Cat & Mouse

Now that the holidays and craft fair are over I can go through my millions of photos and videos. I'll be posting a bunch of backlog and non consecutive pix and movies for a little while. This one is one of Lucy and her friend Owen one morning. It was sometime after Halloween and before Christmas.....

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

This season has been such a whirlwind. I know people say that every year, but I was so consumed with my craft fair that I hadn't started anything Christmassy until the Sunday before! yes, I did the tree, and letters/cards on Sunday, Shopping on Monday and Tuesday, more decorating on Wednesday and Thursday we prepared for Brunch and gift opening the next day! It kicked my butt this year. it was still awesome, but I am spent!

this is sweet Lucy experiencing the stocking tradition...

...yes, she was so excited to get a bunch of cars, bath toys, crayons, and mini balls. I did give her a mini piece of chocolate too. We never give her that stuff and it created a monster.

She made out with some pretty awesome gifts from her Omi & Opi, uncle, Julie's aunt, and us. Her Grandma Allen got her some great things too, but the biggest hit was by far her play kitchen. it's huge, and Lucy can't get enough of it! I fear it will take some of the tomboy out of her. I'll still be pushing her trucks and cars and garage to counteract it.

She really enjoyed the holiday, can you tell???

this was or tree once all the gifts were gone. it's a fake one that is too wide for the space, but I still like it too much to find a better replacement. I LOVE all of our ornaments. many of them were from older family members, childhood, and of course collected vintage ones from flea markets. I don't think I used 1/2 of them and its still covered. I love it!

a few days after Christmas we went to the 'ZOO LIGHTS' exhibit. It's at the Stoneham Zoo, and they have lights set up around the zoo. duh. but then they also have all these old vintage Christmassy things displayed in a mini maze along with a few rides. Lucy's still not into the rides,( or getting her picture taken with a live reindeer for that matter) but she had fun looking at all the santa's, snowmen and lights. she LOVES the lights! Of course you can't tell from any of our pictures, she was not in the mood for smiling or cooperating with the camera tonight. she really did like it though :)

catch up

wow, the last 2 months have been hell and a busy hell at that.

The craft fair went ok. it was not as good as I had hoped, but better than most expected. We definitely had issues, long term and last minute, but most of the vendors made money and most of the customers were happy and excited about round 2. ugh.

the website finally went up, there you can check out pix, videos and a whole bunch more info. Links to our twitter, facebook and blog sites are there too. I am too tired to set up those hyperlinks now, so just go to the site. www.bangcraftfest.com

more fall madness

I have been busy planning a big craft fair for the Saturday before Christmas. It's called BANG!. I will be pretty busy for the next few months and I hope I will update this in a timely matter. before things get even more hectic, I thought I'd post a few new photos of this last month. Here is my first (and unpolished logo).

Today I took Lucy to Wellesley to visit her Grandmother (and I got to do some child-free shopping, yay!) on our way into town we stopped off to get some pumpkins. I took her to the same place last year and will try and fin the photos from then. she was 6 months old, chunky, and bald. needless to say a lot has changed in a year. I tried to get some video of her today but she was too fast for me. here are my tow favorites of the day...

We went to one of Lucy's friend's halloween/birthday bash on Sunday. One of Lucy's other friends is lending us her costume from last year. She's a bee. I would have liked her to be a little more scary, but she's perfectly content, and actually quite likes bees. She was running around and dancing (and eating fist-fulls of food) at the party. disco bee anyone?

Lucy's been able to spend a lot of time with grandparents this month. Patrick's parents (Omi & Opi) came up for a wonderful Sunday lunch and got to play with Lucy for most of the day. She was particularly funny this day, and I think it will stick out in my mind for a while.

Lucy is also fortunate to be able to have an ex-piano teacher as a Grandma. She's always been into music, and seems to really enjoy it when the piano is played for her. So far she is pretty gentle and pays close attention to the placement of fingers on the keys.

the beginning of fall....

Arlington shuts down the downtown area for a night and day to celebrate "town day". There are pony rides, fireworks, food, town info and artisan's booths lining the streets. It gets pretty packed and is a lot of fun. This year Lucy didn't get to ride the pony, but did get to sit in the fire truck!

One of Lucy's good friends, Isabele also had her second birthday party. It was supposed to be an outdoor thing, but the rain kept it indoors. they still managed to have a bouncy house in their house, lots of balloons, it was a super fun time! This photo is Lucy in her party dress practicing her dance moves.

dirt dirt dirt

one of the big reasons why it took so long for me to update this blog is because while Lucy would sleep, or during me free time, I was busy digging dirt, dirt, and more dirt.

see, what was supposed to be a little project quickly turned into a big mess. I wanted to tear up the patios in our back yard. it was old, oversized, and in a bad place. I was going to add dirt and grass to that area and be happy. well, I had WAY too much dirt delivered. the truck couldn't make it to the back yard, so it was dumped in my driveway. I spent weeks digging, loading and unloading the wheelbarrow, spreading it over the patio. I has a gross amount of dirt so I decided I'd also start leveling the back yard. BY HAND (yes, a little crazy) I have done a lot of work and I still have 20+ yards sitting in my driveway. what a mess! anyway, Lucy calls it the "wow!" pile.

playground play!

September was perfect for the playground. It wasn't too hot, too cold, and there was only one rainy day! Needless to say we visited plenty, I started a playground tour in fact. we'd hit up at least on in the morning and then another after her nap. I loved being outside and listening to Lucy cryptically count "one, two, three!" before heading down the slide. She's gotten pretty fearless on the equipment, but thankfully, for now, knows her limits and tries not to scare her momma too much.

farm fun!

we have been to several farms this summer and fall. It's a great way to get some great fruit and veggies, plus it's a lot of fun. Lucy LOVES running around picking (and eating) the fruits and veggies.

We met up with some friends at Honeypot Hill Orchards on a nice day in early September. it was a beautiful (and warm!) day. We had a picnic with friends, visited with the animals at the petting zoo, ate cider donuts, and then Lucy and her friend Maya decided to pick raspberries. They were just perfect! I think Lucy ate 3 or 4 for every one that made it in the little pint box. she had raspberry juice steaming all down her face by the time we were done.

a few weeks later Lucy and I met up with Grandma Allen at Busa/Lookout farm in Natick. It's quite an expensive farm, but a beautiful one. they have a train that drives you through grapevine covered paths to each picking station. peaches, apples, plums, they have it all! There is also a little animal area and playground fun for the kids. It's a gorgeous place to visit!

talk talk talk

Lucy may a little behind with the actual saying of words, but she has perfected her own language of babble. She's very expressive with her fake words and it's hysterical. I can never capture it on video, and I don't think others would find it as cute as I do. Anyway, this week she has expanded her vocabulary of actual english a little bit. here is a video of her at dinner the other night....

Monday Meet up

The first meet up Julie went to a little over a year ago was at a mom's house in Stoneham. There were a bunch of very cool moms and we all seemed to click. since then we have gotten together almost every monday possible. some of the mom's have unfortunately moved further out and we don't get to see them as often, but we are still a pretty tight group. here is a 5 minute long video of 4 of the kids (Alexander, Myles, Elinor, and Lucy) having fun in the pools at Anglika's place on August 3rd.

The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park

Julie's love for art and sculpture is definitely getting Lucy acclimated to cool spots early on. Today we all went to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA. It' Lucy's 3rd sculpture park visit (one in MN and on in TN). It was Patrick's first visit ever and we also met up with 2 other DeCordova virgins; Julie's brother's friend Christian, and his girlfriend Beth. I think we all had a pretty good time walking the grounds and museum. It was a muggy day, but we had no rain, or sunburns, so it was good. We spent a few hours walking the grounds and still managed to miss at least 1/3 of the sculptures, a great reason to go back soon!There are no photos allowed inside (though Christian was bad and suck a few -hopes he sends them this way too!), but there was a very interesting and controversial exhibit being shown. The Old, Weird America. I think Patrick and Julie found it more interesting than Christian and Beth, even while chasing Lucy around. Julie and lucy's favorite part was a room that had paper leaves string around the walls, a fake tree made out of wood scraps puzzle pieced together, and a quilted floor. there were tree stumps made out of magazines and then cased in the same wood puzzle technique. there were also altered iconic posters, a folk art wall collage/installation, confederate watercolors and prints, twirling dresses, and several Abe Lincoln impersonator photos.

the picture Christian snuck......

Simone's visit

Simone came back to visit for a few weeks. After the first week her friend went to Maine, and she was stuck with a toddler's schedule..... the complete opposite to a teenager's schedule might I add. She was pretty bored but still managed to hit up several malls a week (which then in turn made Julie very bored). We also went to Art beat (an independent artisan and craft festival) in Davis Sq, the beach, the zoo, Salem Willows, Chinatown, Boston Public Gardens, Newbury Street, Mini golfing with the grandparents, and hanging out with Julie's mom.

Hopefully next time we will have less mall visits and more city visits (NYC please?!)

She left for Texas, to visit with her girlfriend, then back to Seattle, then to Florida to visit her grandfather, and then back to Seattle to start highschool! of course we haven't heard from her since she left, but according to her internet updates she's safely in the right place and having fun.

Salem Willows and The Franklin Park Zoo

one of the things I have done every summer since I was a kid living across the bay, is go to Salem Willows. I thankfully succeeded in getting both Patrick and Simone hooked as well. It's an old arcade with a tot amusement park and really yummy ice cream. very old timey and basic. it's also on the water; the aroma of the salt water mixed with fresh popped corn is intoxicating. It was one of the places she wanted to visit while she was here, so Patrick took a day off and all four of us went up. it was hot and humid, so in the arcades it was even worse. Lucy was pretty miserable most of the time, but I got a few photos of the family (seemingly) having fun.

The next week we went to The Franklin Park Zoo. It's the bigger of the two zoo's in the Boston area. it was a drizzly cool summer day, so many of the animals were in hiding, but we still had fun!

so here are a bunch of pix for you.......

summer is here!

June was a complete wash out, literally. cold and rain the whole month excluding at most 3 days, so here we are, mid way thru July and even though we are still well below the average temperature, it's still hot and muggy like a New England summer should be!

We have been to a pool party, some spray parks, the beach, and today we decided to go to Salem Willows and have several fantastic photos to show you. despite these, Lucy was not a happy kid and was scared of almost every ride possible.

Glad we went!

first time at the beach!

FINALLY we made it to the beach! Simone is here visiting from Seattle and helped motivate me to go. She also helped a bit with Lucy which was nice. It was a close to the city beach, Nahant (aka, not the best) but was also cheap. the wind whipped sand everywhere and gave us a nice coating, the sun drenched most of our skin, and scorched it in a few random places.

It was fun and I am glad Lucy now knows what a beach is!!!

4th of July!

We had our 5th annual fourth of July BBQ. This time however, we had a bunch of Julie and Lucy's new friends. I think there were over 20 kids and twice as many adults. it was a bit hectic to host but fun! The fireworks went off too late for Lucy to see them, but we did have sparklers (thanks Nora) in our back yard. Everyone brought lots of great food and deserts and we all gained 10 unneeded pounds at least. yum it was so good though! Thanks to all who came!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

ICA

oops, this is out of chronological order! I took Lucy to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) to see the Shepard Fairey show at the end of May. it was better than I thought and would recommend anyone going who can make it. we went with a meet up group and had a picnic on the front steps overlooking the harbor. It was a 97 degree day so the sea breeze was welcomed! Lucy seemed to enjoy the show as well, she seemed to like the Obama print (though always seems to gravitate toward him on TV anyway) as well as a Joan Jett one (which I liked a lot too)

Couldn't take photos inside the gallery space, but one of the draws of this new building is the beautiful view of the harbor.