Jamie's 2nd Birthday

What did we get the big boy this year?  A great big helping of rotovirus, or the like.  Poor kid got sick on his birthday, so all the pics and video here are coming off some vomiting and a fever that was as high as 103 when I picked him up at the babysitter.  Still willing to smile!

 Can you see the incredibly crooked haircut?  While Lucy entertained everyone with her tale of hairy crack woe, Jamie screamed as though he was being tortured.  I sat in the chair and held him on my lap while he cried "Help me!"

 This is the cake that Jamie picked out, butter chocolate cake (yum!) with purple frosting.  Lucy was thrilled.

 And yes, poor guy, I made him make his own birthday cake.

Our little party.  We had ripped through the presents in the package Grandma and Grandpa sent while skyping before we did cake and our presents.

  Someone needs to remind me to stop attempting to decorate cakes.

 Jamie was so happy that we were all singing to him.  He must have sang at Sherry's because as soon as I took out the candles he said "Wishes!"

 Cake cutting helpers.

 I've got to teach Eric how to work the camera.  I cropped this photo down to about half the size. 

 He loved the monkey backpack!

 And you can see who was the seasoned expert at opening presents.  Jamie's helper.

Finally, us singing happy birthday, Jamie opening some presents, and the first tries on his new swing, which is not the night of Jamie's birthday that we opened presents:



Jamie's Birthday from Kristin York on Vimeo.

The Gift

Thanks to Grandma for sending Jamie an awesome new tv seat for his birthday:

And some video of the kids acting silly, too:


Winter 2013 Kids from Kristin York on Vimeo.

I Love Lucy

I know that everyone thinks their kid is the smartest, cutest, funniest kid in the world ... but I know it for real.

Here's a recap of our weekend:

I took the kids for haircuts.  This was Lucy's first haircut, and she has been waiting for months to shorten her hair.  Poor kid, I kind of can't blame her because it is a beast to comb.  Hours of torture at the hands of mommy and a brush.  Eric desperately didn't want her to cut it and I (though feeling guilty about it) didn't either, as I had a feeling all her sweet curls would disappear.  I wanted to hang on to those as long as possible.

So, we get to the mall salon and Lucy hops right up into the chair and announces to everyone that this is her first haircut ever and do you want to know why she's getting her hair cut?  "Sometimes when I'm pooping" ... at this point every single person in the salon stopped what they were doing and looked at her ... "I tilt my head back and my hair gets stuck in my crack.  That's why I need a haircut."

She also pulled apart her lampshade, wrote her name on it and wore it on her head for a while.  I've got a picture in my mind of some party in the 1980s that's missing her here.

As well as spending a quiet afternoon watching Netflix on the ipad with her favorite unicorns, who also were required to wear headphones.

She seriously cracks me up.

Flat Stanley Visits

Hi Kate!  Hi Mrs. DiFrederic’s class!

Thanks so much for sending me to Ames, Iowa to visit the York family.  I had a super fun time and learned a lot about Iowa while I was there.  I hope you enjoy learning about Iowa too!

Here I am on a map of the United States.  Maine is all the way in the northeast corner of the country and has an ocean border with coastline.  The state of Maine is yellow on this map with a picture of a lighthouse, can you see it?  I am pointing to Iowa here.  Iowa is right in the middle of the country with no ocean borders, but there are rivers to both the east (Mississippi River) and west (Missouri River) of the state.  The state of Iowa is red on this map with a picture of a pig, can you see it?

Bangor, Maine and Ames, Iowa are 1,600 miles apart.  If you got in your car and drove without stopping it would take you 26 hours.  That is more than one whole day!

Ames, Iowa is almost exactly in the center of the state.

This is Lucy and Jamie in front of their house in Ames.  The houses in Iowa look a lot like the houses in Maine, but one difference is that almost all the roads are completely straight.  There are very few turns and curves.

You can see there is snow on the ground right now.  Iowa does get cold and it does get snow, but the winter comes later and is shorter.  Iowa doesn’t get nearly as much snow as Maine does, especially this winter.

Iowa is on the plains.  It is flat here with not a lot of trees.  Flat means it is very windy a lot of the time!

And windy means wind power.  There are windmills all over the place in Iowa.  Lucy and Jamie’s mommy works at a school that gets electricity from two windmills.  I visited the windmill at the school, but it’s not nearly as big as most of the windmills.  I wish I had gotten to see a wind farm, where there are 100 windmills or more, but the wind farms are far away from Ames and we didn’t visit one.  The windmill here is over 100 feet tall, even though I look taller than it in the picture! 

Most of the flat open spaces in Iowa are used to grow corn or soybeans.  Farming is very important to people here and there are a lot of jobs on farms or with farm products.  People also raise pigs, cows, and chickens for meat, milk, and eggs.  Do you know what a corn silo looks like?  They are very modern!

These are silos.  Most of the farms are very large.  Corn is stored in silos because the corn grown here is mostly not for people to eat.  It is grown to feed animals or make ethanol.  Do you know what ethanol is?  It’s super silly: Ethanol is gas for your car that is made from corn!

This is the ethanol factory.  There is a tractor trailer truck with a tanker trailer that is full of ethanol ready to bring to a gas station.

There are a lot of farm equipment stores around Ames.  I visited on with Lucy and got to sit in a tractor!

 This is me on a tractor.  You can see how big the tractor is compared to me.  There are also tractors that are called combines that are even bigger, and used to harvest corn.  Some combines cost over $1,000,000.  That’s a lot of money!

The tractors were a lot of fun to see.

Can you see how big the tire is compared to me and to Lucy?  It would make a great tire swing!

In Iowa and all over the midwest, the states on the plains in the middle of the country, water towers are important town landmarks.  They are very tall and you can see them from miles away.  Every town has its own water tower, and people in the town are very proud of them and how they look.  Sometimes they have special designs that show visitors something about the town. 

Ames has one kind of water tower:

And the water tower at Iowa State University looks different too:

Iowa State University is in Ames, where I visited.  It’s like the University of Maine but way bigger.  In fact, there are almost as many students at Iowa State University as there are in Bangor, Maine.  About 30,000!

The mascot for the university is the Cyclone, or Cy the cardinal (bird).  A cyclone is also called a tornado and there are tornados in Iowa sometimes.  This picture is at the entrance to Iowa State University and the sculpture next to me is supposed to look like a cyclone.

College football is very important to people here.  People are very excited about games and lots of people wear t-shirts to show they are fans of Iowa State University.  The football stadium is named Jack Trice Stadium and can hold up to 55,000 people.  That’s way more people than live in Bangor, Maine!  Ames gets very crowded when there are football games at Iowa State.

Thanks again for sending me for a great visit to Iowa State University and Ames, Iowa.  I learned a lot about Iowa and the midwest and I hope you did too!

Love, Flat Stanley

February 2013

December 2012

Race to 2013...

Thanksgiving was uneventful, just the four of us, and December went by in a flash.  I spent much of the month of November sick and recovering, about 4 weeks, and much of December playing catch up and trying desperately to get a Christmas picture of the kids together.  Ha.

Fall hike, nope.

 Sweet evening on the couch, nope.

 You're kidding, right mom?

 Why yes, we're wearing our bathing suits in the back yard with some red shirts on over them.  And yes, Jamie's shirt is on backwards so the print won't show in our Christmas photo.  Ha.

 Lucy held Jamie down.

 I strapped him down.

 Eric propped him up.

 I bribed with television and candy.  That worked well.

 In the park?  Nope.

 More fruit snacks!

  This is me, from behind bars after I have officially gone crazy trying to get a Christmas card photo.

 To another park?  No again.

 This one is sweet and I like the light, but not to send to our relatives and friends.

 I'm getting desperate.

 Now why, why aren't these my children?

 This is how I felt.  Sweet as pie, I think Jamie is the least photogenic child on the planet. 

Christmas wrap-up to come!

Happy Birthday Eric!

We'll never tell how old you are ... and it won't matter because you can't remember.

The kids and I finally made the Fun-da-middles cupcake box that Grandma sent ages ago (for some occasion, maybe Lucy's birthday?)  They were delicious, kids and cupcakes too.  Unfortunately the baking process didn't exactly allow Lucy to fill the tins by herself, but there was plenty of time for the kids to help and get sugared.

 Mommy's little helpers like the mixer.

 And the beaters.

 Poor Jamie went to bed before we sang and ate cupcakes.  Stinks to be little.  Lucy looks like she's plotting to steal Eric's wish. 

Hope it's a great year!