Chicken Dance Thing-y?

Untitled from Emily Papera on Vimeo.

How does he do this?!?!

April Showers Bring May Plants

I'm going to subject you all to looking at my flower beds. You look at this to look at my kids (I think) so I am proud to show off my heucheras which I planted at the beginning of may. More photos to come!!!

The NJ visitors!

Grandpa and Grandma P arrived shortly after Grandma H departed (about a week or so) to hang out with us. We had the chance to score some Gwinnett Braves Tickets. It was a nice venue up in Lawrenceville for sure. Great family fun. Nicole was fascinated by the mascot, "Chopper" and had her eyes glued on him when he came over. The kids had a great time hanging out with Grandpa and Grandma P. They were sad to see them go.

End of April

So post race, we all came back home and got back to our lives as usual. Grandma H stayed and spent some quality time with LV and Nicole. She took some great pictures which I've added a few here. I put a few others for the links to the right there. The time went too quickly as I felt like I didn't get the chance to cook enough for my mom for helping me out with the kids. We always enjoy having her here and I think I wasn't ready to let her go back home just yet!!

Just too cute

 
I had to do this pose with him. I grew up watching Married With Children and love this little out fit he got from Vicky and Dave!!!

First 1/2 Marathon!

Yep. I am going to subject you to listening to me talk about my race. I somehow in some fashion or another, managed to run 13.1 miles in Louisville Kentucky. It was for the Kentucky Derby Marathon. Aunt Kate and I ran trained and ran this race. It was a great time. The course was fairly flat. At mile marker 9, the participants got to run around the famous Churchill Downs. And the weather was absolutely perfect. I still cannot believe I did it but I have the medal to prove it!!! Grandma drove out with me and the kiddos to watch the race and cheer us on. It was a great time had by all!!!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter Everyone!!

Easter Time

We had a whirlwind weekend for sure. First off, Mom's friend Liz was in town from Spain so we all got the chance to see her. Cousin Annie came down to visit us as well! It was a quick trip but fun nonetheless.

We attempted to go to an Easter Egg Hunt up at Lawrenceville on Saturday. We were there before the starting time (They had it posted on a bulletin board. And so we went to grab lunch. When we came out, we realized everyone was on the lawn and we had completely missed it. Louis was heart broken that he didn't get one egg. This really upset us all so we stopped over at Rita's to go get some Italian Ice (We were going to go over there anyway). Rita's Ice truly makes life better!







Mom remembered another Easter Egg hunt near the house, so we went over there to check it out. This one proved to be a little more fun for LV and Nicole.
They had bouncy places, balloon animals and broke down the hunts by ages. Nicole practiced on her egg hunting skills by putting her brother's shoes in her basket. Mom took Nicole over first since 0-3 went first. It wasn't very short lived. Nicole has only recently been walking so she's not as aggressive as those 2 year old kids yet!


Louis's Easter Egg hunt did not go as well as planned. Another child took one of his eggs out of his basket and he really didn't know what to do. So he was understandably upset. Those hunts get a little crazy for sure. But the coordinator, let him hold the sign for his age group and that helped him cheer up a bit.

We took a few family photos after the hunt but Nicole was not having any over it. She just wanted her chocolate candy and that was final.

Playing around

Well we apparently have been slacking on the photos. We realized we have few February pictures and now its almost halfway through March! Well, for the February dilemma, I'll add in the pictures of Nicole with her new pink tutu she got for her birthday. We found some bunny ears and a flower headband at the dollar store so I couldn't resist dressing up the kids in a some spring wear!!! As you can see the one with Louis and the dog, we truly have the sweetest most patient dog in the world, Locke!!!Nicole is not walking yet but is incredibly busy getting into everything. She is very much content opening up anything she possibly can and taking out all of its contents. The end game is to put small things into larger things which makes it a little tough for mom and dad to put all said things back in order.

Happy First Birthday Colie!!

For Nicole's birthday we did a little combo party for her and her brother - at another bounce place close to the house. A small group of friends came by and we all ate the traditional train shaped cake for Louis's birthday (4 this year meant a Gordon cake for all you Thomas the Tank Engine fans). The kids had a great time playing and bouncing. Nicole attempted to try to shove her entire cake in her mouth. She really does love sweets!!

The Times

LV and Nic enjoyed a weekend with their NJ Grandparents. They spent all day Friday playing with them and then on Saturday, we headed to something mom had been looking forward to for some time - Medieval Times. Mom had only heard about some mention of it in the movie "Cable Guy" but that was about it. Dad has been before as a young lad but not mom.

It was a great activity for us. LV was excited to see the Falconer and the other birds around the actual space at the Medieval Times. At the intial start, he was a little overwhelmed by the noise and sounds of people cheering on their color of knight. The idea is that it is to take place during the Medieval time period (Get it?) and we were served food with no silverware at all. So we had to figure out how to eat chicken and soup without utensils (which was fine). We were in a particular section. We were all separated by six different colors and we had the Blue crown. We cheered on "our" knight in blue when he did performed and did his jousting. LV really started to get into it cheering and yelling with everyone. Nicole just pounded the table non-stop.

The Game Ranch

After living in our house for 8 years, and having children for 4 of those years, we finally got around to seeing the Yellow River Game Ranch near our house. We went on the federal holiday to enjoy the animals they had there. The Game Ranch boasts the home of the "Georgia" Groundhog, Beauregard Lee. They say that Beau's record beats Phil the Pennsylvania Groundhog by a higher percentage of being correct. Hmmm. Well in this ranch they truly do have a wide variety of animals. We mostly toted Nicole around in her stroller and Louis got to go up and feed them. Our friends Sophia and Ed joined up with us as well. There are many many more shots to the right there if you want to see the full album!!!

Happy Birthday Louis!

Well Louis had a grand old time during his birthday "week". It was drawn out by the fact that we try to get together every year with his friend Abigail. They were born in the same hospital on nearly the same day. We celebrated with Abigail and her brother William by going to the Jumping Bean and jumping our little hearts out. Following that we had pizza with everyone and finally stopped by a 'gift' emporium. There they had the old grocery store style ponies you can ride up front. It only cost a dime!! Where else will one get a deal like that?


For Lou's actual birthday we woke him up and put some candles in a breakfast bar (his favorite) and had him make a wish. We sent him to school with cupcakes decorated with his favorite characters from his FAVORITE movie of all time - Wall-E. So his classmates enjoyed Wall-E and Eva cupcakes for his birthday!!

Insert Holidays here

Holiday Pictures coming soon!! I promise!!

Fall Weekends

Cold Weather is here and so are about a million leaves on our lawn. We have been just down and out with the germs the last two weeks. The flu two weeks ago and then a terrible terrible stomach bug this week. All of us were feeling better, and the weather cooperated, so Dad, Mom and LV decided to tackle the leaves. Nicole squeezed in her nap to get out of the tough work! Enjoy some cute photos of LV's first leaf pile fun!

Happy Halloween

We had a great week of Halloween fun. The weekend before the actual Halloween Holiday, we met up with our friends and watched a Halloween Parade. There were a lot of interesting costumes to say the least. I didn't end up getting a lot of good shots but have a few that made me laugh.

Afterwards we went out for burgers and gelato in town. It was really chilly that night but LV kept warm hugging the Gelato Cone Sculpture. We just thought it was funny and took a picture of him in his Stormtrooper outfit giving some love to the gelato cone!!

We had a fantastic Halloween Holiday. LV went as a clone Stormtrooper and Nicole went as a bumble bee. He was a little shy at the very FIRST house but then he really got into it. It was so much fun to see and hear how excited LV was into the whole experience!



Once he realized people were giving him CANDY, he was super polite to everyone. He got to the point where he wished everyone a "Happy Halloween" as he left their homes! He kept saying "Mom let's go to the next house!" He had an absolute blast. It had been cold all week but we had great weather for the festivities and LV drew down a lot of Candy Loot!!! More photos to the right ----->