Maria as Queen of France in the January 2015 homeschool one act play competition:
Landon in his last one act play competition-his performance won a ‘best actor’ medal.
I think he’d fail the marshmallow test:
Apparently we invited a dwarf to Daniel’s birthday party:
Claire slipped smoothly into her role as big sister. Benjamin is only one week old here!
Landon assists Maria in making a Galadriel costume.
Little brothers. Love.
Musician in training:
We were fortunate enough to have a very mild last half of January, so winter has been easier to take this year. I was even starting to worry that the spring bulbs would get a little confused after temperatures in the 40’s and 50’s had melted away almost all the snow. I didn’t need to worry, though, since it is now cold enough, and we have eight new inches of snow. Yesterday as I walked to class in the early morning the wind whipped my cheeks till they were red and numb. It was quite a sudden reminder that there are still at least two months of winter left.
There are a few things that make even the coldest days of winter pleasant. Landon has been working on mastering the preparation of frothed milk cappuccinos. He also likes to make his drinks into works of art which are wonderful to sip on a cold afternoon.
We also brought a puppy home in October of last year. He’s a cairn terrier, the only breed of dog we’ve found that doesn’t give me allergies. He’s very friendly with the little kids, and Claire is one of his favorite people, since she loves to give treats to him. We named him Watson, after Sherlock Holme’s faithful companion. The detective themed name suits him, for he always has his nose to the ground.
Here Mom is holding him on her birthday in November, when he was so little!
Cuddly is not the first word I would use to describe his bouncing personality, but as he is getting older he is starting to appreciate sitting with us on the couch. If you can catch him around one of his favorite nap times, he will stay on your lap for quite a while. He makes the perfect winter lap warmer.
My birthday was a very exciting day, on account of the white smoke coming from Rome. How many people in the world get a pope for their birthday?
I had a tiramisu cake, and it was delicious. It looked really nice, too.
Yes. My family ate half a cake in one sitting.
I REALLY like coffee in desserts. Landon has been making ice cream like crazy, and last week he made some coffee flavored for me, so I was able to top my slice of cake with my favorite coffee ice cream.
(By the way, Landon’s ice cream is excellent. He’s able to make it smooth without crunchy ice crystals I tasted in our last attempt at homemade ice cream. Furthermore, his recipe calls for egg yolks which make it luxuriantly creamy. Now after writing that, I’m actually going to have some right now, because it’s Sunday, which means a break from Lent.)
(I have dibs on almost all of the coffee ice cream, because most of the boys don’t like it.)
March flew quickly past, as I kept very busy with schoolwork, vision therapy, and preparing for my grade 4 ballet exam. I’ve been working hard on my geometry, getting in an extra lesson a week on Saturday mornings to stay on track, since I’m a bit behind because of the problems my eyes have been causing me while reading. Fortunately, I just made a breakthrough in my vision therapy that I attend once a week, and it seems to be the beginning of the end of my eye pain.
Ballet exams for Maria and I took place at the end of March. I had to wait almost a week for my score, and I just found out tonight that I received a pass plus for my score.
The only other exciting thing to happen this March was my sixteenth birthday, which was made even more special by the robins arriving on that day for the second year in a row. My cake also turned out nicely, and it was six layers of white cake with raspberry frosting and jam in between the layers. It was delicious!
Sunday was both the end of daylight savings time and Mom’s birthday. We went out to Johnny Carinos, my favorite restaurant, where Mom got free tiramisu. The next day she opened a present that Landon, Maria, had I ordered her a birthday present and came a day late.
We’ve been eying this statue of Our Lady for a long time, plotting to get it for her sometime. Once Mom was paging through the Leaflet Missal Catholic catalog, and she remarked that she had always liked that statue. Landon and Maria were with me, and they both winked and nudged me with their elbows at the same time. Thankfully, Mom didn’t see it.
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Yet.
We have one more day.
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Announcing Daniel Augustine Frederes, who was born on May 27, 2009, at 6:14 PM. He weighed 8 lb 7 oz, and he’s beautiful. Thanks be to God for his safe delivery!
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Alexander and his presents.
Landon decorated Alex's cake in chocolate chips.
By the end of the day, this candy necklace had been eaten. Alexander also had a tummy ache. Coincidence? I don't think so.
I took this picture because Alex loves his age, and has been telling people he is going to be five ever since he turned four. If you come to our house, he will probably tell you that he is five, but he's turning six soon.
It took a while for Alex to blow out his candle. Joseph is trying to get Alex to play with his new WALL-E and EVE toys, which were his birthday presents.
Another attempt to blow out his candle. I think he got it this time.
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I’ve been busy. I have had an explosion in babysitting, mostly because I was hired by a woman with a newborn to help babysit her three year old while she prepared for a three week trip to Europe. I have been going over to her house twice a week for two weeks. However, they left today so I won’t be doing that job any more.
On March 13, I turned fourteen. That day also marked the return of the robins. I saw six in our yard! Instead of cake, we went out to a Mexican restaurant and ate fried ice cream, YUM! The next day we started painting my room, which was one of my birthday presents. It is bright blue and yellow, colors that were in the blanket on my bed. My blanket is very tropical, with parrots and hibiscus on it.
More posts later!
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This is definitely a late post, (Mom’s 33rd B-day was on the seventh), but I just remembered I had these pictures on my camera. Mom went to the hair salon on her birthday, and she had her hair done up in temporary curls. Naturally, I was taking pictures of the it as soon as Mom walked through the door. Clover decided to fly to Mom to get in the picture as well.
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It just seems that nothing around here has happened that is worth writing a whole blog post, so I’ll just mention them all in a breif summary of the last few weeks. On September twenty seventh, Landon, John, and I slept out in a tent in the backyard. I peeked out the tent window and saw the constellation of Orion, which is only visible during the cold months of the year, gleaming in the South-East sky. This, along with the fact that I just pulled out my first long-sleeved shirt today, is a sure sign that winter is coming.
Landon turned twelve on October 1st, and he got a radio controlled car for his birthday. He couldn’t make up his mind about what kind of cake to have until the last minute, so Mom had to pick him up a cheese cake from the grocery store.
Tuesday I am going to get a pair of new pointe shoes, because i have grown out of my old shoes. I can’t wait to dance in the new shoes, the satin outside of the shoes is so shiny when they are new. We are now doing exercises away from the barre (without holding on to anything) in my pre-pointe class.
That’s all the things I can think of, so I shall close this post.
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John Paul turned seven August 30th. This is the cake I made for him.
One of John’s gifts was a stuffed monkey. He made a jungle gym for it outside out of scraps of wood from things that Dad has built.
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Happy Birthday America!
This Fourth of July, our family went to Dad’s parent’s farm to shoot off fire works. It was a good show, and though I can never capture the brilliance of fireworks, I did get a few good pictures.
Bad picture, cute subject.
We had water balloons to play with. I got completely drenched. Everybody was aiming for our grandpa. Landon eventually got him, but every time I threw a balloon at him, they rolled off his back. I needed to throw harder.
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Here are the pictures Dad took of the Baltimore Orioles that stopped by a while ago. We haven’t seen them since, but I did see a few more when I was at a friends house for a birthday party. (She lives out in the country.) Aren’t they lovely little birds?
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