Thursday, January 29, 2009

BABIES, BIRDS and SNOW!

THREE BABIES AND A BIG SISTER
I thought it would be fun to give some updates on the grandchildren. Andy, Helena's newest addition, is three weeks old here. He looks as if he has something very important to say.Hazel is the next oldest. She belongs to Barbie and Kyle, and is now almost 3 1/2 months old.
Here's Hazel again. She loves her bouncy seat.
Peter and Karen's daughter, Elizabeth is now one year old. Yay, Elizabeth! One of her favorite Christmas toys was her Fisher-Price Nativity Set.
Elizabeth as a sweet little Santa.
This picture of Elizabeth was taken a few months ago, but it's a favorite, so I just had to include it here. ^o^And then comes Kate. Helena and Doug's oldest just turned 4. She got a baby brother for her birthday, right on her birthday. Of all the pictures of Kate and Andy that Helena has on her blog, this is my favorite: Helena said: Monday was Kate's four-year checkup and shots. They had us fill out a sheet of developmental questions--physical and cognitive stuff. Some of Kate's answers were a real hoot. One section had questions like, "What do you do when you're hungry?" ("Eat food!") and "What do you do when you're tired?" ("Go to bed!") But for "What do you do when you're cold?" she said, "Play in the snow!" Ha. There was also a section of defining words. I remember her explanation of "curtain" was "You open and close it to see the sun and the sky and the whole world!" and for "banana" she said, "It looks like a moon and you eat in your oatmeal."
Way to Go, KATE!

BIRDS * BIRDS * AND MORE BIRDS

We have had a lot of feathered visitors at our bird feeder lately. I
took these pictures through our back window. Some of our
Square-Foot Garden boxes show in the background.
I really like woodpeckers. As far as I know we have only one pair that visits our yard.
I also really like the cardinals. Currently there seem to be three pairs of them that come to our backyard restaurant . Usually they feed on the ground under the feeder, but occasionally they will come to the feeder itself. When they do, it's usually at the bottom like the one shown here.
The next picture shows one of the female cardinals landing on the feeder along with some house finches.
This is my favorite cardinal picture so far.

And So IT SNOWS!

We had snow on the ground, but then the weather decided to change a bit yesterday and give us sleet for about 6 hours. After that it snowed much of the day. This is what we saw out our back window. There is quite a bit of snow accumulation on top of the bird feeder.
The world was closed yesterday (over 500 closings were listed on TV), so Jim and Kirsten were both home. Jim went out to clear the sidewalk and found an inch of ice under 6 inches of snow. Other areas got as much as 12 inches. It took Jim over an hour to scrape the ice off the car windows even with the heater going.

We have a fair number of icicles, and tree branches are coated with ice.
Towards twilight I noticed a bright patch in the sky, and thought it would make a cool picture.

This is my favorite picture of all.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

PICTURES OF ANDY

Helena's baby made his appearance last Saturday. We're so glad he's here and arrived safely. Betsey said she just knew that he would be born on Kate's birthday. :-)

Here is Helena's short version of the birth story: Anders Alfred, born at 2:18 AM on Saturday, December 27th, 2008; 6 pounds 5.8 ounces, 19" long (probably). Yes, he was born on Kate's birthday. I'd mentioned how similar the timing was with the two pregnancies, and we knew they were going to be close, but somehow I hadn't really considered that he might come on the same day. Hopefully they won't mind sharing a birthday!

We're calling him Andy. Anders is the Scandinavian version of Andrew (that's with an "ah" sound as in "father"). We have Anders(es) on both sides of the family. And Alfred is for Doug's dad, of course, who passed away just two months ago. For her longer version and more pictures click here.
And here is more about this sweet little boy:
Welcome little man.
What are you thinking?
There seems to be such wisdom in those eyes.
What can you see that we cannot?
What do you remember that we have forgotten?
What could you tell us if you could only speak?


Getting acquainted with Big Sister Kate.
Little brothers cry sometimes…
Tender Moments.
Goodbye for now, little one. We hope to see you soon.