Sam's birthday was a lot of fun. Check out the pictures here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/truscott/. The best part was the slide that takes up our entire living room. The only thing that would make it better is if the slide was rated for people four times heavier than it is, then we could all ride it. A set of monkey bars would be nice too. I think we are going to get Gus a trampoline and Zoe a pair of those sumo suits. That way we can eliminate all of our floorspace, and our kids will never have to go outside.

Sam's birthday

Another year has gone by since Sam was born, and I think his birthday party was a raging success. We all went to our friends house to celebrate with Elle, whose birthday is nearly the same day. It was funny to hear the two fight a bit about whose birthday party it was, but in the end I think they agreed to disagree. The cake was great and so was the company. We talked about children and freedom! The girls made fun of us and our discussion about the safety of our country vs. the right to privacy. We played games like ring around the rosies and pin the crown on the princess. Sam didn't mind, he likes to spin around and say "I am a princess." Gus used to say things like that and dress up in a tutu, but now he his mad that we took pictures of that. I will have to remember to pull those pictures out at his high school graduation or wedding! It was a lot of fun.

We also had our cousins in town for four days! We had a blast. There were 10 kids and 4 adults in our house for four days and although it was crowded everyone had a great time. Zoë tried to leave with them, but she decided to stay behind until we can go visit them in a couple of weeks. We all went to the New England Aquarium on Saturday, which was actually a lot of fun. The kids really liked all of the fish and we only lost two of them for less than 30 seconds! It was kind of crowded, which made it a bit more exhausting, but I don't think the kids mind that kind of thing much. We then had a night out on the town with the adults. We got out of the house late enough that we just had desert. Just so you know what a typically double date with thirty something parents is like these days, we started by driving to Target and getting some items for the cousins trip home. We then went to Harvard Square and spent 15 minutes looking for parking. We got a desert at Finales, walked to the tea shop, then to the hot chocolate shop, and enjoyed our sipping delights and goodies in the car because it was too crowded in the stores. Then we stopped at Ellen's house and went home! What an exciting evening. It was fun, I haven't laughed so much in a long time. We were all joking, making fun of others, and remembering old times just like we always do.

Please take a look at the pictures here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/truscott/

Happy Birthday Zoë

I know I don't usually post twice in one day, but I had to wish Zoë a happy birthday, and post the first picture in a long while. Here she is eating some cake. She had a lot of fun, her friends came over for a short party, and we all went out for dinner. Plus, she got some really cool gifts! A few days ago she made a list of things she wanted to do for a perfect 9th birthday, I think they all came true but one.

A sphincter says what?

I hope some (1 out of 2) of you remember this Wayne's World reference. We have witnessed a miracle. Julie has been pain free for over 36 hours now, and she has only had two square meals! It seems so unreal. We are all so used to her running from a room to the kitchen to get a big drink and pinching her side, and now she just sits around without any pain. We are all so excited and thankful. Anyway, this whole miracle was made possible by cutting the muscle that controls the Sphincter of Oddi, which the doctors believe was spasming when she was in pain. Thus, the "spincter says what," reference.

Procedure

Julie is having a 'procedure', which should alleviate her ghost gallbladder pains tomorrow. This is exciting news because if it is successful she will no longer have a constant side ache! I call it a ghost pain because she doesn't have a gallbladder. She was born with one but she had it removed about 9 years ago. Since the removal there has been a daily side ache, which often feels like childbirth she says! So for the past nine years she has had these pains sometimes 10 times in a day, and usually a couple of times a night. The doctor said there are only a few things that are painful enough to wake someone up at night, and this is one of them. Even ibs (irritable bowel syndrome) isn't painful enough to wake people up! Wow, she has some amazing pain tolerance. So tomorrow she has a special endoscopy, to explore and open her bile duct, ewe. Please send your prayers and positive thoughts in her direction tomorrow. Let's hope this is all it takes!

Guitar Hero

All Julie ever does is play Guitar Hero.

Sam's Birthday and Easter

Sam's birthday was a lot of fun. We celebrated on his birthday and again on the weekend. It was a couple of weekends ago now, but it was still fun. We also had an easter egg hunt at the same time. We let Sam and Elle hunt first, they got more than their share (15 eggs in less than 2 minutes!) pretty quickly, so they had to share some with the other kids. It turns out that 2 year olds are a lot better at easter egg hunts than you might think. Then we had cake.

The next day we colored eggs and had a big easter meal. We were all so full from the lunch that we waited until after church (3hours) to eat the dessert!

Sam's Birthday

Happy Birthday Sam! We had a fun party for Sam yesterday. Julie made pizza and angel food cake, with strawberries and whipped cream. It was delicious. The kids all had so much fun with his presents. He got a basketball hoop, a ramp for cars, some coloring books, a tambourine, some wooden fruit and vegetables, a wooden knife to cut them, money, and a cranium build a building out of foam and magnets kit. He was having so much fun running from toy to toy. He tried to blow out his candles, but they were all too far away from him to be blown out. The video is pretty cute, I will have to post it later in the week.

Hiking in the Fells

I promised that I would take a day this week and spend as much time as possible with Julie. Friday was that day. I really haven't been available lately, and it was terrific to be together all day. We started with breakfast and a hike to the top of Pine Hill in the Fells, with this great view of Boston. We made lunch together and laughed and talked like old times. It seems that lately, although together, we are busy doing other things. It was great to not do anything else while we were together. Later, we went on a date. We ate dinner hung out at the bookstore, and had Italian Sodas (our favorite treat). We also learned a little too much about Aga stoves, but for some reason the saleswoman thought we looked like the type of people who would buy a $12,000 oven for the blind.

Video Games

Apparently Gus needs a helmet to play video games.

Slides

Today was a nice day. It was a bit overcast but fairly warm. Julie, Gus, and I played Monkey Target when I got home. It was fun. I put up a picture of Zoe and Julie on the slides this past December. It was so warm in December and this slide is a lot of fun. I guess it is time to go back to the slides.

And I can't seem to get these photos to post correctly. They want to remain in landscape...anyone know how to fix that? They look right on my computer!

Dead fish

I woke up to the kids telling me that one of our fish was dying. We bought them on Friday and losing one is to be expected in a brand new tank. But it bothered me, so I went to petsmart to get some supplies to make sure the water was set properly. I spent the day helping out at home with intentions of doing the writing I needed to. I am glad to have a clean closet now though. We had a lot of fun with the kids tonight. Zoe taught us all how to dance to "Cotton Eye Joe" by the starsound opera. Video to come I hope.

Sweeterade

I had a great weekend. Jake and Reagan came up from NY and we all sat around, mostly just playing video games. Sometimes it is fun to just sit around with friends. We also ate a lot of candy, and I mean a lot. We each had a bag of candy at one point. The kids were loving it! We did eat a pretty good salad on Saturday, but we still kept eating a lot of candy. One of our favorite candies is called Sweeteraid. Each of us gets a gatorade and a handful of sweet tarts. You start eating the sweet tarts and then swig on the gatorade. If you don't believe me try it yourself, but I am warning you that you will probably like it. Oh and I got the high score on Super Monkey ball, 1160 on monkey Target. That is a game where you are a monkey in a ball, you roll off the ramp and then fly in the air with the ball opened up like two hemispherical wings, when you get over the target of your choice you roll back up in the ball and fall sort of like a spinning billiard ball! I love the game because not only is it really fun, but it is almost legitimate research. Let me explain, I shoot spinning billiard balls into water, so knowing how balls fall into water, even if there is a monkey in them, seems important to me. We didn't just play video games and eat candy after all, I just remembered that we also spent sometime at the science fair at the elementary school. We discovered that with 2 AA batteries a christmas tree light (incandescent) will last for hours, but if you put 8 AA batteries the light burns brighter but will burn out in just a half of a second!

Pirate!

Gus told me tonight that he wants to grow his hair out until halloween so that he could look just like Jack Sparrow. He has been wearing this costume for two days now. He wanted to wear it to school so the kids would think he had long hair. I think the eyes are the best part, isn't he freaky looking?

baptism

Zoe was baptized a little over a month ago, but I wanted to just post a note to that effect. Here dress was beautiful and she still wears it on Sundays! Thanks Jana, it was fantastic. The funniest thing that happened was that the water was ice cold, and Zoe's dress came out of the water so she had to get wet twice! Brrrrr. Sorry Zoe, we had tons of friends and relatives there though, it was really a lot of fun. I remember when I got baptized, I was very very sick and just remember being in my bed afterward while everyone was having some noisy fun and wishing I was feeling better so I could play with the cousins. Sorry the photo is sideways, but I can't fix it.

A little nervous

Last week we went to the doctor to see what this lump in Zoe's throat was. It turns out that she just needs to have a small cyst removed, but we were sort of nervous for a few minutes anyway. Now she is sort of nervous about surgery, but she is awesome and should be fine. She says it doesn't hurt or anything, but nervous. I have never had surgery so I am one to talk, but we will keep encouraging her to be strong.

Sunny Cold Days

It was pretty cold yesterday and in typical New England style the beautiful blanket of snow we received on Saturday was covered by a thick layer of icy rain. We took the kids to the park to check out the 9 foot igloo our neighbor made, but it was already ruined. The snow was too hard to play in so we played on the slides instead.

Sleepy head.

I decided that I would post a picture and a short blog each day this coming week. I have had three people now tell me that they look at our blog from time to time and never see a post, so this one goes out to you three.

Tonights picture is of Gus sleeping in a very large bucket! We had some friends come over and watch the kids while we went to a pu-pu party. The party was fun despite the fact that there was pupu everywhere - I had to say that. When we got home they were all asleep, and Gus got the bucket.

More tomorrow.

Sorry I don't post much.

[insert excuse here]. So I welcome myself back to this blog by saying if you would like to see some wicked cool pictures of us on Halloween just head over to my homepage.

We have had a lot going on since returning from our summer of vacations. After the wave of visitors left, we were left high and dry for things to do, so we dove back into school, church, and thats about it.

Funny things I heard today: "kinkley", "I can't believe my students all become a$%#@ the day before a test", and "Nerdular Nerdance"

A weekend in Queens and NYC

We spent the weekend in Queens and NYC with our friends Dan and Minna. We had so much fun. We visited central park and rode on the carousel and went to the zoo. Zoe and Gus loved the zoo and carousel but I think Sammy liked the zoo more than anyone. He wouldn't ride in the stroller he wanted to walk and explore by himself. I got a lot of video footage, but only a few pictures. You can see them at the new link.