Seeley Happenings: June 2008

On Thursday April 24th, we rented a mini van from Enterprise in town got packed up and loaded, including Dick, and picked up Ben at daycare at about 12 noon and headed for Oxford, NJ were John's step-mom Trudy lives. Ben did an amazing job riding in the car! I was so amazed and pleased! He only slept in the car about 30 minutes on the way down and we only made one stop at a rest area off the NY Thruway right before heading into NJ. We arrived down in NJ about 6:30 pm, not great time but not too bad either considering we hit some slow spots were traffic was just crawling. John's sister Anna, her husband Jason and their daughter Kate were already there from San Diego, CA. They cooked dinner for us that night and we just hung around talking. Yonik (John's brother) came and picked up Dick after dinner. Dick stayed with Yonik and Margaret in Branchburg, NJ about 30 minutes from Trudy's house. Here are some on my favorite pictures from that 1st night in NJ

Ben and his cousin Kate playing

John pushing Kate and Ben on the "tire" swing (so cool! a horse cut from a single whole tire!)

Pretty Kate in the chair

Me reading stories to Kate and Ben

The three of us slept in Theo room. John and I in Theo's very bounce bed and Ben in the pack n' play. Ben didn't do so great sleeping but I think alot of that had to do with being over tired and over stimulated. But it wasn't too bad. I just hated waking everybody else up.

On Saturday the 25th we hung out at Trudy's house and everybody came over. We had a nice party to celebrate Trudy's 60th birthday. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day.

Ben and Kate drawing together

Grandma Trudy making the puppet dance for Ben & Kate

One of Ben's favorite part of the whole trip was feeding Trudy's ducks. He thought it was the greatest thing ever. Everytime we went inside, he would immediately start saying "Outside", "Outside", over and over until somebody took him back outside. Thankfully the weather was great the whole time we were there and we could spend a lot of time outside!

Trudy's dog's name (the one in the picture) was Chinook (sp?) and by the end of the weekend Ben was saying his name and calling me Chininnook. Chinook loved to chase sticks and balls and whatever so Ben had a great time throwing for him.

Cute picture!

Trudy had this great motorcycle. I can't remember what it was called. I was like an off road one with big fat tires. John got it running and it was a great hit with everybody. 1st row, John's sister Theo, brother Yonik giving nephew Jason a ride and brother-in-law Jason (Anna husband)

Second Row: John and brother Yonik gives Kayla a ride (I love the motion in this photo!)

This is great group photo of the day. I think the only people missing are Anna (inside cooking) and myself (behind the camera). From left to right, Kayla, Margaret's Mom (can't remember her name right at the moment), Margaret (Yonik's wife), Dick, Trudy, Theo, Jason, John and Yonik and Jason on the bike.

Ben and his Uncles Jason & Yonik checking out the ducks

Kayla and Kate helping Grandma Trudy blow out her candles

Woohoo! A picture of me and Ben from the weekend! I got out from behind the camera!

These next two have got to be my all time favorites from the weekend! I think they are so funny and cute! Future biker in the making!

Kayla and Kate riding Obie and Trudy on Obie

Cass and his friend made it up late Friday night so we all sat around and had a snack once they got there.

On Saturday, Kayla had her first Communion. Everybody attended except Jason, Kate, Ben and myself. We stayed at Trudy's to get the kids naps and then joined everybody later at Yonik and Margaret's house (after driving by the turn and getting a little lost!)

While we had everybody together, I set up my tripod and we took some group shots. Then at home I used Photoshop Elements to Photomerge the best of the 3 into one good one. Here it is. Back row: Me, Dick, John & Ben, Cass. Next Row Standing : Yonik & Kayla in front, Trudy, Theo & Jason. Sitting on the bench: Margaret, Kate, Anna and little Jason standing next to Anna

Ben absolutely LOVED his cousin's swingset. He couldn't get enough of going down the slide and climbing the wall with Dad's help.

Kayla and her cake

I so wanted to get a good photo of the three generations while everybody was clean and all dressed up but Ben won't cooperate and this is the best I could get!

Ben and Uncle Yonik playing with his cousin's awesome train table.

Ben and cousin Kayla swinging

Ben also loved his cousin's chocolate brown bunny rabbit. It was so soft to pet!

On Sunday, we all had breakfast together and started packing up for the ride home. We did manage to get a picture of Trudy with all of her grandkids.

We also made sure to feed the ducks one more time before we left.

One last group shot group shot of us loading up the van and everybody standing around. Yonik and Margaret gave us a ton of hand me downs and we had that van packed on the way home. We brought more stuff home than we took down. I was certainly glad we rented the van. (It was also so much better on gas mileage than my truck would have been!)

Last picture, a cute shot of the Dads and their kids!

It was so great to see everybody and get a chance to get away for a weekend. We left about 2 pm on Sunday and Ben slept for about an hour and a half in the car this time. We stopped in Glens Falls and had dinner and he wasn't too excited about getting back in the car but he did great! I was just so impressed with how well he traveled considering it was his first real road trip for such an extended period of time. I'm so glad I was able to capture such great photos of the trip, especially of everybody together. So it's posted a little late and a lot long. But I got it down, that's what's important!

In some ways it amazes me that it's been two and half months since I've made the time to post but when I sat down and tried to make a list of all that's gone on in the time, I'm not so amazed! It's just been crazy but good. Anyway, what better thing to do on a crummy raining Sunday than sit down and get this blog up to date! I don't know if I'll make it through the whole list because the post might get really long especially since I've taken hundreds of photos too. But here it goes anyway and I'll see how far I get!

April

Sugaring wrapped up with a good year for us. We made about 365 gallons which is very close to the 4:1 average for a good year.
I took another online digital scrapbooking class with Jessica Sprague. It was her advanced class called Digi In Deep. I didn't get all 8 layouts done but I did complete 4. Here they are

I have the 1st and 2nd framed together for my dad for Father's day. If you are interested in checking out Jessica's website and her classes go here's the link.
We celebrated Sarah Kaufmann's 18th birthday with her on the 12th of April.

Some where in there we spent a weekend washing tubing. On Saturday, John and Tim washed tubing and on Sunday it was Evan, Shane, Larry, Doug, John and myself (with Ben in the backpack) It was good to get it all done and clean up on time this year. Here is a picture of all of our syrup samples for the year (4/13)
Another cute picture from 4/13
These are from 4/14, spaghetti face singing itsy bitsy spider
Self portrait taken with the timer on the deck (I haven't edited any of these photos. These are all as taken Agh!) 1st one taken 4/16 2nd one taken 4/18
Full Moon Photo taken on 4/18
On 4/24 we traveled to NJ for a mini family reunion with John's immediate family. It was a great weekend and deserves a whole posts all by it's self. But here are a couple group photos.
I picked up ten new baby chickens the day before we left for NJ and took them out to Patty house so she could take care of them while we were gone. 4 for me and 6 for patty. Here a picture of them on the 3oth when I got them home.