Princesses and more princesses!

We had a princess party for emma's 4th birthday.  Seven little girls running around in princess outfits.  It was so much fun!

Mommy and Daddy even dressed up as the "King and Queen".

Emma is 4!

I can hardly believe that Emma is 4 already!  She is growing up so fast.  

We celebrated last night with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.  Actually a lot of fun.  

4 things I love about Emma:

1..She takes a little while to wake up in the morning and after a nap.  She's a little grumpy..just like me:)

2..She loves to help, especially with cooking.

3..She loves to laugh.  

4..She is the best cuddler I know.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl!

Tis' the Season!

Emma's Christmas recital.

decorating the tree.

Emma's 1st school field trip to see reindeer.

Liam's first "school" christmas party.

Just Emma being cute!

One of the 2 really good Christmas Card pics we got!

Searching for a Christmas tree.

Emma loves Santa..Liam not so much.

Fall is here!

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  The whole family went to DC a week and a half ago to see some good friends and for me to run in the Marine Corps marathon.  We had such a great time!  Emma and Liam made some new friends and we got to see some old friends that we haven't seen in way too long.  They were gracious enough to open their home to us...so we had 5 kids running around for 5 days!  Too fun! I think Emma is still adjusting to not having her friends with her all of the time.  

We had a great time going to a couple of museums and just enjoying the city.  It makes it hard to come back to Albany.  It was so nice to just be able to walk or jump on the metro to get to everything.  And there is just so much to do there...for FREE!!  And I just loved the "community" feel that we experienced in our friends' neighborhood.  It was such a blessing to watch neighbors who truly cared about each other..regardless of color or background.

(side note...i am now in an albany funk.  it seems to happen every time i go out of town.  albany can be such a tough place to live.  i think a lot of people have forgotten how to reach out to others here.  this is a fairly exclusive town and it is easy to feel lonely.  i sometimes long to live somewhere where it feels like their is true community.  all that said, we have been blessed with some amazing friends here.  )

And the trip was topped off by my running a marathon with one of my best friends.  

What a great trip!  Thank you Tom and Leah for all you did to make it so much fun!  

And then, of course, we had Halloween last weekend!  We had a great time going trick or

treating.

You Can Do It!!

She might not finish first like this crazy looking chic from Romania, but tomorrow morning my wife will run her first official marathon. I say official because she's already had three 26 mile runs in training. Granted tomorrow will have quite a bit more pomp and circumstance, a few more observers and an actual medal. All of her other long runs have been followed by getting kids ready for school or at least having them around enough to keep her from stealing a nap. Her marathon training has been well documented through the Toenail Trials of Angie Elliott, and I can't bring myself to see another picture of them. So I won't ask you to either.
To say I'm proud of Angie is a huge understatement. About 10 months ago Angie hated running and would be the first to admit it. She also would admit that she couldn't run 2 miles, but she set a goal and started working towards it. Half marathon in March and now a full in DC. She's inspired my lazy butt to start running as well. Granted I still have a lucid mind, so I won't be running anything near 26 miles, but I'm looking forward to some 5ks, 10ks and I'm contemplating the 1/2 marathon in Albany. I'm pretty sure that after tomorrow she will have something that she can look back at for the rest of her life as a huge accomplishment. Liam, Emma and I are proud of you!

Oh and this is my first ever blog. So, yes, the seal is broken and I will now forever document my every mood, event and circumstance. Prepare yourself world.

Our little monkey!

We've known for quite a while that Liam is a climber. It all started with the skull fracture he received when he was only 1 when he decided to jump out of the buggy at Lowe's. We often find him standing on the kitchen table or standing on top of whatever he can find to climb. Lately we've been finding him in lots of crazy places...some funny, but some I'd rather not find him in. He's gonna be trouble:) but it's hard to get mad because he's so darn cute!

Bad Game..Good Weekend!

Yes, we lost the game but we had a great weekend with friends. We got to see our good friend, Jason, play his first show with his band "The Warm Fuzzies", got to hang out with some old college friends that we don't get to see enough, were blessed to stay with some sweet friends, Jana and Jason and got to eat at some of our favorite places. Wish we could do it every weekend.