Emme's first family day

Tuesday we got together at Mary's house to celebrate a very special occasion: Mary and Emme's first family day! It's amazing that it's already been a year that Mary and Emme have been a family, and in some ways, it seems like it's been much longer!

We had a fun dinner with the little girls, and some cake to celebrate with after. All the girls loved the cake!

Happy first Family Day Emme!!!

Skype Baby Turns 1!

A few weeks ago our youngest villager turned 1! Happy Birthday Skype Baby! You may remember the introduction of Skype Baby here. She is now 1- amazing how fast a year can fly by, or how slow it can go if you are waiting.
We celebrated Skype Baby's birthday at their house- Liana loves hugging the little girls- I'm not sure Emme wanted all the hugs that she was getting, but she was a cheerful and patient "hug-ee."
The older girls started "cheers"-ing at the kids table- Zoe, Dumpling, Eva & Liana. It was so cute because they all did it in unison with their various sippy cups! I love moments like this!
Dumpling was very excited for skype baby to open her presents- she is a good big sister who doesn't always realize that little sisters are not the equivalent of your favorite stuffed animal in terms of how they can be hauled around, but fortunately Skype baby is about the happiest baby ever, and almost anything that Dumpling is doing, makes her smile or laugh.
And the infamous cake picture... She had no qualms about reaching right in and digging into the frosting! And when you have a bunch of sugary frosting, you are most certainly going to need a sippy cup of milk to wash it down....
Happy Birthday Skype Baby! We are so glad you came home to be a part of our Village! We love you and wish you many more happy happy birthdays!

Wallpaper Removal

We had 3 layers of wallpaper in the dining room, and 4 layers of wallpaper in the entryway and livingroom. Interestingly, once we stripped all the layers, we found unpainted plaster! Except for the entryway and a section of one wall in the livingroom, the top 3 layers were pretty easy to get off, and the last layer came off willingly with a little bit of Dif. We had our drywall people patch some of the major cracks, and advice from them on purchasing elastomeric paint to help cover most of the smaller cracks...
Stripped walls!!! And a whole lot of wallpaper on the floor! Clearly this was before we actually moved to the house, since there is room in the living room. As of now, it's stacked full of multiple couches and tables and a big chair and two ottomans. We are waiting to move much stuff to the second floor until we have done some of the more urgent remodel things upstairs- taking wallpaper out of Maddies Room & putting in a new carpet, and taking the extra wall that makes it into two rooms) out of our bedroom. So for now, furniture that should be in the extra bedrooms downstairs is all in the living room, and furniture that should be in the upstairs bedrooms is in the downstairs bedrooms. Sooner or later it will all get straightened out!
Maddie didn't seem to mind the construction phase too much, as long as there was a good stool to play on...
I love this little cheesey grin!

Apple Cider Pressing

Last year our friends borrowed an cider press from friends of theirs and invited us to come and press cider with them. I spoke to Jeanine (the wife) a month or two back and she mentioned they were doing it again, and I told her yes of course we very much want to come again! Well, we were super busy getting ready to move but this had been on our radar since LAST year so we were really excited to come again! So about 2 weeks before the date, we saw both Roy and Jeanine and Roy said to me, "I know how busy you are so I'm not even going to invite you to cider pressing this year." Of course I responded "WHAT???? Jeanine said we could come!!!" So yes, he quickly realized that despite how busy we were, we were dedicated cider pressing people, so we got to go press cider again after all! There were not as many apples as last year, but we had "Maddie Help" this year, which means we were about half as much help anyway!
We followed the same process as last year- dumping the apples into a big bucket with water to rinse them, then cutting them in half and into the 'grinder' on the cider press. Maddie LOVED playing with the apples in the water and loved to go get apples to bring to us, bring apples to put in the water, and help the older kids fill the pots and pans with apples for us to cut for the cider press.
After the apples went through the course 'grinder' on the press, the top went on and the pressing started. Everyone had fun taking turns spinning the crank that pressed the cider out of the apples.
As beautiful as ever! We had an added bonus this year- I found out about a website where people can list fruit trees found on public land. I went unsuccessfully in search of apples, but did manage to find two Asian pear trees FULL of beautiful Asian pears- on public land! they were poured into the bucket with the apples but somehow they all disappeared. Finally when we had cleared some of the floating apples, we discovered that they had all sunken to the bottom! There was a pressing of mostly asian pears, which we did not yet taste, but we're excited to see how it affects the flavor!

First dinner in the new house

Special thanks to my friend Deb for the inspiration on this one, although truthfully we didn't have a lot of choice! The first day after getting the keys to the new house, we had a picnic on the floor. We situated Maddie on a plastic painting drop cloth (we figured if it could contain paint, it can contain Maddie spills!) and spread out on the living room floor- Jeremy in the middle & our friend Scott on the right.
We had takeout from Sckavonnes- one of our favorite breakfast places but also great for dinner. One of Maddie's favorites is Macaroni and Cheese:
I think she is saying "this stuff, can I have it every meal?" We were back there for dinner recently & thought it would be wise to order her a childs serving of Mac & Cheese. they told us the kids menu mac and cheese is just Kraft. We thought, really? You guys make this rocking mac & cheese and you give the kids KRAFT??? I said, "oh, I don't know if she'll eat it, she's never had it before." But we decided to give it a try, and guess what? Nope- not at all interested. In fact, she ate two noodles and decided no more. However, Baba had gotten Mac and Cheese and she proceeded to eat nearly half of his plate of Mac & Cheese. What can I say, she's a foodie from early on!