Feathered Friends

We had some unexpected feathered friends show up at the feeder this morning and they decided to spend the day. There were 11 turkeys at one point feeding on the ground around our birdfeeder. When they were full they moved off into the woods a little bit and rested around a hemlock tree, some in the branches some on the ground. It is very cold and windy here today and the branches of the tree offered some shelter from the cold and wind. Periodically they would come back up to the feeder and eat the seeds that the other birds had knocked onto the ground. Then they would go back to the tree. It was kinda fun to watch them.
Poor Boomer, being a bird dog, was not really happy. Especially since I kept him on a leash to go outside so he wouldn't scare the turkeys away.
Unfortunately the sun was at a horrible angle and there was a glare trying to take pictures throught the window.(The window is also incredible dirty from dog and cat noses as well as kid prints!) But These pictures came out okay.

A Walk in the Woods

Over the weekend we took a little walk out into the woods. It had been awhile since we had walked down to the river, since before the ice storm in fact, and we were curious as to wether there were any down trees or anything that would need to be removed from the trail.

As is often the case when Dom and I suggest a walk to the river the girls put up resistence, once we get them out there we ususally meet with resisitance getting them back. This time was no different at least for Becca. It took a ton of coaxing to get her out there and then she didn't want to come back. And as for Kenzie she really is not a big fan of the cold but in short bursts she does okay. It is a given that she is the first one that wants to come in. But she and Boomer kept us amused in the meantime.

Here Kenzie practices her balancing.

And down she goes, narrowly missing getting run over by Boomer.

Undeterred she continues to climb on the downed tree and gets stuck.


Still stuck. Please notice that is her sisters leg in the lower left and she is offering no assistance just giggling at her. Wonder where she gets that, not that I was standing there giggling and taking pictures. Daddy ultimately came to the rescue.

Becca was very busy gathering sticks and leaves for some great imaginary adventure.

Dom the snow Ninja.

Boomer playing his favorite winter game, steal the mitten.

And here is the famous "I'm freezing" face.

Project 365

I am starting a daily challenge called project 365, inspired by my cousin and other various scrapbookers. The project basically consists of taking a photo a day for a whole year starting on my birthday. This will be a cool reflection of a whole year of our lives. I expect it will be fun though probably challenging at times to find something to photograph especially during the long winter months, but I think it will be a good reminder that even the little things are worth photographing. It will also be good photography practice.
I have decided to blog this project seperately. I will post one picture for each day and probably a few sentences to go along with the photo. This blog will continue as usual.

The new blog is called Signs of Life and you can check it out by clicking on the link to the right.

Another Year Older

Today is my 38th birthday and just for fun I thought I would share a baby picture. I think I might have been around a year old in this picture but I don't really know. Maybe mom remembers.

I need to wish a Happy Birthday to my Birthday buddy Lisa too!

Saying Goodbye

A few days ago we said goodbye to our dear Copper. He was a great dog and I believe he lived a happy thirteen years with us. I wish I could write some wonderfully eloquent tribute to him but the words are too hard coming right now so I'll use a poem.
We'll miss you Copper!

The Rainbow Bridge

inspired by a Norse legend

By the edge of a woods, at the foot of a hill,
Is a lush, green meadow where time stands still.
Where the friends of man and woman do run,
When their time on earth is over and done.
For here, between this world and the next,
Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest.
On this golden land, they wait and they play,
Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.
No more do they suffer, in pain or in sadness,
For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness.
Their limbs are restored, their health renewed,
Their bodies have healed, with strength imbued.
They romp through the grass, without even a care,
Until one day they start, and sniff at the air.
All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back,
Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack.
For just at that instant, their eyes have met;
Together again, both person and pet.
So they run to each other, these friends from long past,
The time of their parting is over at last.
The sadness they felt while they were apart,
Has turned into joy once more in each heart.
They embrace with a love that will last forever,
And then, side-by-side, they cross over… together.

Steve and Diane Bodofsky

Simplify

Simplify is my word for 2009. I got the idea from a scrapbooking related blog I often visit. I like the idea of having a word to concentrate on rather than making a list of resolutions because honestly, I'm not going to keep the resolutions.

I did quite a bit of thinking to decide on the word. For me, simplify means decluttering and organizing my home. It also means concentrating more on relationships with family and friends and concentrating less on consumerism. For a more detailed explanation of this idea and a whole list of words visit http://aliedwards.typepad.com/ , you'll have to scroll down a bit to find the post.

I'll try to update what I am doing to simplify in future posts.

Becca's Birthday Adventure

Becca's Indiana Jones adventure was Saturday. I am not sure if the kids had more fun participating or I had more fun planning and decorating, but either way everyone had fun.
Here is the entrance to our 'temple of doom' with spiderwebs, spiders and crepe paper vines.
At the bottom of the stairs were stepping stones to spell out the birthday girls name in runes.


Next there was a native to shoot poison darts at, or actually straws with q-tips inside. This was great fun!

Some code to decipher and treasures to find.

These little pyramids contained little egyptian relics that the kids uncovered with a little pick and brush. This turned out to be a little more time consuming than I thought it would and eventually the kids wanted to move on so I just sent them home with everyone.

Here was the final treasure, a box that read "property of Indiana Jones" that contained treat bags for each of the kids. Playing right along with the whole theme the girls came running up the stairs after recovering the treasure insisting that the temple was crumbling behind them!

And then there was of course cake. There was actually a little lever so you can release the boulder, pretty cool., everyone had to have several turns and poor Indy eventually got knocked right off the cake once it was cut.

Birthday planning

Just a quick note to let you know that I am not being a blog slacker but that Becca's birthday and party are this weekend and I am a little bit preoccupied with that. She wants an Indiana Jones themed party complete with an Indiana Jones type treasure hunt. I am trying to figure out how to write Happy Birthday in Hieroglyphics which is not easy by the way. The treasure hunt is taking up my free time too. It is also a bit challenging to keep it contained in a relatively small space and have it last more than 5 minutes. It has been pretty fun to plan and I hope it turns out fun for the kids.

Over the weekend we celebrated Becca's upcoming birthday at my parents house. Becca's best friend even got to join us. I made a little 6 inch cake for everyone to enjoy. It was of course Indiana Jones themed. I love these little figures! The cake for the party will have a different top. I found one that is the famous Indy running away from the boulder.

And here is a picture of Mom and Dad's dog Toby. He had a blast playing outside with the kids and he ended up with a little snow beard!

I expect that this will be my last blog post for the rest of the week as I will busy with the party, but I hope to be back early next week with hopefully lots of pictures of our Indiana Jones adventure!

Dirty

In case you were wondering if you could get pulled over by the police because the back of your car is so dirty they can't read the license plate, the answer is yes.
Not that I would know.
Said officer might have also pull you over because you were going a teeny bit over the speed limit and your license plate is too dirty to read. And said officer might even ask you to get out of the car to show you how dirty your license plate is in case you didn't realize it.
Not that this happened to me or anything.
And if your lucky, said officer will just give you a verbal warning and send you on your way after you promise to wash off the license plate. So I ran my car through the car wash today just to be sure that I wouldn't get stopped again. I mean I just want to be sure that I don't get stopped and I wanted to share that information with you in case you were driving around in a vehicle that is so dirty the license plate is unreadable.
Not that you or I would be seen in a vehicle that dirty because you are so frustrated by the fact that 5 mins after running it through the carwash the car is dirty again so why bother. I live on a dirt road and it is winter time and my car is never going to be clean. In fact I like to think of the dirt as a protective coating that is saving the paint job from all the salt on the roads right now. My husband isn't buying the story and I don't think the police officer would have either, but the moral of this story is keep you need to at least keep your license plate clean if not your
whole car.

Reality Slap

After a nice long Christmas break with the kids and Dom, we all headed back to our normal routines today. And after a nice long break where we are all so relaxed and refreshed the morning went smoothly,

Not.

After our low key and less than action packed vacation( which was very nice). I got a wonderful slap back into reality early this morning. Though I get the girls up with plenty of time to get ready, they dawdle until there is 10 mins left and then rush around to get dressed and brush teeth and hair. This is normal and, as frustrating as it is, no suprises here.

But inevitable during this mad dash something ends up missing like a shoe, a hairbrush, a mitten...you get the picture. Then I bite my tongue and start muttering to myself under my breath while searching for the lost item. Somehow we do manage to get out the door on time
(or close to it). This morning was no different though the girls weren't missing anything and things went smoothly. until I went to grab my keys and they weren't there. Dom had moved my car and left my keys in his coat pocket. Lucky for me (and him) he didn't wear that coat this morning and after rummaging frantically through the closet and silently swearing my husbands name, I found my keys. And yes, I only have one key for my car so grabbing the spare wasn't an option. Then we get to the car and realized that Becca's booster seat is in Dom's car. Yes, Becca is almost nine but I still put her in a booster most of the time. Those of you who know Becca know that she is very petite(just over 50 pounds) and the booster seat is rated to 80 pounds so I just feel safer having her in the booster. Since the booster seat is rated to 80 pounds there is a good chance she will be sixteen and ask to use the car and I'll say "Okay honey just don't forget your booster seat!"

So needless to say she rode to school without her booster seat and all was well. And the day has continued to progress without incident but thanks for letting me share my little reality slap for the day.

This picture has nothing to do with the post but I like it.

Experimental Weekend

The girls got several cool science sets for Christmas to help curb thier curiousity about mixing substances together around the house. (You may remember my post from June entitled Mad scientists or Detroyers of Worlds?) We've spent quite a bit of time this weekend checking them out. The first sent was a Crazy Chemistry by Discovery Kids which was lots of fun. The most popular experiment from this set was insta-snow. This was a powdered polymer substance that you add water too and as the polymer absorbs the water it makes a snow like substance. We added more water and less water to get different effects as well as sticking some in the freezer where it became hard and sleet like as well as adding salt to some which made it melt. If you have any little budding scientists I would definitely reccomend this set.

The second set we used this weekend was called Tasty Science. These were edible concoctions. Very cool! We made grape soda and powdered candy (like pixie stix). We also experemented with litmus paper which the girls thought was very cool. I'd also reccomend this set, especially if your kids like helping in the kitchen they get to learn about about the science behind food!

Both of these set come with plenty of materials to do the experiment several times which is great when their is something they think is really cool.

The third set we checked out was a Crystal growing kit. Though cool, it doesn' hold the girls interest because growing crystal is a long process and they want instant satisfaction. I think they will be excited with the end results though.

Motivation...Not

I am suffering from a severe lack of motivation. I guess maybe it is post holiday let down. I just don't feel like doing much of anything that really needs doing. There are a billion toys still under the tree and I have no idea where I am going to put them all. I still have a bunch of leftover food that is slowly spoiling in the fridge because we can't eat it all as well as a mulititude of baked goods going stale because there is only so many cookies you can eat. (And silly me was worried about not having enough food!) There is a mountain of laundry to be folded and put away and the countertops are covered with half finished art projects.
But do I care?
Not really.
It is Christmas break with the kids and it is time to hang out and play. All that stuff will wait, it's not going anywhere. Well I guess it's possible something in the fridge might grow legs and walk away so maybe I should tackle the fridge, but the rest can wait.

I am also completely bummed that most of the Christmas photos I took were not that great. Playing hostess and photographer did not go hand in hand for me this holiday and I wish I had just set the camera on auto and not worried about settings or flash because I handled both poorly. I also wish I had taken more photos. But whats done is done. I'll stop the pity party now and share some pics.

The most popular present was Spyro Dawn of the Dragon for the playstation. There was a rotating round of players from about 7:30 in the morning that continued all day. Notice Boomer in the bottom of the picture hoping to score some food while everyone is distracted by the game.

And here are the girls making cookies for Santa on Christmas eve. You can see how thrilled they are to have their picture taken. Especially my oldest. She has that "What the heck are you doing?" look. She learned that look from her cousin Jill.

A Very Merry Christmas

We here in the Ciolino home had a very merry Christmas. Festivities began on Christmas eve with the arrival of Nonna, Nonno, Aunty Lisa and Uncle Chuck. We had a traditional Italian Christmas eve meal with lots of yummy food thanks to Nonna. Baked stuffed shrimp, stuffed clams and haddock topped with scallops and lobster were some to the things we enjoyed.
Everyone spent the night to enjoy waking up Christmas morning with the girls. On Christmas we were then joined by my parents and uncle. We feasted on Ham and lots of yummy side dishes. It was fun to be surrounded by family and everyone had a good time.
The day after Christmas was a "girls day out" thanks to Aunty Lisa and Uncle Chuck who provided the girls with tickets to Disney on Ice. So Nonna, Aunty Lisa and the girls and I headed into Boston to see the show. It was a great show and we all had lots of fun.
It was a very fun and very busy three days and I, for one am exhausted. Today is a very low key day and I admit I am even too lazy to download pictures to go along with this post which considering how much I enjoy taking and sharing photos lets you know just how tired I am. I did want to take the time to do this post to let you know what we've been up to and to let you know I plan on elatborating on the holiday activities, complete with pictures, very soon!

New family member

Just a quick little post to say congratulations to my niece Jen and her husband Micah who are the proud new parents of a baby girl. Abigail Mira Gelman was born early yesterday morning and is of course absolutely beautiful. This makes me a Great Aunt (well, I've always been a great aunt, Right Jen and Jill??) My parents are now Great grandparents and my brother and sister- in- law grandparents! That's a little weird to think about but very cool to have a new baby in the family!

Ice Storm Pictures

Here are some pictures from around the yard of the ice storm. This is one of my favorites:



In this one the goldfinch is resting on a cherry tree that has fallen into the yard, that is why the icicles appear to be pointing upwards.

I'm Back!

Yes, it's true we survived the great ice storm of 2008! Wow what a storm it was too!
I have many more pictures to share but this one will have to do for now.

I have to admit that I was not expecting the storm to be as bad as it was and I would have rather had snow over all this ice anyday.

I have counted my blessings repeatedly over the past several days knowing that we and those we love were able to ride out this storm without much incident.

So here my personal account.

Thursday morning I took the kids to school as usual and it was already rain mixing with sleet making some of the back roads slick. I kept an eye on the weather outside as well as the news on TV and it wasn't long before the stairs and deck were starting to get a slight glaze on them.

I went to get Kenzie out of Kindergarten at 10:45. The main roads were in good shape but the back roads were still slick in spots. Going on Motherly instinct I decided to pull Becca out of school too, why go out into the messy weather again in a couple of hours. It wasn't going to get better outside.The news was saying to was going to last all night into Friday at noon. Becca was suprised to see me but I think maybe a little secretly pleased to get to leave early. After getting everyone settled at home I checked the news to see that they were closing the school early. Ahh my instincts are pretty good after all. Dom got home safely that night saying the road crews were doing a good job and the roads were in good shape.

I was just happy to have everyone at home.

Not long after he got home I let the dogs out and I could here the sleet coming down like crazy. The rest of our evening continued as normal and sometime after 11 the electricity went out. We kinda expected this. It's not the first time we had lost electricity because of a little ice. Little did we know what was going on outside.

Around 2am Dom and I both had gotten up to use the bathroom and after getting into bed again, suddenly we heard a loud creaking, crackling and crashing noise outside. Branches were starting to fall under the weight of the ice. This couldn't be good. The noise sent the girls rushing into our bedroom where they spent the rest of the night in our bed. No one got a lot of sleep from that point on. The eerily quiet night was repeatedly broken by the crashing of branches and the shattering of icicles. When your home is surrounded by trees this is a very scary sound as you wonder if the creaking is going to send a branch crashing through your roof!

Not suprisingly we were up early on Friday morning and looked outside to find the world covered in ice. Branches littered the ground everywhere and continued to fall randomly throughout the morning. Trees and branches were bent over everywhere under the weight of the ice but at the same time it was incredibly beautiful, like a sparkly fairy wonderland.

I stared out the window feeling a large range of emotions run through me, awe at the beauty, sadness at the broken and bent trees and concern. This wasn't going to be few hours of no electricity this was big. Did the whole state look like this??

Lucky for us we have a generator and when we built the house we had a panel put in so basically we plug in the generator and are good to go. We had heat, water (hot showers), refrigerator and few outlets in the kitchen- (Coffee!) as well as several outlets in the living room which meant TV,DVD, and playstation. We had no cable or internet though and my only source of news was the radio and the scanner. Basically we were very comfortable though Kenzie really missed the internet! I missed being able to blog since I had something to blog about! We passed the time playing games both on the playstation and regular board games, our elves brought us two new games too which was helpful! Watching Christmas movies was fun too. Reading (for me anyway) was a popular pastime too. Photography kept Dom and I busy also , but I didn't feel real safe being outside. Branches and ice were still falling. Friday afternoon the sun actually came out and I ventured outside again but now the ice was melting and it was raining from the trees. In some cases pretty big chunks!

Sunday afternoon we finally got the electricity back but still no cable or internet. Today we have cable and internet back. There is no school for much of the state including us. There is still a lot of people without power and a lot of schools are being used as shelters. Everything is getting back to normal for us. My parents are still without electricity but they have a generator too so they are warm.

I will be posting more pictures soon - hopefully later today!

Just Chillin'

Just a quick post with a few pics I thought were cute. Becca and Boomer all cuddled up on the couch together this morning. Becca was supposed to be getting ready for school but as you can see she wasn't moving too fast! And Boomer, well there is nothing Boomer likes more than to have someone snuggle with him. Of course he didn't move much even after Becca got up!

This was also photography practice in low light. I really prefer not to use flash especially onboard flash. I have an off camera flash that I hope to master while being stuck inside most of the winter. Anyway this picture is low light no flash with a 50mm 1.4. This is an awesome lens for indoors and will hardly leave my camera all winter.

A few crafts

I haven't been crafting as much as I would like but here are a few quick things that I have done.



The first one is an ornament that can be make with scrapbook paper or even photos or children's artwork. It's best to use two sided paper or just glue two pieces of paper together.



And here are the easy step by step directions:
First take a 5x7 piece of scrapbook paper or picture and cut it into 1/2 inch strips.




Next punch a small whole in each end.



Place a brad through each hole like this:





Pull the pieces apart to form a ball and tie a string around the brad to hang it up.

Here's a photo one:

This is the only knitting I have been doing. These are fluffy snowballs for indoor snowball fights!

New Look

Been playing around with the look of my blog. Let me know what you think!

Christmas Crime

Here is the crime scene:


Here is the suspect seen running from the scene:

Actually, I don't really blame the cat even though she was at the scene of the crime. She has always been good with the tree. She does like to sleep under it as you can see from the picture and she has been known to bat at the ornaments on occasion.

I think this may have more to with a faulty tree stand. We had a hard time getting the tree to stand straight in the stand and I think that any simple move may have toppled it. Luckily no one got hurt, though I have seen the cat since she went scrambling from the scene. We do unfortunately have a few broken ornaments and I spent a lot of time sopping up the water that spilled everywhere. This is the first time we've ever had a tree topple over and hopefully it will be the last!

Merry Mischief Makers

For the past several years we have been visited by elves from December 1st until Christmas eve. Their names are Deenie and Jeannie and they cause a lot of mischief and often leave little trinkets for the girls. I think I have mentioned them briefly before but it seems this year that they want to join the blogging world and have started their own blog to chronicle their antics while they visit. Since the elves are on what could best be described as vacation they will be blogging daily and have agreed to include some fun craft activities and recipes straight from the kitchen of Mrs. Claus! So for a daily dose of Chrismas fun please visit their blog at http://www.deeniejeannie.blogspot.com/