Hello, Blogging World!

To say I took a break from blogging would be a gross understatement. I am a little ashamed that our last post was sometime in April or May. What is that, 6 or 7 months? Well, here is a little summary of catching up.

We ended up taking a job in Greenwich, CT. Dan works at Greenwich Hospital. In fact, the house we live in we rent from the hospital, which owns several houses in the area. This means that Dan's commute is a whopping two minute walk! In fact, I can see into his office window from the front of our house. That also means his staff can see whenever I leave the house at all. They keep Dan up to date as to what is happening over here.

Abigail will be one in two days. She isn't walking by herself yet, but she is working on it. She already has an uncanny connection with technology. One day she went over to the dvd player and pressed play, then sat back to wait for her video to start.

Alyssa will be three in January. She has a preschool class once a week that some of the women from church rotate hosting and teaching. She takes a gymnastic class called Tumblebugs that she absolutely loves. She is currently very into Mickey Mouse. And she has an annoying habit of calling me Marie instead of Mama. I think she thinks it's funny.

I have cut my teaching schedule back to one class a semester at Albertus Magnus College. I have also started a program called CMA, or certified movement analyst. About once a month for two years I travel down to the University of Maryland at College Park for an intense two days of training. It is hard to leave my family for that time, but the program and people are great, and I really enjoy it once I'm there.

The pictures that follow are a montage of Halloween. You will see our house, in festive attire, our little ladybug (Abigail) and bumblebee (Alyssa), and some great pictures of the Jack O' Lantern Blaze.

And here is a video of Alyssa interacting with her favorite Halloween decoration.

Easter, Better Late than Never

Mostly for the grandparents who live so far away, I wanted to go back and catch up on some of the things I have missed blogging about. For Easter we took Alyssa and Abigail to an Easter egg hunt in Farmington, CT, at a miniature golf place. It was nice because they had the hunt divided into age ranges, so the little kids could be sure to get some eggs. There was a hunt in Stamford we thought about going to, but since we will live down there next year, we decided on this one.

Alyssa loved her Easter basket. She helped me pick it out. I think she liked having the basket more than the egg hunt.

Here we are all lining up for our turn. They only allowed one parent to go with each child. It's a good think we have two kids, or I might have missed seeing Alyssa hunt for eggs.




When we got home, we of course had to dye our own. This was another first for Alyssa, and technically for Abigail, but she was otherwise engaged, as you will briefly see.

Alyssa loved dyeing eggs. She was fascinated by the whole process. She kept asking for days afterward if it was time to dye eggs again. I think the red was her favorite, or maybe green. Green has been her favorite color lately.



Abigail occupied her time playing while we experimented with colors.



This is just a really cute clip of Alyssa with the easter eggs.



And not to leave out the furry members of our family, here we all are, except for Dan who is holding the camera. Yes, our house is pretty crazy, but most definitely fun.