The Monkey

Well today we had a great time being a monkey! Although he was mistaken for a bear, a dog and anything else furry and with potentially large ears... We trick or treated our block of the neighborhood and everyone wanted to give Caed candy, even though we told them no. They couldn't help it.

Our time at Jon's office was fun, there were about 5 other kids there dressed up and Dad was happy to show off his little monkey. The first bit Caed was really quiet and shy, and then we took him out of the costume and he opened right up walking up to Jon's co-workers and saying "hi!" and telling them "bye" as they left. He won big points!

These pictures on our steps were taken this morning. I wasn't sure that later in the day I would get Caed agreeable to more pictures. But these turned out fun anyway. Caed loved that mom carved a kitty face in the pumpkin. He LOVES kitties. (our friends have two cats and today on the ride home from Jon's office reviewing who we saw this morning, I mentioned Aliyah and immediately he said 'kitty'!)

I took a couple of photo's outside our friends house who live on the Hill and I thought they turned out fun. Caed was agreeable to these photos and of course the real banana helped out too.

It's time for this momma monkey to go to bed. Whew, I am spent! More tomorrow (hopefully!)

Busy!

Who knew that having a child on Halloween meant your day was booked solid! This has been a fun day, but Caed is sleeping now- and when he wakes up, we are on our way to Jon's office for some more dress-up fun.

Pictures to come soon! Stay tuned!

more to come

I must head off to bed if I plan on being coherent in the morning. I still have a few more pictures, but I'll leave this for now. I really want to catch up so I can put more recent photos and not feel guilty!

The fridge problem is close to resolution. Instead of having Jon take off the frame to the back door (one of three in that back room alone) we are just going to have the doors straight out replaced before Thanksgiving. What a fun project! Jon's heading up the planning with the construction guy. That will keep us busy for a few days around here.

Additionally, we got some bad news about Khaki our dog. She went to the vet to have a lump removed from her belly. They didn't do the surgery because they did an x-ray first and saw spots on her lungs. They seem to think it points to lung cancer. There's an off chance that it could be left from the Heartworm she had before adopting her. We are hopeful she's still got a lot of life in her, we don't see any evidence of illness at all at this point. Khaki is such a good dog we can't imagine life without her.

Fall Flowers

The flowers were so beautiful in the town we were walking through (on our way to get pedicures). Here are just a couple:



(can you see the bee in the lower left corner?)

Spider webs

On Saturday morning at Heather's we woke up and there was still dew on the ground. Out in Heather and Jerry's bushes the spider webs showed up because of the dew. Someone said that it looked like jewlery- and it did. They were so cool.



This was what one of the bushes looked like with the small spider webs in it:

Heather's 35th birthday

Finally- some photos from PA. Here is Heather on the morning of her birthday...thrilled with her orange turtleneck sweater (her favorite color.)

April, Kik and Ken looking just as thrilled to be awake:

Outside the Amish market where we all went to get breakfast. I started off the day in a foul mood. I must have needed that fresh meat breakfast sandwich badly!

And a picture of Caed for good measure. Being at his aunt and uncles house is one of his favorite things:

would be...

I would be blogging some of my photos right now, but since Jon is using the other computer for work, and that's where my un-blogged photos are, I can't disturb him and get them to my computer right now. Drat.

I will get them soon and then I'll be caught up to the beginning of October- but I guess I've jumped ahead with my fridge post. Oh well. This weekend we had a great weekend. On Saturday during Caed's marathon napping (after a 5 am wake up) we got some down time and Jon watched a whole movie- (treat for him) and I took care of things around here that needed tending too since our fridge escapade. Then we went to church on Saturday evening and then enjoyed a meal with our friends the Martins. The kids played together and Caed is learning how to kiss and hug his friends. Since most of them are girls and he's nearly the only boy this is good for him. (not really a habit I want to continue- he won't be kissing any girls until he's in his 20's, thank you very much!) Today we went to the church family pumpkin patch thing at a local farm (as local as a farm can get to DC) and we had a blast. we took a lot of pictures and I will get to those soon too. Just Jonathan keeping me from that right now...silly work obligations, I've got posts to make!

Happy Birthday Auntie Co!

(my mom, Jonathan and Co- at Jon's graduation)

My two sisters definitely surpass me on this entry. But I have to write something too because after reading their blogs for my aunts birthday, I want to contribute too on how important she is to our life!

As Heather started, it seems fitting to start the same way- I have an amazing Auntie Co. As April and I say, Co has always been our "otha motha". When I was in third grade she took me, and me alone, to Walt Disney World. I somehow seemed to think that she was magic because of that. That was the first airplane ride I remember, and that contributed to her magical-ness. She's there when we need her and always gives us words of encouragement- and gives it to us straight when we need it too. She's an amazing sister to our mom and my favorite part of their relationship right now is they can get each laughing so hard, you can picture it when then talk about it days later....Co has always travelled to exotic places, dressed perfectly (i think it's so funny we all thought that, and I don't think we ever discussed it!) had the coolest cars (the red Pontiac and the other car on LI that had the flags in an line below the car model) and loved us all equally.

Jonathan, Caed, Khaki and I all wish you a Happy Birthday!

A busy week

This week our fridge died. I have been writing the word fridge all week, and I can't tell if it should be with or without a "d". My suspicion is to include the "d" but when the word refrigerator doesn't have a "d" it doesn't make sense logically to me. I digress.

So this week has been a little stressful trying to keep our existing food cold- and having to do all the other busy things this week (file at small claims court, all day conference yesterday) and pick out and accept a new fridge. We picked out one that we will really enjoy. We are both so happy with it- and best of all, it's cold!!

We have a slight problem though. The fridge is too big for our doorways. Yikes! So now we have a space in our kitchen, and a fridge in our dining room. We are hosting Thanksgiving, so we better have a solution soon! (although it makes grabbing a forgotten item from the fridge really easy to retrieve!) The actual resting place of the fridge will be the back area of our house- so not in the kitchen proper- but a room we use for pantry items- a fridge doesn't really fit in the spot it was, because there is a radiator against the wall in front of it, and you can't open anything completely without hitting it! The freezer in the old fridge never opened completely- so anything larger then 5 inches across had to be tilted to fit. Makes it hard when you've made a meal and then want to freeze it- you've got to have the spot, tip it quickly and then slide it in....so all that is the reasoning to temporarily move it to the back room, until we redo the kitchen this spring. So we have to take off the back door then call Sears to come back and "complete" the delivery.

Here's a little photo, taken with my phone of what it looks like right now:

Sunday, end of the weekend

A new work week starts tomorrow. This weekend we didn't do too much- and nothing too festive either. We took in a couple of garage sales (actually sales at churches with mass amounts of stuff) and relaxed together with tasks here at home. I did get to do some yard work which I thought was enjoyable and somewhat "festive". I am closing up all the plantings....I have decided to move my veggie garden to the front of my house next year, in hopes to get more then 3 tomatoes, 2 green peppers and 1 zucchini! (it was a lot of work just for those!) So that entails moving some things and pulling out other things. I don't profess to be a landscaper, but I'll make a go at a nice flowering yard (Jon takes care of the grass) this coming spring. I am also clearing out a shared piece of planting between our neighbors and our house. It's totally overgrown and I want to figure out something a little more polished for the area. My neighbor doesn't mind, so I'll come up with something! Jon was busy with pressure washing the front steps- we're trying to change the current purple to gray, and so he's in the process of cleaning them off..the house will look totally different without the purple steps to look for. Jon did get a little football watching time in today, which he enjoys getting Caed to watch the 5 minutes that's he's interested for, with him.

Pictures soon to come, but still may be a few days off, we've got a busy week ahead of us! Tuesday I'll be filing a claim in small claims court (yuck) and Wednesday I am off to an all day conference in Baltimore for some graphic design stuff. Thursday we have a college friend of Jon's coming for dinner at night. Pretty soon we're back to the weekend!

100th posting!

My sister Kristen recently wrote about her 100th post, and so I asked her how she knew that- apparently, I was just at 100 too- it would have been my Vineyard pictures post! Too bad I didn't realize it before and wrote something more meaningful! :)

Well it's Friday, it's actually fall weather out and it's October. I am hoping we do something fall-ish this weekend. No other plans are on our planner, so it looks like a good possibility! I'll be posting more pictures again soon too. It's not everyday the Adare girls are altogether in one place!

Becky's engaged!

We just found out tonight that my best friend Becky is engaged!! Yay! Congratulations Becky and Jason, we pray many blessings on you both!

Becky, Jason and Jason's son Caleb:

Vineyards

Since leaving Long Island lots of vineyards have popped up out east on the island. It's really pretty so I wanted some photos with Caed.

Last of the Long Island photos

I am now free to post other photos now that I am getting these last photos up here- my own restriction- but it's better that way to get everything posted!

We went for a walk, and Caed only wanted to walk- so our walk became short:



Our very special Aunt Betsy and Caed:



We went to this farm where you can feed the animals, Caed loved it- the animals were so vocal too, it was a great reinforcement of 'Old MacDonald'!:



Loving the animals:



Finally a photo on the Tractor!:

More Horton Lighthouse

Here are a few more from the beach at the Lighthouse- the water was so beautiful, and Caed so cute!

At the top of the stairs down to the beach:



The flight of stairs that I carried him up and down:



Two quick pictures on the green slimy rock that he wanted to dive off of:




One pretty photo of the sailboat along the horizon and the water appearing to be clear:

Horton Lighthouse

My maternal grandfather's family are Horton's- descendants of the early Long Island Settlers. (I think I have that right?) My mom has always loved to bring us to the Horton Point Lighthouse, but the significance was not understood until I went back myself with Caedmon when we were out in Southold visiting the in-laws. I was out looking for Tractors, and saw a sign for the lighthouse and then decided to go. When we got there it was beautiful. Beautiful weather and setting. I took a few photos and really had a great time on this little unexpected adventure.

The lighthouse:



Getting Caed to sit still on my own was a little tricky:



Another:



On the bench on the lighthouse property:



Flagpole on the property:

On the boat with Grammie and Grandpa

Sorry it's taken so long to post these. With our trip up to PA and my sister Kristen's Blog already showing some of the photos from that trip, I decided I needed to get on the ball. Caed has just woke up from his nap, so this will be short.

Jon's parents have two boats, and on the Thursday that we were there before Jon arrived, we got a great ride on the smaller one. Caed loved it a lot! But that is no surprise!

With Grammie, leaving the canal to go out into the Peconic Bay:



Driving the Boat with Grandpa (he wanted to figure everything out!):



Pretty views:



A snack in the seat by himself:



Looking through the glass at the captains area:

Bathroom

Don't worry, this isn't going to touch on anything remotely undesirable.

We have our groceries delivered by Peapod (wonderful luxury!) and we were on our way out the door when the running late delivery wasn't running as late as they said showed up. So we got Khaki back in the house, Caed out of the stroller, and the task of getting the refrigerated items was at hand. While I was putting our groceries away, Caed was traipsing around the house. Then, I hear a squeak come from the bathroom and then water running. Caed has figured out how to turn on the faucet, and he's tall enough to reach it now. And he can push it enough to get a good stream running too. The problem is that it's the hot water he can reach. Small hazard for a toddler in the house. So I start to play "oh you can reach it, let me turn it off, put more groceries away and come back and turn it off again" game. I don't really have the availability to discipline this at the moment, so I let it go as I try to hurry as fast as I can. Then I come and look (make sure he's not touching the hot water) and for some reason he's taken the empty toilet paper roll that was in the trash and pulled off the remaining small pieces and started putting them in the sink with the running water- and then there are small pieces of TP scattered in my small bathroom. So we now have time for a quick disciplining moment of teaching "no-no" for the bathroom trash. I distract him enough and we retreat to the rest of the house for destruction while I finish getting those groceries away!

It's amazing that in 16 short months the progress he's made developmentally. And even though things like this are frustrating and make every task longer, I try to sit back and think of how quickly this time passes. We are truly blessed with our son.

"UP!"

My good friend Carrie called me last night and asked me about funny things Caed was doing. I was trying to think of some but was having a hard time recalling them on the spot. So this is just a short post- but I wanted to remember this funny thing Caed has been doing. When he wants to be picked up, he says "up" but then lately to get put down, he says "up" as well. So it's quite humorous when you are already carrying him, and he starts repeating incessantly "up, up, up!"

We know pretty soon with our reminders he'll get the hang of "down" so I wanted to make sure I didn't forget this short (hopefully) developmental progress.

Additionally, we just returned from a surprise trip to visit my sister Heather who turned 35 on Saturday- so I have to finish posting the photos of Long Island to post pics with my sisters. We were altogether!