A New Beginning

Our good friends Hayley, Mike and Piper are in China now, adopting their second daughter. Her name is Paisley, and she is gorgeous! Take a look at their website and follow their trip. Congratulations Hoppe Family - we love you!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

An Irish Blessing

May love and laughter light your days

and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,

wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world

with joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons

bring the best to you and yours.

First Haircut

Maggie and Ethan got their haircuts done today. All I can say is that the girl who cut their hair definitely earned her tip today. Maggie did great as always, but let's just say that Ethan had a little bit of a meltdown as soon as she started using the clippers on him. I'm pretty sure I had nail marks on my fingers from him gripping my hand so tightly. But he looks so good - such a big boy!

When life hands you lemons (or 20 inches of snow)

You make a sledding hill out of the huge snowdrift in your front yard (and use a Rubbermaid lid as your sled)!

Storm of the Century...

Maggie's Picnic Table

The back yard and playhouse

Maggie in the driveway - what was shoveled so far!

Maggie and our neighbor Julia playing in the snow banks!

Maggie stuck in the snow

...or at least for 2008. We got hit with 12 inches of snow since yesterday! It's supposed to slow down tonight, but we will be digging ourselves out for a while. Plus it will take the city snow plows at least 4 or 5 days before they get to our road, so we may be taking the 4-wheel drive truck everywhere. Of course, next week is supposed to warm up into the 50's - so we'll probably be facing flash floods with all of the melting snow. Perfect!

John had to shovel the driveway twice, and will probably need to do it once more tomorrow. Maggie got to play outside for a while with her friend Julia, while Ethan and I stayed inside.
Maybe he'll get to play in the snow tomorrow, but for now - inside was much cozier for us!

Our First Outing

Since Monday was so nice here, we decided to head to the zoo for the day. Ethan and Maggie were going stir crazy (and I think John was too), and we all enjoyed the weather, getting the sunshine on us and blowing the stink off of us.

We are HOME!

After a 30 hour trip, we finally got home late Thursday night. We ended up having an almost 3-hour delay in Newark NJ, so instead of getting in at 7 PM - we landed at 10:00 PM. It was a very long flight. Ethan was kind of a terror, but that is all we could expect from a 19-month old who wants to boogie around! He didn't sleep very well on the flight, and was totally off his sleep schedule. We are still paying the price for that now - he is not sleeping through the night yet. Poor kid is so sleep deprived right now, which means John and I are too.

Maggie looks like she grew 6 inches in the 2 weeks we were gone! She looked like such a big girl now - I can't believe I can actually pick her up still. Compared to Maggie, Ethan is so light! We missed her so much, but it was definitely the right decision to keep her here. The trip was hard enough - having a 3 year old along would have made it even hard.

I'll be posting more now, as we catch up on our sleep...