Kids from Work

A couple weeks ago I went on a hike with some of the kids I work with. It was really fun. I really love the kids I work with, they are so cute.


This is Tina. For Halloween this year (I didn't bring my camera, curses!) she was Cinderella with a big, black, curly wig. It was hysterical.
From Left to right: Josh, Jabril, Guy, Anna and Caitlyn.

In this picture you can see Josh changing into a dry shirt. He fell in the water a couple of times. Acutally, all of the kids had wet pants but Josh's whole body was soaked, twice.

Left to right: Guy, Jabril, Caitlyn, Anna.

Here is everyone on the bridge as we were leaving.

Fall Colors and Activities

This post is mostly for my Mom who really wanted to be out here in Connecticut for the leaves to change. The irony is my parents never, ever, read my blog. Ever. Oh well.

Though I grew up in Wisconsin I have been away from real fall colors for about 10 years. I realize now that I really didn't appreciate it when I was younger. I find the changing trees so incredible. There are so many really spectacular trees. I feel like there is a rainbow around every corner. There are times I just want to cry because of the beauty. That being said, these pictures don't really look much like the real thing. It's depressing but true. The trees in real life with the sun gleaming off of them look like they are glowing. I think I've gone on long enough about the pretty trees.

Patrick and I found this resevoir while hiking one day and last Sunday decided to see if we could drive out to it. We brought a blanket and played guitar. It was great because there was no one there and it was beautiful.

Here are a couple of particularly beautiful trees that are around Danbury.

While we were biking we also found this amazing fungus on one of the downed trees. It, too, looks even better in real life.

While we were biking Patrick was somehow attacked by his bike. I decided to refrain from the close up, gorey picture. I won't go into detail about the wound as some people have already had to hear the grusome tale, but the teeth on the crank dug into his leg and let's just say it took out a chunk and was disgusting.
Then this weekend we went to Hartford. The drive there was amazing in and of itself. But we also hiked up to the much frequented Tower.

Another of our activities was reading this funny website which inspired this funny skit. Here is the link to the article it was done after http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/11/87-outdoor-performance-clothes/ . It has nothing to do with fall colors but we thought we were pretty funny.

I am excited because there are still quite a few trees that are still green so I hope there will be a couple more weeks of great leaves.

We used to have Christmas in Florida

Before my Grandmother moved to Texas we used to go visit her in Florida for Christmases. I am trying to be a little more steady blogger so I looked through some of my older pictures. I thought I would include some pictures from when we were in Florida in 2004 when Patrick and I were just engaged.

This is what it looks like if you are a boy and succeed in making fire on the beach.


This is what the girls did most of the time on the beach, look for shells.

This is cute little Joel. He just turned 10 this October 9th. I can't believe how old he is getting.

It was one of those days where the sun wasn't out directly but still it was so bright you couldn't look at even the slightest upward angle. It was truely impossible to keep your eyes open. I think Alyssa's face deserves the prize.

And another cute picture of Joel because he is my buddy.

My Dad and his brothers

The last time we went to New Jersey to visit my Dad's older brother he pulled out some old slides of my Dad when he was younger. These are pictures of the slide screen so they aren't the greatest but you get the idea. I guess his brothers, a friend, and him went out to take weird pictures one day. My Dad is the one in the middle with the hat. His younger brother, Jeff, is on his left with the yellow turtle neck.


This is my Dad when he was in the army. Nice glasses!
My Dad's older brother, Pat, is in the middle with my Aunt Liz on his right.
This is us with my Uncle Jeff. We were excited to get to see him again after about 20 years.

Madden Girls Trip with boys

A word of warning: This post is not for the faint of heart! It's pretty long. So normally with a post this size I would break it up into multiple posts but I am too lazy for that. Most of the people who read this blog have already seen the pictures on other peoples blogs/facebook anyway. Patrick thinks there are too many pictures. I think fooey, then he should do more posts and they could be just how he wants them. Let me also say that I decided to leave out any videos to make it a little faster browse. Ok, I just added one because Alejandro's personality is so great and it doesn't always come across in pictures.

So the girls in my family came out to the east coast to visit us. We had so many great times. We got to go to the city on Saturday so Jared, Matisse, and Patrick were all able to come with us! We took the ferry to Staten Island to go past the Statue of Liberty. It was not picturesque enough so I didnt' include a picture of it. You are know what it looks like anyway and us in front of it is not going to make it any neater. Why, you ask, have so many pictures in general of the diffent places we went? I can't answer that. Just read on.

After the ferry we went to Brooklyn and had some legit Brooklyn style pizza. Thank goodness Dominos Pizza let us know it existed so we knew we had to try the real stuff. I actually don't think it's that great from Brooklyn or Dominos. I think others feel differently.

I was more impressed with the Brooklyn Bridge. To tell the truth the only reason we went to Brooklyn was to walk back to Manhattan across the old bridge. Kaitlyn was evidently not impressed with the bridge. She thought it smelled funny, or something.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is always a popular place to go in the city. I think Alex was bored, though.

Some of the modern art is pretty interesting, especially once I got there. This disc thingy was cool with sight and sound. If you stood just at the right place it would reflect and focus your voice for someone across the room.

This is what Patrick would look like to a spider...

Alex liked the baby he saw in the museum bathroom mirror. He was so intent on himself he kept rolling over when Alyssa was trying to change his diaper.
Central park loves pictures.

I am showing here the only look you can get away with when carrying a baby in the front loader. Otherwise people will think you are sissy. See, I look like a sissy.

Alex was really the best thing there was to see in NYC.

Except maybe Alyssa in this picture.

(Patrick says, "Now who wants to see us in Jamba Juice when they have already seen all those faces smiling from the Brooklyn Bridge?" He is just doesn't appreciate the novelty of each picture to those who truly love us, nor the ability of those that don't love us to skip through without really looking at the pictures once they get bored).

But really there is nothing better than Jamba and Times Square. You can tell we are all thrilled at least with our Jamba Juice. I think it's better in pictures than in person, not the Jamba, the Times Square.

We had a picnic in Hartford where they had these amazing Dahlias and also this patriotic flower bed for my mom.

These are some of the dahlias. I think at Matisses suggestion we were trying to look like fairies in this picture, the kind with wings. I don't think we did a very good job. I'm pretty sure Alex came away with some of this poor flowers leaves in his hand.


One day we went down to the lake to go rope swinging. Some dummies had used our swing and had tied the end of the rope up and it was too short to get back to the tree to swing. That was very annoying, but the picnic lunch was good.

We also went to Boston and were tricked for a little while into thinking this was Benjamin Franklin's grave. I mean, who wouldn't think that a giant obelisk with just an enormous "FRANKLIN" didn't belong to Benjamin Franklin. It was actually Obedia Franklin, not as cool.

Another day we went to this cute little town in CT named Kent and had Wisconsin Cheddar on our cheeseburgers.

Just outside of Kent there was this covered bridge and river area where we stopped to take some great pictures.

This was the position we had to get in to take the pictures of Alejandro with out Alyssa in it. I think I like this one better than the ones of just Alex.

Sometimes I feel the need to have some sort of closing comments at the end of my posts and sometimes I don't. I guess this one could really be considered either one of those options since there are comments but not about the post.