Lina's Birthday & First Quarter Birthday Celebration

The last few years, Lina's birthday fell during school.  Well, this year Spring Break fell on the same week of her birthday so we were able to celebrate on the day. Every year I take the girls to dinner at a place of their choice and Lina's was Panera again!

Looks like we finally got together to celebrate birthday...included are Hannah's and Landon's birthdays

 

 Hannah loves to draw

Is this face adorable or what...and he knows it!  

  

and he loves his Uncle Rob!

365 - On the Stairs

This is a picture from when we brought my niece here last year for Lina's birthday.  We live in East Providence, behind the school that our girls went to from N-8.
I just love this picture.  It's just missing Samantha...

and I had to add this one as well because I love it.  Again missing Samantha  :(

Tagging a Tree

Every year we aim to tag a tree and we never seem to be able to remember.  Well, this year, finally we actually remembered.  So one day in November we went to our old stand by in Swansea to tag our tree. I even remembered to bring a scarf to tag it with.  So there we were on our merry way and low and behold we couldn't find a decent size tree that wasn't already tagged...are we going to have to go in August to tag our tree next year?  So after some discussion, we decided to get a smaller tree and set it on a table instead.  If you could only hear, every year, how the kids always want their OWN mini tree, so we settled on a medium sized tree.  We didn't end up needing to put it on a table.

 All the rows are labeled so one can find their tree (if they remember where they tagged it).

 These are some of the tree's Alyssa wanted.

we like to see what others are tagging their tree to make it their own...

this was a favorite of the family since we are Dunkin lovers as well...

this one was a favorite of Jenna's and Rob's...

a bunch of random stuff...

and good ol' Mickey Mouse...

we got a kick out of this one...

Then Jenna took over the camera for a little while.

 

and then we found our tree...there's wasn't a lot to pick from, I guess we'll have to go even earlier next year!

Alyssa wanted to put the tag on.

and I actually remembered to bring something to personalize our tree...a scarf the kids had knit when they were in elementary school tied together with a knitted belt that came from some piece of clothing from long ago.

and of course some fooling around...

and Rob pretended to throw me in a hole (you can see Alyssa trying to protect me).

and this is what the hole looked like (clearly I wasn't going to go to far).

and then of course, Alyssa TRIED to push Rob into the hole (always sticking up for her Mama that one!)  :)

and since that didn't work, she thought she'd just hitch a ride on him.

 

Right at the farm was a Tree Carving shop.  The guy made all of these really cool decorations.  The kids really liked looking around.



This little fire pit is so cool!  Rob bought the shavings and candle and made two for me for mother's day.  It sits right on our porch. 

 

They called this a man cave but Alyssa really liked playing in it...

 

 

Then we stopped at Wendy's for Frosty's!  I stayed in the car to read while they went in.

No if we can only remember to go earlier next year.