Update on School

Emily went off to school today on a BIG bus. It still had the integrated child seats in it, but it was a BIG bus. She was excited for the change this morning. We got out to the bus and it was a sub driver and aid, but the students were the same. Apparently, Emily's friend Emmett said that he wanted Emily to sit by him this morning. He told Lisa, the aid when they pulled up in front of our house! He was very exicted to have her there.
It's funny, in the last few weeks I've run in to several people that were in my graduating class from highschool. Dan and I went to a "newbies" party at Nativity a couple weeks ago, there were three people from my class at Derham there. As I was standing in line to go through security as MSP on my way to Palm Beach last week, I ran into another person from my class. This morning, the substitute aid on Emily's bus was also a classmate of mine from Derham.
Maybe it's a sign, with Emily going to school in the old Derham building . . .

Ugh! Back-up Photos and Photoshop!

Last Friday night, some "kids" were out and about the neighborhood causing trouble. Being that light sleeper that I am and our bedroom window was open, I heard them out carousing in the street. At first, we thought it was people from the house on the corner outside smoking . . . until the doorbell rang.
Dan and I both jumped out of bed, he to his robe and me to the window to see what was going on. I could hear them, but couldn't see them.
Well, they stopped by and left a box of junk on our step . . . but lit it on fire before running off.
Ever since then, I've had visions of our whole house burning to the ground and all I can think of is all the pictures that we would lose . . . wedding pictures, family pictures, kids pictures, etc.
Currently, we don't have them backed up anywhere. I found SmugMug last year when I was searching for somewhere to scan negatives and make them digital, but never checked it out.
I checked it out in January and have had every intention of starting to upload pictures to their website.
Well, I've finally started uploading and what a project!
http://pelletierfamily.smugmug.com
At the same time, we've gotten all our wedding photos transferred to digital images and want to create an album, but they need a little work. Now we're adding Photoshop to the list of things to work on.
If anyone has a recommendation on books for Photoshop Elements, please let us know. It's soooo user friendly and my patience for this stuff isn't very long.
We're plugging away at all the pictures to Smugmug . . . I didn't realize we had so many pictures.

Ted and Ivy

When we go out of town or simply need a break from Ted, he goes on vacation to Spa Owen where his buddy Ivy lives. He LOVES to go to Ivy's house and goes nuts when he sees the Owen's car pull up in front of our house.

Mary just sent me a couple pictures of Ted and Ivy before their Russian Motorcycle Club meeting . . .

Flowers . . . .

What a busy weekend!
Dan, Emily and Louie went to a Pump It Up birthday party yesterday, it is the "inflatable party zone." Sounds like sensory overload for me, but the kids had fun. I guess the idea is that you load up kids with sugar (aka: cake and ice cream) and then let them loose in this building that is full of slides, jumpers, bouncing and climbing things.
While they went to that, I headed to Cottage Grove for a baby shower for my friend Sara. She is anxiously awaiting the arrival of her little baby girl, Charlotte Mary, from Guatemala. My, how baby things have changed since Emily was born. . . .
Today, it was such a beautiful day, we went to Gerten's and got some pansies for the front steps and also some begonias for later. We got the herbs for the garden. We also decided to give growing watermelons a try. Last year we bought these black ball shaped watermelons from Gertens and they were soooo delicious. We thought if we could find seeds, we'd try and grow some. Well, they had some. Now we just need to get the ground ready to plant them, soon! These watermelons were the best that we've ever had. So delicious! Can't wait. I hope they grow.
After naps, we went to Fabulous Ferns for dinner with Tapios and Grandma. It was Charlie's confirmation at the Cathedral this afternoon. It was fun to see everyone.

Yeah! It's a BOY!!!

Here he is. . . .

http://oliviawagnerphoto.blogspot.com/2008/04/its-boy.html

Update

Emily's in her second week of school and loves every minute of it. We really thought that she would have resisted or cried at least once, but it hasn't happened.
I asked her if she liked going to school and she said "I yove it, it's so fun!" She wants to sing songs from school all the time, but we don't know the words or what songs she sings there.
Louie cries when Emily goes on the bus, I'm pretty sure it is because she gets to go for a ride and he doesn't. But it is giving him quality time home with Dan, Ted and all the toys!

We're anxiously awaiting news on the arrival of Baby Ramos in the next day or two. Baby was supposed to arrive sometime today, but there wasn't room at the hospital today . . .

Emily's First Day of School!

Big things are happening around here . . . . Emily went off to her first day of school without shedding a tear! Dan and I were so proud of her. She woke up this morning and when I went into her room, I told her that just like in one of her favorite movies, "Finding Nemo" it is her first day of school. She ran around her room saying "first day of school" just like Nemo did in the movie. Emily was very excited to go today. We were pleasantly surprised that she was all smiles and climbed right up on the bus when it pulled up in front. She met the driver and the aid, very nice ladies, (I have no recollection of what their names are though). We also met Nissa, the only other girl in the program at school. They were all excited to have another girl there. However, Emily will be the only girl in her classroom. She's going to the Harriet Bishop Expo School, ironically, it is the old Derham Hall High School. Very familiar territory for me . . . She'll go three days a week and be in a room focused on speech development and gross motor development. During those three days, she'll receive two sessions of 1:1 speech therapy with the teacher and also two sessions of gross motor skill development with the occupational therapist.

We are very exicted for Emily and this new stage in her short little life.

There goes the bus! She said "bye Mommy, see you later." She was such a big girl and very excited to go and make new friends at school. We'll see what tomorrow brings when the bus comes . . . .

Florida

We had a great time in Florida over the Easter holiday. This is the view from our balcony. Baby Justin playing in the fountain at the pool. We had our annual Cape Canaveral Special at the Dixie Crossroads. If you're ever in the Cape Canaveral/Titusville area, excellent seafood dinner with hush puppies can be found here. Louie was trying to give Mrs. Rock a kiss. Dixie Crossroads is famous for the rock shrimp, these little shrimp that are sweet like lobster. Delicious!

When we were at Grills watching the cruise ships depart, a little US Coast Guard boat that was escorting in a Navy submarine pulled up to the dock. They let the kids pretend to drive the boat. Of course, now all Louie wants to do is drive!

Dunkin' Donuts on the lanai on Easter Sunday.
We headed to the beach after church to take a few pictures at the beach before we departed later in the afternoon. Emmy and Louie loved the sand and the water, but it was cold. Not like the pool water.

On On Saturday afternoon, Louie feel face first into the TV credenza in our condo. He got a really nice looking bruise. It was extra special when Emily would yell for no reason "don't hit me" as we went through security at the airport. Very nice!

Bunnies!

We went and had some pictures taken on Saturday at Olivia's studio down in New Prague. She had some tame rabbits with the plan of having and Easter bunny shoot. Well, I think our kids were the ones that she was referring to that weren't that into the bunnies. Emily and Louie danced and had a great time, as soon as the bunny was put back in her cage.
http://oliviawagnerphoto.blogspot.com/2008/03/bunny-shoot.html

Sesame Street

We headed down to the Childrens Museum on Sunday to see the Sesame Street exhibit. Both kids loved the exhibit. Louie got to see all the different monsters. He loves the monsters and the Count. He loves to count to one, two ,thre . . . ten, turteen. He always skips eleven and twelve. Loves turteen!

He found Big Bird! Emily found two turtles. One of them is the painted turtle, not sure about the other one. It's not native to Minnesota, as it lives on land.
Louie enjoyed this area too. Each of the cubbies had an animal that went with the letter. He did pretty well matching them up (for an 18 month old!) He matched the duck, the cat and the turtle.
There's one area that has all these little tunnels for kids to crawl around in. Louie loved crawling around in the ones that kept going, but there was one that hit a dead end under some stairs. He started screaming and crying, it was terrible. The tunnel to get up there was so small and I started feeling a little anxious with the thought of having to crawl up and get him. Thankfully, some woman sent her older son up there to lead him out. He didn't go in the tunnels anymore.