Lady's Slipper

Pink lady's slippers are my favorite wildflower and I am always on the search for them when we go hiking in the spring and early summer. They are not easy to find which always makes it more exciting to find one. Since we have moved here I have been on the lookout hoping that somewhere on our 14 acres there must be at least one. Of course trying to find one wildflower amongst 14 acres is much akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Dom was very insistent that he had seen them 'around' but could never remember where exactly.

Armed with my camera and macro lens I was determined that I would find some to photograph. Well Mother Nature smiled on me and while sitting in the backyard over the weekend I spotted one right on the edge of the woods. I ran into the house to grab my camera. Giddy with excitement, I crawled around on my hands and knees taking shot after shot while my husband shook his head and said, "I told you I'd seen some."

I scanned the perimeter of the yard and found seven more. Each and every one has posed perfectly to have their photos taken and not one of them has run away screaming. Now my children on the other hand.....

By the way, Pink lady's slippers are the New Hampshire state wildflower, while Purple lilacs are the state flower.

A Sticky Situation

We've put a little fire ring in the backyard and have been enjoying hanging out outdoors in the evenings around the fire. And if you have a campfire you gotta have s'mores, right?

Right.

Now Kenzie who is a great eater doesn't like marshmallows, but she does love to toast them over the fire and she does a great job. She even has the whole s'more technique of sliding the marshmallows off the stick between the graham crackers (I have yet to catch her on film, but trust me she has it down to a science.) Becca, on the other hand loves to eat s'mores but is not so keen on toasting the marshmallows so they make a great team. And when Kenzie is not toasting marshmallows she is entertaining everyone with her antics. Sunday was a case of you had to be there to really appreciate it but I will quote her when she got marshmallow all over her fingers and exclaimed, "Well this is a sticky situation!"

Smile!

More First Communion pics

These were a few I took at home with my high tech paper background that was duct taped to the deck outside. I did some post processing to these in photoshop elements. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out! I'm still working on a few more.

First Communion

Sunday, May 4th was Becca's first communion. It was very sweet. We were very blessed to have many people join us and appreciate that several of you traveled from many hours away to join us on this special day!

Becca led the procession down the aisle and we were lucky enough to have a front row seat.

After the service we had a cookout at our house all in all in was a very nice day, despite the rainy weather!

It took me a month to convince Becca to do a little photoshoot in her dress. Tomorrow I will share the results!

Spring suprise!

Yesterday afternoon when I returned home from picking up Becca at school I found a basket of Spring daisies outside my front door. I was pleasantly suprised and couldn't imagine who they were from. I was even more suprised to read the card and find out they were from my husband!

You see, as wonderful as my husband is, romance is not one of his strong points and he really doesn't like the "hallmark holidays" when people generally give flowers . And that's okay because when it comes to the really important stuff he is spot on and he spoils me in other ways. But I have to admit it was really nice to receive flowers for no special reason!

Thanks honey, I love you!

Fashion Statement

This is the latest in Spring fashion here in the northeast. When the temperature gets above 60 degrees it is time to pull out the shorts and t-shirts. But one also needs to be practical as well as fashionable and rubber boots are a must to navigate the mud puddles, spring creeks and remaining piles of snow(and dog poo!).

Just check out these lovely fashionistas!

Becca is modeling the more subltle "Fireman" style, while Kenzie prefers "Cute and Cuddly" with her Cow boots.

Special thanks to Grampie who provided the boots for todays fashion segment.

House For Rent: Cheep!

For several year now we have been wanting to put up some birdhouses around the yard in the hopes that we could get some birds to raise a family that we could watch. So the other day Dom came home with one and we proceeded to put it up in the front yard. Since the children still are not too keen on me taking thier picture and the current landscape is pretty dull and drab Dom became a willing subject as he put up the house.

Hopefully sometime this Spring we will get it some tenants and get a chance to see some baby birds. I'll keep you posted!

And speaking of birds here is a favorite picture of mine of an Evening Grosbeak. Usually we have a whole flock of them show up at one time to feed at the feeders and they are ususally easily scared away. This guy was all alone and let me get really close, relatively speaking as I was using a telephoto lense. He hung around for several days and I haven't seen him since, but I am glad to have got some pictures of him!

Life is Good

The Bruins made the playoffs for the first time in four years and they are playing Montreal in the first round. We have had significant snow meltage this week(I can actually see large areas of grass!) and for the first time in three weeks everyone in the house is healthy.
Life is good.

Mud

Poem To Mud

- Poem to ooze- Patted in pies, or coating the shoes. Poem to slooze- Poem to crud- Fed by a leak, or spread by a flood. Wherever, whenever, whyever it goes, Stirred by your finger or strained by your toes, There's nothing sloppier, slipperier, floppier, There's nothing slickier, stickier, thickier, There's nothing quickier to make grown-ups sickier, Trulier coolier, Than wonderful mud.

-Zilpha Keatley Snyder

So we are full on in mud season which is obvious from the photos. As you can also see from the photos we were actually able to go outside without snowpants, coats, hats and mittens! Yes Spring has finally arrived and after three weeks of one person or another being sick it has been a very welcome reprieve! We still have piles of snow but there are patches of grass to be seen here and there and for the next several days we are supposed to get temperatures in the 50s and 60s so we should have some significant melting. But with the melting comes the mud and I have given up trying to keep my floors clean until it dries up!

Free Snow- take all you want!!

So according to the news we have the most snow in a season in 134 years with 115.2 inches. That means that there are people who have lived their whole life and never seen this much snow. How lucky are we to be experiencing such a phenomenon?? I have no idea, but lucky probably isn't what most people are thinking since it is almost April and we have snow measured in feet still sitting in our yard.

For all of you not "lucky" enough to have had this experience let me share some pictures of what record breaking snow fall looks like...

And because we can't do anything about all the snow the best we can do is try to enjoy it the best way we can as Dom demonstrates here.....

Now this is what you call ice cold beer!

Happy Easter...a little late.

There have been some grumblings from the peanut gallery about me not updating my blog, so here is an update. We are actually in the second week of either one or both of the girls being sick and Dom and I are starting to feel a little sniffly, so in case I get sick hopefully this will tide you over...

Last week Becca had the stomach flu and missed the whole week of school. The doctor has had some concerns about her weight, especially since she has been really sick twice within a month, so he ran some blood tests just to make sure there wasn't any other reason that she might be losing weight and all the results came back normal. Now I just have to fatten her up! Not easy since she is such a picky eater!

Right about the time that Becca was starting to feel better Kenzie developed a horrible cough and stuffy nose. I brought her to the doctor on Tuesday where the doctor confirmed that yes she did have a bad cold, but it was making her wheeze and we are now doing nebulizer treatments 3-4 times a day to help her breath (and sleep) easier.

In the midst of all the sickness we did manage to celebrate St. Patricks day with a visit from a little leprechaun who caused some mischief, like turning the toilet water green and TPing the bathroom.

We managed to color eggs a few days before Easter and spent Easter Sunday in Gloucester with Nonna and Nonno. It was nice to see bare ground as opposed to our house where we still have several feet of snow. These past few days we have been blessed with the temperature close to 50. I have been opening all the windows and trying to get some fresh air into the house. The temps are supposed to cool off again tonight and we are due to get several inches of snow. This is of course spring in New England.

Lunar Eclipse

One day last week we had a lunar eclipse, Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever and I decided I had to try getting some pictures. So here are my attempts. It was very cold out, like 17 degrees and my hands were freezing so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to play around with the settings. And I didn't stay outside long enough to get the full effect when the moon had that reddish glow though I later wished I had. I also locked myself out of the house (must run in the family, Jen) but luckily Dom was home to let me back in!

On the mend

For the past week Becca has been sick with the flu which then turned into pneumonia. She went back to school today. We'd been lucky so far this year no one has been sick but I guess it was just a matter of time since it seems people are getting sick all over. Now I just have my fingers crossed that the rest of us don't get sick. Of course one of the first things that Becca said to me after getting home from school was that one of her friends threw up in class today and was sent home. Great. If we can just get throught the next couple of days then we get a week off for school vacation.

Another snow day.

Yesterday we woke up to this:
Which then turned to sleet and freezing rain like this:

Which built up on the powerlines like this:

Which means we spent the evening like this:

Lots to Learn

I have been trying to learn how to use my camera to its full potential and not rely so much on the presets but it hasn't been easy. As much as I had hoped that just sitting down and reading the manual cover to cover would work it didn't. I found the technical stuff aperture, exposure, ISO

very hard to wrap my brain around because my brain just doesn't work that way. So I got another book about my camera and read that and yet another and after reading the three different books and retaining very I little went on a search to find something else to help me learn because what I really needed was hands on step by step lessons with the camera. There weren't any classes readily available but I came across two books that were helpful-Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson and Digital Photography by Scott Kelby. Both great books. But what really helped was my favorite Scrapbook sight-Two Peas in a Bucket offered a free 12 week course online. I have been doing it for 6 weeks and learned a ton and the best part is that they explain everything step by step and then give you step by step challenges, exactly what I needed and now everything is making sense and I actually took pictures in manual yesterday(meaning that I chose the shutter speed, aperture and white balance) and some came out pretty good. And Kenzie even agreed to be my model!

So here are some of the best ones. All were done in natural light, because one of the first things that I learned was that I no longer like the onboard flash and avoid using it as much as possible.

All pictures are straight out of camera as I haven't learned how to use photoshop yet either, that is on my long list of things to learn too! Shot with a 50mm lens that is awesome for shooting indoors!

And I had to include this last one just because it makes me laugh.

This is the "Haven't you figured that camera out yet??" Look.

So I always on the lookout for new victims, I mean models, so if any of you are in the area and want to do a little modeling, let me know. You know just hop on a plane and come on out here. How about it Jill? Cause you always look "fabulous"!!

Bunnies

I don't know if you remember our little fuzzy friends, Thumper and Brownie, our bunnies. Just thought I post a little update. They have grown quite a bit, but are still very cute and fluffy.

When the weather was nice we would let then run around on the grass in a little play yard. For obvious reason we can't do that in the winter so we let them have some time to run around the family room. The girls love it and the bunnies seem to enjoy being able romp around and stretch their legs out. Brownie has the brown face and Thumper has the lopsided ears.

Go Patriots!

Later today this evening we will be cheering on the Patriots and I hope that all the rest of you are too! I made some cupcakes for the occasion. You know cause we didn't have enough cupcakes after the ones I made for groundhogs day yesterday. All the extras will be going to work with Dom on Monday in case you were thinking we were making total pigs of ourselves.

The girls who have very little interest in the Superbowl are very excited about Puppy Bowl that is on Animal Planet this afternoon. They were busy making little flags while I decorated the cupcakes. They even let me snap one picture. Actually I took several pictures before realizing that their was no card in the camera. DOH! So by the time I got it they barely stuck around for the one pic. And yes they were still in their jammies at 2:00 in the afternoon.

Happy Groundhogs Day!

So Six more weeks of winter according to Punxsutawney Phil.

Wow.

Big suprise.

Not.

But it does mean that winter is half over and so to celebrate I made these really cute cupcakes with a little groundhog peeking his head out of the ground.

Got the idea from the book," Cupcakes from the Cake Mix Doctor" by Anne Byrn. Lots of cute ideas. I would recommend any of the Cake Mix Doctor books.

Check back tomorrow for Superbowl cupcakes!