Where we've been: part 1

The past three weeks have gone by so quickly; much has happened, and I have so much to say that it's hard to think of what I should even write. There are too many pictures to share, too many things to say. Instead, I'm going to give you the highlights. First: our visit with my parents. (If you're here for the pictures, they're all in Flickr in this set: Visit to NY Sept. '09)

On September 4th, we flew from Germany to the Baltimore International Airport, and my dad picked us up. We then spent the next week with my family. Unfortunately Greg and all four of our children came down with the flue on the 1st day, so they all spent a lot of the time sleeping, and I spent most of the time holding a sick Jonah. Fun times. At least I didn't get sick myself.



We may have passed it on to a few of my siblings as well...



My cousin, Becky, her husband Daniel and their baby Moriah also visited at my parent's house during a few of the days we were there, and we had a lovely time together.









(This is most of the family, plus Uncle Henry, my Grandma Claire and Grandpa Mark, and Becky with husband and baby, although my dad happened to be at one of his college classes when we took this, and of course Jonathan is in Germany.)

At some point, while everyone was feeling just a little better, Andrew opened some gifts for his birthday (which had been on Sept. 3rd):



Andrew says "Thank you, everyone!", especially to Aunt Terry & Great-Grandma Annette, and Aunt Mary Ann & Uncle Bob, who couldn't be there for this visit, but sent him gifts anyway. We love you and miss you very much!!

Isaiah also opened a very belated gift from us for his 1st birthday (in July!)



These are wooden ABC blocks, painted with non-toxic paints. You can find them here: A-B-C Alphabet Blocks.

I made Andrew cinnamon cupcakes with green cream cheese frosting at his request as his birthday "cake".



I followed the recipe found here, although I omitted the orange zest, and creamed the butter and sugar together instead of melting the butter with milk. I added the milk in cold when I was adding the eggs.

For the frosting, I just did my usual: equal parts of softened unsalted butter and cream cheese with just enough confectioner's sugar to make it mildly sweet but still tangy.

To get that perfect Shrek shade of green, Andrew and I added an entire florescent green bottle of food coloring, as well as 1-1/2 squeeze bottles of classic green. He was very pleased to have his favorite color on his cupcakes.

Everyone seemed to love them, and a quadruple recipe had vanished without a trace within a few hours of making them.



I call that a success.

During the week there was also some pumpkin carving:



And I recorded duets with both Caleb and Joy, just for fun.



We got to watch a logger truck stack up my parent's wood pile for winter.



And just because they're cute, here's some pics I stole off of Becky's Facebook page:



(Thanks Becky!)

Remember, for more pictures (or bigger ones, in the case of all of the mosaics in this post), click through to the Flickr set to see them all!

Next post: a week at Greg's parents' house.