Pictures from Pittsburgh

Here are a few pictures of our time in Pittsburgh for my Grandma's funeral.  Most of these are from my cousin Jackie - I think I took 2 pictures total.  I think I just had my hands full holding the baby most of the time!

Molly and Luke "sneaking"

Gotcha!

Linde with Finn

Mom, Tammy, and Melissa

Madeline and Ana

Loey and Finn

John & Madeline

Patrick & Finn

Colorado trip - fun with cousins

The kids and I went to back to Colorado to visit for 3 weeks in August. We had a great time with Nana & Grandpa and lots of family and friends. My brother John and his family came out from Grand Junction to visit us twice, and Linde and the girls stayed for the whole first week. We really enjoyed spending time with them, and it was great that the cousins had a chance to play together! We also got to spend time with some of my cousins and their kids - Jackie and Jen were visiting Melissa during our trip. You can check out their sites for more pictures and stories of all their visits.

Elijah making a rock collection

Molly and Luke playing soccer


The girls busy with their rock coloring

Lily - rock chalk

Sophie helping Elijah with his rocks

Logan enjoyed his ice cream a little too much!

Nana reading with Elijah and Piper

Elijah and Piper spent a lot of time with the Play-Doh

All the kids loved playing the piano.

Watching train videos with Grandpa

Miss Molly - silly

Playing bubbles with Nana

Little girls playing

Elijah and Piper did such a great job together! Their mammas and grandparents were all surprised and pleased at how well they shared and worked together (most of the time). The little girls mostly played near each other, but they were cute, too. Tallie is just four weeks older than Molly, and it was fun to see how much alike they are, and all the things that they are doing at the same time. Tallie is walking better, and Molly is talking a little more. And of course, Tallie has more hair than Piper and Molly combined! It has been over a year since we had been together with John's family, and this was the first time that the little girls got to meet. We were so glad for lots of time to just be together!

A recipe and other randomness

The other night we made Chicken a la Queen (recipe courtesy Rachel Ray) for the second time. We really like it! I think the combination of red bell peppers and asparagus is fun and different (although it can be hard to find both of them for a good price). Elijah loved it too! We used Pepperidge Farm puff pastry and the ratio of puff pastry (3 servings) to Chicken a la Queen (4 large Patrick-sized servings) didn't come out quite right, but Elijah and I had the leftovers for lunch today with toast instead and that was good too - in fact, Elijah preferred it that way. (Although to be fair, he is completely obsessed with toast right now and would eat it with anything.) He had a lot of fun dunking his toast in the soup (or whatever you want to classify this as) and slurping it off.

Yesterday my cousin Melissa referred me to a blog that I think is awesome - The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. The blog is great, and only serves to encourage my rather strange passion about correct punctuation. At least I know that I am not alone. (I first found this out when a friend recommended the hilarious book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves.) Now I want to start a blog of misplaced apostrophes! By the way, friends, please do not freak out that I am over-analyzing your blogs, emails, etc for incorrect punctuation - it only really makes me crazy when people publish it. I know I am a horrible speller and even tend to be rather informal and liberal with dashes when writing for fun, so I can't judge. But if I were printing a huge billboard, I would have someone proofread it first!

Pictures from last weekend

Here are some pictures from Elijah's weekend, as promised. Check out Melissa's blog for some pictures and a video of Elijah's visit with Logan.

Driving around while "helping" Uncle John load the moving truck

Exploring at Nana & Grandpa's house

Hugs for Nana and Bixby the Bear

Cousins

I think Elijah is very lucky to have so many fun cousins - several who are close to his age! Although we don't get to see most of them all the time, I'm sure that Elijah will enjoy our travelling around the country to visit them. I am blessed to have a great friendship with my cousin Jackie (she's 15 days older than me), and I'm thankful that our parents made such efforts over the years to make sure we got to see each other despite the distance. I am hopeful that we can do the same for Elijah and his cousins! Click to see more pictures of Elijah with his cousin buddies: Piper, Evan and Rylee. Elijah is lucky to get to see his cousin Logan (who is 14 days younger) much more often, and we all enjoy seeing the boys together. (The boys are only starting to care!) Check out some of Melissa's fun pictures and a video of the boys.

Elijah (12 mo.) and Logan (11 1/2 mo.)

A few more pictures

Here are some more pictures. If you want to see a few more than I posted here, check out the photo album. Thanks to Melissa for some of the pics. We had a wonderful visit with Grandma, and I am thankful that she was able to come. This week reminded me how thankful we are for the support of our families, and for the legacy of faith that has been passed down to us. What a wonderful inheritance we have to share with Elijah. I pray that we will be as faithful to teach him about our amazing God.

Elijah with Nana and Great-Grandma
Reading with Nana
My mom and her brothers
Generations

More family pics from Saturday

Elijah and Great-Grandma Jennie
Elijah playing with Melissa and Logan
Four generations