taking his turn mashing up the berries for cooking.
The berries getting cooked with the added pectin and sugar -
The final product!! It is super yummy and I even did the reduced sugar recipe! I almost don't want to use store bought again! LOL
P.S. We ate thru these 2 jars in about 2 weeks and I have since made about 6 more jars!
