Labor of Love

Happy Valentine's Day!

Enjoy some pics of my little taste testers/artists making sure our cake was safe to eat and looked beautiful as well!















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Home Decor

We've been in this house now for 13 months now and therefor have gone through all of the holidays that you could possibly go through but for one reason or another (with the exception of Christmas) we haven't really put much up in the way of decorations but now were changing that...and we're starting today with some window and wall clings. I love seeing how much a little sticker can brighten my little girls day.

It's going to be fun to see our little collection of decor grow year by year :)

Tomorrow we decorate Valentine's cake for Daddy...









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Ahh she's standing! Walking on her own isn't too far off...







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Spaghetti Dinner

I just can't seem to find the right words to get my point across tonight.  Sorry it's just not happening.  Over the past week I've seen/heard about so many terrible things happening to kids it's just not fair.  

We have been incredibly lucky with our girlies, and I can only pray that we continue to be as fortunate as we have been.  I feel that since we have been so fortunate it's our responsibility to pay it forward to help out people when and where we can.

Fast forward to tonight and we brought the girls out to Greenville HS to a Spaghetti dinner being put on by the Greenville Fire Department to benefit the family of a local 10 year old girl battling brain cancer.  Dinner was absolutely delicious and we walked around a little bit , there was a fantastic bake sale and a load of baskets being auctioned off.  

There were a good number of people there, and more coming in as we left.  And a good number of the baskets/items being auctioned off were donated from local companies (and some not so local companies)  It truly warms my heart to see how generous people can be when they are coming together for a common cause.  

With all the nonsense that's going on in the world it's still awesome to see proof that nice people still exist.

  I hope we can pass on a willingness to help others to our girls, leading by example :) 

 

So 24 hours in and I'm still loving this thing. And it appears that C is too :)

Today I went ahead and actually bought some apps...something I avoided like the plague with my iPod. But it seems to be worth it. C is loving her Dora game that reads to her and the Color Drop app that let's her draw to her hearts content :)

I'm loving how big everything is especially compared to the iPod and my (droid) phone and the ease of use. Almost too easy. I don't have a particular favorite app yet...I'm reserving judgment until the the Star Watch becomes available (for some reason it's not downloading right at the moment) so we'll see...

Till tomorrow, here are some pics...







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iPad :)

Sorry, not much time to post tonight, hubby got me an iPad for Valentine's Day and I'm figuring out how to use it :). Loving it so far!

Making Valentines

Today the Girls and I made Valentines :)

We went out side and took pictures

Then we came inside and broke out a kit I had bought at Target, sorted through the mishmash of letters desperately searching for non existent letter "V"s 

Stuck the Stickers on (I helped with the spelling...)

And came up with some pretty great looking valentines :) which will be sent out with the pictures :) 

Fun Times in the V household today :) 

It's the little things...

Today I was searching for a pan to make dinner, A crawled on over to see what I was doing so I gave her a couple of pans to keep her busy while I cooked.

Fast forward a couple of minutes and I leave the room for a second, come back and C is teaching A how to be a Rock Star by banging the pans.

 It's little things like watching them interact like this that I love the most :) C is such a great big sister.  I'm not saying she's perfect all the time and never ever gets upset with her sister, but all in all she is great.

Going Green!

It's official!  We're going green!  Solar City Reps came out today to take measurements to take back to their architects to draw up our blueprints and in about sixish months they'll be back to start installing!  

So excited for this to finally come about, for years we have wanted to go solar with our energy.  We tried with our home in Schenectady, but thanks to the ancient trees that blocked almost all the sun from coming into our yard we were shot down.  

Now that we are in this house one of the first things we did was contact a few different companies to get our options and after about a year of looking and researching we settled on Solar City (through One Block Off the Grid) because of the great deal they (OBOTG) were offering and the different payment plans they offered.  

So awesome!  The panels are mostly going to be put on the left hand side of the garage roof and some on the roof of our house where they will be getting the most sunshine.  

In the end it should look something like this...

Photo Courtesy of One Block Off the Grid

This project should be offsetting about 60% of the energy we are currently receiving from our power company.  

So hand in hand with this we are going to be getting a home energy inspection some time next month from Solar City so they can show us different ways to cut our energy usage even more.  Can't wait to see what kind of suggestions they give us (besides getting doors that fully fit in the frame and windows that are  properly installed LOL).  


It's fun being able to see how we can take further control of the money we are spending, not to mention that great feeling of doing something better for the environment!


Next up: Electric Car.

Super Bowl Sunday

Go Giants!  That is all.

Our Other Baby

Here he is, our *other* baby, a right old love bug if he knows you but if your a stranger watch out :) 

He's a rescue, a Katrina Puppy (brought up here to a shelter after the hurricane), he's our guard dog, our co-pilot (see picture below), the cleaner of our daughters' hands and faces and general food type messes, the one who sucks on blankets but never destroys them, the one who follows C around just waiting for her to drop that darned cheese stick, the one who LOVES to run and play (but not well with other dogs) and the one who most can't wait to get our yard fenced in so he can keep a patrol running to keep our yard free of squirrels...and turkeys...and snakes...and cats.

He's our baby boy.  He's Sirius Black.

Friday First...table food!

Well A got her first taste of Made by Mommy lunches and/or dinners this week.  In order to help her put some weight on her doctor gave the okay to start milk and eggs and instructed us to just put a helping of whatever we were eating in the blender to mush it up for her.  So that's what we did.  Her first ever was some Rotini with sauce and cheese mixed in.  She didn't really appreciate the texture very much and more ended up ON her rather than IN her but she's getting it down fast.  

When feeding her with the spoon wasn't working all that great we gave her the bowl just to see what she would do with it, since when ever she picks something non edible up it goes right in the mouth.  Not so much with the food, it was apparently too fun to squish around and or feed to the dog.

All in all though I think she had a good time with it, and as long as she had fun with the experience  (and *some* made it in her belly) that's all that matters right? 

Library Love

Seriously, what's not to love about a library?? 

Movies, Books, Games, story time, etc., etc.  all for free, you get to borrow them for a week or so then drop them right back off so they aren't cluttering up your house :) plus you aren't forced to watch the same Dora (for example) episodes over and over and over again, you return one one week and your kid gets to pick out a new one all.by. them. self. next week.  pure magic I tell you :) 

Going to the library has become a weekend ritual for us in the past couple of weeks, I print out a list of books to look for before we go (gotta have some that are Letter or Holiday of the Week related!) then when we get there we let C put the return books from the previous week in the slot (they even have a step stool specifically so littles can turn in their books) then she heads straight for the games and puzzles they have out to play with and I take A and go on a book hunt.  The thing about the children's section though is that all the books are at their level so I get to crawl around looking for the books :). Its a great sight I tell you the Librarians there must love watching all the moms pick out the books.  

After all that we head for the movies and pick out a couple for C to watch in the van for the week and maybe even one for Family Movie Night, then let C pick out a book if she wants and check out and head home with our treasures.

I truly truly hope that I can some how impart my love of reading on these two beautiful little girls of mine :) Its great to know that a world of opportunity sits right here at their fingertips only minutes away from our home.  

February already

It was close to 60 degrees out today...yes that's 60 degrees Fahrenheit in upstate NY on February 1st...so we couldn't let a beautiful day like that pass by with out going outside!

We played on the swings...

We played with the Ball...

We took a walk around the yard...

Then we landed in the driveway...

...where A practiced her crawling...

...and where C collected sticks :)

Then after we came in, we noticed...a rainbow to top it all off.

After we came in both girlies were tuckered out and took good naps, when C woke up from hers it seemed she spiked a low fever and was sick for the rest of the night :( seems she was fighting something off all day but luckily she's feeling a bit better today though!

And this marks the end of my first of 29 in 29 yay for another February challenge!  Yes I am a day late with the posting, but after last night I can forgive myself lol...