Happy spring everyone! It may be spring, but that doesn’t mean that snow season is over yet in Minnesota, as is evidenced in a number of pictures in the Mar-Apr 2008 album. Debbie and the boys went out and played in the snow one day about a week and a half ago, but it melted quickly that day – the big snowman was in pieces by the time I came home from work. The next day, they were out riding bikes in the beautiful weather. Two days later on Good Friday, we had 8 inches of snow fall, plus 2 more the next day. Days later, it’s all gone again. Ya gotta love Minnesota weather…

We had a lot of fun on Easter this year. The Easter bunny left gifts for the little guys, Cole and Joe made a fantastic breakfast for us all, and we had fun playing with all sorts of eggs. Two of my favorite new words were invented on this day: cup-ets and bunny beans. “Cup-ets” was Alex’s attempt to say buckets, which was what the Easter bunny left their goodies in. He was so cute as he tried so hard to say it right. “Bunny beans” are more commonly known as jelly beans, but I think we’ll be forever calling them bunny beans now thanks to both Zach and Alex. Check out the pictures in the Easter 2008 album.

Tags: Alex, Cole, Easter, holiday, Joe, spring, Zach

It’s hard to believe we’re this far into the new year already to have enough pictures to start the 2008 Family album, but here we are.

The first batch of pictures include little glimpses at just how much Zach and Alex have grown in the last year. They are able to feed themselves with forks and spoons – and doing it quite well most of the time. They’ll sit down with a book on their own and look at all the pictures, naming the objects and colors they know (which grows by the day, it seems). And they love to do art projects – coloring, painting and more. It’s amazing how much they can do now!

Some favorite pictures, though, are from just a couple days ago where the boys were hanging out in their Halloween costumes, dressed as Pooh Bear and Eeyore. They loved wearing them and looked so darn cute! Particularly funny was the fact that Zach absolutely HAD to have the hood up – any time it slipped off, he came running to ask for help putting it back on.

Tags: Alex, playtime, Zach

Happy New Year to all! We hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas.

Lots of new pictures have been added to the Photo Gallery. Finishing out the 2007 Family album are some new photos in the Nov-Dec 2007 album, including a few in early December that were hiding on one of our digital cameras of Z & A enjoying an early Christmas present from Papa and Grandma Pat – a new play table. Also included are a gift of Buzz and Woody from Debbie and fun for the whole family with wooden blocks from Grandpa Dan and Grandma Marilyn.

Debbie and I took the boys to visit Santa. They were really excited about Santa – right up until it was time to actually meet him. Alex had a death grip on me, while Zach was wary of this strange man and found that exploring the area was more interesting. Debbie captured a picture of a struggle to keep the boys still enough to get that split-second portrait. Once we left, they got excited about Santa again. What can you do?

In the Christmas 2007 album, we have pictures from our mid-December trip to celebrate Christmas with family and friends in Chicago – we had such a great time visiting everyone! For Christmas, we opened all our family gifts on the 23rd so we could take our time and enjoy everything with Cole. On Christmas Eve, we made the trek up to Grandma Pat and Papa’s house and spent the day with them; we also were invited to invade the Aberle’s holiday celebration to spend a little time with them.

Christmas Day brought a visit from Santa (fortunately for the boys, while they were still sleeping) and a fantastic meal with some dishes that have become holiday traditions for us – a roast duck with apple and prune stuffing that is to die for, the Vandermark traditional Green Death (lime Jello salad with cream cheese and pears – yum!), and a new butternut squash risotto that was a lot of work but was wonderful with the duck.

Tags: Alex, Christmas, family outing, holiday, Zach