Happy Spring!

Woohoo!  Spring is finally here!  Yet here I am inside blogging   Oh well…in my defense it’s quiet time here   Last Saturday, Josh and I decided to take the girls to the Sciencenter in Ithaca.  We had heard it was a really neat place for kids and that it had a lot of hand-on things for the kids to play and experiment with.  It was pretty awesome.  We can’t wait to take the girls again when they get another year older or so.  Here are some pictures we got of the girls while we were there.  There were two sections to the Sciencenter.  The outside had a giant wooden ramp with a variety of things to play with.

I think I can...

 

 I can with Daddy’s help!

Thank you Daddy!

 

 For those of you that are aware of Family Game Night that we have on the weekends with Dan with Amanda, we use to be “addicted” to Clue.  However, we have evolved…and now we are into Rock Band 2 with wii.  We have our own band!  It’s very exciting.  I should take some pictures of us all.  There is nothing better than a bunch of 30 year olds getting together to rock on!  Amanda is our singer, Dan plays the lead guitar, Josh plays bass, and that leaves me to be the awesome drummer!  Why am I telling you this?  I decided to take the opportunity while at the Sciencenter to train Peyton to be my lil drummer.

I look like Mommy!

 

Here is good picture of Daddy having some fun.

 

Poor Lily   Next time we come you’ll be able to get out and play the drums also.

When do I get a turn?

 

 Here are Daddy and Peyton playing the xylophones.

 

Then we went inside and did some exploring.  Here is Peyton learning about dams and what the result would be if she launches that big ball into the pool of water…

 

Our next stop was the vacuums.  They had a bunch of different vacuums that the kids could play around with and experiment with picking up styrofoam pieces.  So, I may have a little too excited about teaching Peyton how to vacuum…

 

Here is Peyton playing with the vacuums.

 

Sunday was Easter!  I was able to finish both of the girl’s sweaters in time for the big day!  Peyton had other plans for the day though   She woke up with the stomach flu.  Josh ended up staying home with both girls while I went in and braved our early 2 year old class solo.  I’m going to put the girls in their outfits this coming Sunday, so you can look forward to those pictures in the future.  We still had a little fun though, even though Peyton wasn’t feeling too well.  It was the first Easter that she was able to look for an Easter basket.  She found her basket and then went and helped Lily find hers

I found my Easter basket!

 

Here is a picture I snagged of one of those rare moments:

zzz...

This last picture is of Lily at church in the nursery.  She has become the “poster child”, and a bit spoiled by everyone.  Everytime we go into the nursery or walk by, somebody is playing with her   They took this picture of her and hung it up in the hall.

Catching Up

We’ve been keeping pretty busy the past couple of weeks here.  Josh has been successful at keeping Emmaus a secret.  I am looking forward to going in a couple of weeks, but at the same time, I’m a little hesitant.  I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to handle being away from the girls.  We are still trying to figure out what is going on with the laptop and why it isn’t recognizing the disk drive   I think I just have to bite the bullet and install the software onto the desktop, so I can upload the videos.  I’ve taken a lot of pictures of things that we’ve been doing lately.

Doing our yeast experiment.

Our edible bird nests

Last weekend, we went up to Rochester to spend the day with Chris, Tiff, and Claire (who is now 2 years old).  We walked to the park that is near their house and let the kids play at the playground for a bit.  Here are some pics of them:

Wheee!!!

 Here is Peyton:

I want to go Super High!

 Here is a cute picture of Claire with her mommy

Say Cheese Claire and Tiff!

After playtime in the park, we headed back to Chris and Tiff’s house.  We let the girls play outside for a bit and we got some really cute pictures of the girls   Aww…I wish we lived closer.

Hold my hand

 Peyton is talking up storm:

You know what I mean?

 What do you hear?

Claire! I think I can hear them growing!

 Let’s go this way:

 

 It was a fun day together.  We were blessed with nice weather too   I wish we were able to get together more often.  The girls had a blast. 

This past Saturday, we were invited to go to an Easter egg hunt at the local Methodist church.  The girls had a lot of fun.  They had a band that played some music for the kids and put together a little children’s sermon before the hunt began.  The lady that is holding Lily is Mrs. Hurd.  Her husband, Dick,  is the pastor at this church.  He married Josh and me, and Mrs. Hurd (who was my department chair back in the day) walked me down the aisle.  I’m not sure who enjoyed the Easter egg hunt more…Mrs. Hurd or the girls.  I do know she loved spoiling the girls and introducing Lily to the wonderful world of Jello jigglers!  Now all of us girls here are addicted to jigglers!

Okay Lily, we're going to show you how to go Easter egg hunting!

 Here’s another one of Lily:

Go ahead and pick it up Lily!

 Here are Peyton and Daddy looking for some eggs also:

Let's put the egg in your bag Peyton.

Yesterday afternoon, we were able to get the girls outside in the back yard to go on the swing set while Daddy did some yardwork.  Here is a picture of Daddy pushing Peyton before I was able to get Lily outside also.  But, both girls had a blast on the swings yesterday.  

 

I need to get a video of Lily on the swings so you all can hear her giggle up a storm.  She really really likes swings

I finally was able to finish Lily’s Easter sweater!  Yay!!!  I’ve already begun to work on Peyton’s sweater.  Peyton’s sweater will look the same, only it will be a pistachio color.  I have no worries about being able to finish hers on time.  Here is a picture of Lily’s sweater.  The arms are suppose to be big.  It looks really cute on her in a dopey kind of way   I can’t wait to get pictures of the girls in their Easter outfits with matching sweaters. 

Lily's Easter sweater

I’m thinking of trying to teach myself how to knit.  I found a lot of really nice patterns that are free online:  http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/en/kategori_oversikt.php.  These look like something you would find in a store!  It would be really neat if I got good enough to knit my own clothes

Well, I think I’ve covered everything that we’ve been up to for the past 2 weeks.  This Tuesday night, we are suppose to go over to Dan and Amanda’s to continue the Knaisch-Jamison tradition of coloring eggs!

Family Night at the Ice Skating Rink

Last night was family night at the ice skating rink. Our church was sponsoring it. I spent the entire day building it up for Peyton, how she was going to ice skating with Daddy and get hot cocoa and a cookie. She was so excited! It turned out to a really cold night though. We all went to the skating rink together, but Lily and I went over to the library to get our books for next week while Daddy and Peyton hit the ice! I did manage to make it back to the skating rink to get a couple of pics though

Daddy and Peyton skating

Whee!

Both Daddy and Peyton had a blast!  They made it through the night without falling!  I think Daddy got a little more of a workout than he was expecting though

Turning 30

Tuesday was my 30th birthday.  Unfortunately, I spent it comatose on the couch in the living room, sick.  I have been sick since Saturday.  I decided to go to the clinic Monday night.  The doctor seemed to think that I had mono again, but she decided to give me some antibiotics to try out in case it wasn’t mono.  She told me to come back towards the end of the week if I wasn’t improving to get tested for mono.  The good news is that the antibiotics finally started to kick in today for me   I’m able to actually move around and interact with the girls and Josh.  Josh was a little too happy this morning to be able to finally return to work (he’s been staying home to take care of the girls since Monday)…go figure.  Me being sick though, didn’t stop Josh from trying to make the day special for me.  He got me ”Change of Heart” by Jodi Picoult to read.  Josh and Peyton also decided to “surprise” me by baking me a birthday cake.  Of course, I could hear Peyton in the kitchen getting all excited about it being a chocolate cake and singing happy birthday.  Here are some pictures of Peyton getting the full experience of baking a cake with daddy. 

mmm

Here is a picture of Peyton enjoying the chocolate.

I love chocolate.

Here is a picture of Lily looking leftout of eating the cake batter.

When do I get to have some chocolate?

Here is a picture of the cake that Josh and Peyton made.  It was a double layer, with frosting inbetween.  I was impressed, too bad I wasn’t able to taste it

 

What is up with those candles?

Some Daddy and Daughter Time :)

One of the things we got Peyton for Christmas was a big tub of playdoh that came with some fun little toys to use with it.  Here are some pics of Josh and Peyton having some one on one time playing with the playdoh while I got dinner ready.

 

How do you do it Daddy?

Lily has been having a hard time going to sleep the past couple of nights due to having a cold and teething.  Not only has she been awake, but she’s been a little grumpy also.  The only thing that seems to make her happy at this point, once all of her needs have been met, is sitting in the blue backpack carrier that Grammy and Papa J got us for Christmas.  She really enjoyed playing golf with her daddy the other night and critiquing his swing.

Looks like it's just a chip and a putt Daddy.

Good job Daddy.

Happy New Year’s!!!

Happy New Year’s everybody! I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas also We all had an awesome Christmas here. We decided to go with the birthday party theme and hung red and green streamers throughout the house. Peyton was very excited about the birthday party. I must say, the girls were definitely spoiled this year It took us a couple of hours to open all of the presents. Down below, you will see some pics that we took on Christmas morning. Our house was a disaster zone when we finished opening everything.

 

The first thing Peyton saw was the dollhouse from Memere and Pepere:

Here is Peyton trying to figure out how to blow into the party favor:

Here is Tommy trying to snoop a little

Here are some pics of the girls opening some of their presents and Peyton in her Tinkerbell outfit:

Here I am making Christmas dinner and trying out a new gift

Here are the girls in their matching Patriot jammies

Can you see anything Peyton?

Well, there you have some of the highlights from our first Christmas home with the girls.  It was definitely fun, especially since Peyton is getting to the fun age for opening presents.  Peyton didn’t want Christmas to end.  We had birthday cake for a couple of days and each time we had a piece, we had to sing Happy Birthday

Baseball Hall of Fame

For those of you that don’t know, we were blessed to have Zoe (I don’t know how to get the 2 dots over the e) spend 10 days with us recently.  We tried to do something different each day with her.  On one of those days, Josh and Zoe went to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I don’t really know too much about baseball, but here are the pictures that they took while they were there .

Happy Birthday Peyton!

Yes, I realize Peyton’s birthday was June 29…however due to technical difficulties I was not able to post on the blog until today.  My digital camera finally died a slow death without me realizing it.  I had been taking pictures with it only to realize that all of the pictures were blurry.  So, I switched to using our video camera and I just figured out how to get the pictures off of the camera and onto the computer!

We decided to keep Peyton’s birthday low-key this year.  We only invited Dan, Amanda, and their 3 kids:  Abbie, Brent, and John.  We decided to meet at Peyton’s favorite park with the purple slides and have a cookout  

Dennison Park!

Here is Lily…crashed.

Here is Peyton playing in the tunnel.

Here is Peyton…being 2!

Our VeggieTales party favors!

Look at all the stickers Peyton!

New Year’s Day

Yay!  We finally made it to 2008!  2007 definitely had its ups and downs for Josh and myself.  The most important thing that happened to us this year (I think I can speak for both of us) is that we both found our Savior, Jesus Christ right when we needed him.  We were both baptized on June 22, 2007.  From that point on, we have begun a new life together and haven’t looked back since! 

I think last night, we both realized how old we are getting.  We didn’t make it past 10 pm last night, before we had to crash.  Of course, we had also just gotten back from New Hampshire last night as well.

Today was an extremely exciting day for me.  I finally had time to sit down and fill out our Christmas cards!  Yes, I realize it’s after Christmas, but it’s better late than never right?  I also used the Christmas cards as an opportunity to slip in a note sharing the information for this blog with everybody. 

I got a wok for Christmas this year, and I was very excited to learn how to use it.  Josh and I found a couple of easy recipes on the internet this morning.  This afternoon, I left Josh at home to begin to assemble Peyton’s toy chest and kitchen set, and I went grocery shopping and had a blast in the Specialty Foods section looking at all of the neat things in the Asian section.  I thought about buying one of everything, but refrained…a little…  Just when I thought life couldn’t be any better, I headed over to the Organic Food section in search of Pirate’s Booty.  For those of you that don’t know, Pirate’s Booty is bite-size flavored rice cakes…in simpler terms…it is Peyton’s new addiction, thanks to Grammy.

When I got home, I tried to show Josh my new purchases, but for some reason, he just didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm for them.  I decided to make Thai Chicken tonight for dinner with my new wok.  I got out the cute matching aprons that Peyton and I got for Christmas and put them on.  Here are a couple of pictures of Peyton and me getting ready to wok it up!

I just realized that these pictures uploaded without any difficulties and fit fine on the page, unlike the ones that were taken over Christmas break.  I guess that just goes to show you just how much I don’t know about computers.

After Peyton and I stopped posing for the camera, I made the Thai Chicken, which came out really good.  I think I might begin another blog and link it to this page, where I can keep all of my recipes for everybody to try themselves.  I use to ask the question “How can anybody live without a crock pot?”, now I’ve begun to ask “How can anybody live without a wok?”  I can’t believe I went for so long without owning one.  I had fun shopping for the ingredients and cooking the meal, plus the food was edible!  What more could you ask for?  I hope stir-fry is healthy for you…

After dinner, I grabbed a coloring book and crayons that Peyton got for Christmas.  She did pretty well with the crayons.  I tried to take a picture of her coloring, but by the time I ran into the computer room to grab the camera and back out to the living room, Peyton had lost interest in coloring.  Maybe tomorrow…

Christmas

I thought I would include some pictures of Josh and myself as well. 

I couldn’t resist putting in this picture.  Who has the better hairdo?

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Here are the three of us, posing with Frosty.

frosty-1.jpg

I guess, since I included that lovely picture of Josh, I should also include my own picture of myself making my first snow angel ever.

jess-outside-angel1.jpg

Here is a picture of Josh and me.

joshjess-christmas-day.jpg