Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve here at the house. Jeffrey is excited and Meredith is having fun with her Grandparents. No snow here but turning colder here. Will be a nice night for a big old fire. Merry Christmas Eve!

From December 2011

Putting up Christmas tree 2011

On Saturday we went and got our tree and decorated it. Jeffrey helped me go cut the tree. Gwen and I wanted a Douglas Fir (for reasons I forget -- soft needles? Also I think a few years ago I remembered somewhere that I heard they keep their needles the longest). When we got to Tait Farm the guy told us that this was the last year they were selling Douglas Firs -- apparently they are time-consuming to trim and require a lot of pesticide spraying. There was one just one row left and we hiked all the way to the end of the row to find some good trees. Jeffrey was a good helper and we got it cut and wheeled all the way back down the hill.

Everyone had fun decorating the tree -- Meredith dumped a big box of ball ornaments on the floor and had fun with them. Tree looks good and smells great. I'm glad we waited until the week before Christmas. If the tree is up too long I think it loses some of the special feeling.





-- Mike

Festival of Trees

This year Jeffrey, Meredith and I went to the Annual 'Festival of Trees' in State College. Different organizations sponsor a tree and decorate it. Stay and Play preschool decorated a tree and Meredith and Jeffrey made ornaments. We had a fun time looking at all the trees, and it was interesting to see so many Christmas trees in one place!

Jeffrey and Meredith liked looking at all the ornaments and decorations.

I thought this tree was pretty.

'I tried to eat glitter!'

Thanksgiving

Jeffrey said the other day 'I love everyone I know.'

Jeffrey got to make this great turkey t-shirt at school for 'Turkey Tea'. All the parents were invited to see the kids perform thanksgiving songs and to eat pumpkin bars and snack mix and drink Iced tea. It was a fun event with Jeffrey's Fabulous Fours preschool class.


Meredith is finishing up her Thanksgiving grocery shopping. Got the cranberry sauce?


Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

gettin ready for Halloween

First off, holy cow, Mike's writing a post again! Yay!
Like lots of other people in the Northeast, we had some early snow Saturday. Not too bad here, just 2, maybe 3 inches at most, and I didn't seen any tree damage around town. Unusual early snow fall but not as destructive as the one we had in mid-October 2009 that destroyed a bunch of trees in the neighborhood. Here's the melting snow as it appeared today (Sunday)

From October_2011

We carved a pumpkin and decorated some others for Halloween. Gwen gets the props for pumpkin shopping and door decorating. (Although I bought the indian corn). Everyone is ready to go trick-or-treating tomorrow night!

-- Mike

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

Beautiful Fall Weather

We finally had some beautiful fall weather here in 'Happy Valley'. The kids and I raked up a big pile of maple leaves had had days of fun playing in it. We also had a few picnics out in the yard. It was so wonderful after some of our recent soggy weather.

Time for a picnic on the deck.

Our maple tree has the best leaf pile ever! The kids are yelling 'Celebrate!' and throwing leaves in the air. Meredith was trying to yell 'Celebrate!' just like Jeffrey. Not sure what inspired them, but it was really funny.

We picked apples at the annual Way Fruit Farm Apple Festival. We also went on a hayride out to the pumpkin patch. It was fun and everyone was there! I made a delicious apple crumble for dessert, it turned out yummy.

Meredith is riding her bike too! Just like Jeffrey! But mostly without any moving. She likes to put on her helmet and sit on the mini bike for about 2 minutes. It sure is cute though.

September Fun

Some of the fun family activities we did this September were attending the annual State College Insect Fair (along with every other family in town and their children!), and finding some of our own caterpillars and butterflies at home and at the Arboretum.

We finally found a big monarch butterfly caterpillar on the butterfly weed at our house!

Jeffrey at the insect fair with the butterfly displays.

We saw some buckeye butterflies at the arboretum - Jeffrey calls them 'owl butterlies'.

We also took a trip to 'Reptiland', where we saw giant dinosaur displays, a butterfly house, tortises, and of course really great reptile and amphibian displays. It was a fun day trip, we packed a picnic lunch had a fun time. I highly recommend visiting Reptiland - we will go again next year when they have a Komodo Dragon display.

Meredith and Daddy check out the Aligators.

Watch out for the T-rex!

First Day of School

The kids started school on Wednesday. Jeffrey was very excited to go back to Stay and Play, he has a lot of friends there. New teachers seem nice and all the kids seem so big now! Meredith started in the tiny tot 1 year old room this fall, she liked it - the teachers tell me she colored with crayons, played on the slide in the big room and played with the pretend kitchen.

Here's the pictures from the first day, it was so rainy we had to take pictures inside this year!

Jeffrey and Meredith are ready to go!



Jeffrey ready for Fabulous Fours!

Meredith loves her new backpack, it has owls on it!

A hike with Jeffrey and his camera

Gwen got Jeffrey a little digital camera made for kids, so he's been taking some pictures. He and I went for a little walk in the woods at Shaver's Creek. It was a hot and very muggy day - the weather station at home (Thanks Uncle Dave!) claimed 80% relative humidity at 79 degrees F. Anyway we still had fun. There was a lot of orange touch me nots blooming by the creek and Jeffrey was excited about little regions of moss.

Sweaty Jeffrey and his moss bed

From September_2011

Jeffrey and his camera

From September_2011

Taken by Jeffrey with his camera. The camera has some nice enhancements as you can see:

From September_2011

Meredith is a Walker!

Saturday August 28th was the day that it all 'clicked' for Meredith and she officially became a 'Walker'! She is sauntering around everywhere with great balance now (for the most part!). And can even pivot and change directions completely. She waited until she was sure she knew what she was doing and now she is walking great! Now she just walks right into the room like it is no big deal. But it is to us, yay for Meredith!

Meredith walks at 16 months.

Jeffrey walking at 15 months.

Summer Update

We have been keeping pretty busy this summer. Enjoyed some fireworks at home for the 4th of July - they sell really good ones at Wegmans, some fireworks are legal in Pennsylvania. We especially liked the one called 'killer bee', lots of colors and sparkles. Then at the end of July we drove all the way up to the Adirondacks and had a good time at the Lake. There can never be enough swimming when we are at the cabin, Jeffrey wanted to go in all the time! Meredith is quite the water baby too, and loves splashing, kicking and crawling in any pool or lake.

We have had some fun picnics this summer, everyone in the family likes subway sandwiches, so we grab some and go to the Arboretum or to Whipple Dam - a local pond with a swimming area. Easy and fun for everyone.

'I like to picnic at Whipple Dam - where's my sandwich?'

Jeffrey has been very interested in Butterflies this summer, we have been taking pictures of all the different kinds we see and will be making a photo album soon. Jeffrey's favorites are the Monarch butterflies, he knows that they migrate to Mexico.

Jeffrey and his Monarch Buddy.


Kids love racing!

Today was Jeffrey's last day of summer school at Goddard, they had a PSU tailgate Picnic, with Hotdogs and Cupcakes. Jeffrey has really enjoyed doing some different activites at school this summer, notably fun educational computer games, and playing all sorts of tag games outside with the other boys, playing on the playground, and playing soccer. He also learned about different countries this summer, such as Italy, China and India. They talked about the animals that live there and read stories and listened to music from the different countries.

We are anxiously waiting the beginning of Stay and Play this Fall - Jeffrey wants to go back and see all his friends again. He got very excited after receiving a welcome letter from his new teachers. One more week until school begins, we are planning on enjoying the pool a few more times before it closes for the season.

Meredith is very close to walking, she can do it, she just doesn't really want to yet! I led her all around the playground that has a soft spongy groundcover that is perfect for walking and falling on yesterday. She was able to take about 15 steps by herself from the slide over to me, but wasn't happy about not having my hand for constant support. Should be any day now that she realizes she wants to run and walk after Jeffrey! Here is a picture of her after her nap - I put her hair up in her first ponytails!

Post nap snuggle with friends.


Playing with tiny ponytails!

ball game

I like to take Jeffrey to the Sunday night State College Spikes baseball games, since they start at 6 instead of the usual 7 and have fireworks after the game. We don't really watch much baseball though. There is a large kid's area with inflatable play areas that Jeffrey loves. We went last night and some of Jeffrey's little friends were there too. Had a good, sweaty time. We did watch a few innings of baseball too (the Spikes got creamed).

- mike

From July_2011

From July_2011

From July_2011

From July_2011

From July_2011

Happy First Day of Summer!

Meredith wants to wish you a Happy First Day of Summer!

Here's a quick video of her using the footstool as a 'walker'. My mom tells me that Dave and I used the same '70's' footstools when we were learning to walk!

Last Day of School

(First day of preschool pictured at left, last day pictured at right.)

Jeffrey's last day of Thrillin' Threes preschool at Stay and Play was last week. We will miss seeing all our wonderful friends every day.

Jeffrey started summer preschool this week and had a great time eating lunch at school and playing on their outdoor playground. He seems pretty happy about it, they talked about camping this week.

This summer we will be filling up our free time with park playdates, time at the new pool, as well as tuesday afternoons at the farmers market. We had a pretty good time this week, our first official week of 'summer' vacation.

Everything is growing and changing this May!

We have been very busy this May. Mike had to travel to a conference then was very busy with a conference he organized at Penn State. The kids and I traveled to Rochester while we had Air Conditioning installed in our house. We had a great trip to Rochester, Jeffrey had a wonderful time visiting the 'Museum of Play', The Zoo and the Lilac Festival. When he returned to preschool he told his teachers that Rochester (and Grammie's house) were his 'favorite place'. Meredith did a good job riding in her stroller eating cheese sticks during our many adventures.

We are now happy to be home in State College, our Air Conditioning is all finished just in time for all the hot days that are forecast next week! Jeffrey is finishing up his last few days in the 'Thrillin' Three's' class at Stay and Play. Hard to believe his school year is almost over. He had a great time and made many friends.

Our gardens are busy growing, we ate a lot of spinach mustard greens this week, and all the lettuce is just about ready for the first harvests. I have plans to put in our tomatoes this weekend. And last weekend I planted all our herbs in the new self-watering planter that I got for the deck this year. I am excited to see how that works out in the hot days of summer.

Parsley, Basil, and Thyme in self watering planter.

Meredith enjoys a nice evening swing - she loves swinging!

Jeffrey at school standing underneath the butterfly he made.

Our gardens are sprouting and growing, just like our kids!

Meredith is 1 yr old !

Happy Birthday Meredith! Here's a video of her birthday cupcake. Just like Jeffrey when he was one, Meredith as you will see wasn't very impressed. Also, posted some pictures from her birthday to my Picassa gallery. https://picasaweb.google.com/axtell.mj/April_2011#

- mike

Kids in action!

We started our Sunday off right with a trip to the Waffle shop. I think we might have all enjoyed this better than the cold cold maple harvest festival last weekend! Today our pancakes/french toast/omlette stayed warm while we were eating them! Even though Meredith slept in this morning we still made it in before the big breakfast crowds. Meredith and Jeffrey were so smiley and giggling while we were there, they love the Waffle Shop!

Meredith is crawling and scootching around more now. She also gets up on her knees to reach Jeffrey's toys on the fireplace, and look into the book bin. She is moving herself in all kinds of new ways this week. She still loves examining and studying everything she finds.

'Hmmm. I might stand up for a space shuttle and some trains.'

Meredith thinks this tool set is the best! She has been playing with it all week!


11 months old, she loves getting out all the books.


Jeffrey takes the lead in the great Lowes Tractor Race! (Racing is scheduled for every weekend shopping trip to Lowes.)