What's Making Me Happy This Week

What's making me happy this week is simply being in Colorado, which I love, and seeing the kids playing with all of their cousins, making tons of lasting memories.


















The kids loved the plane rides, including the turbulence that we experienced on both flights. Norah's ears hurt on the first descent, but other than that we had a very smooth travel day. They entertained themselves very well for most of the flights, and ate up all the snacks and the ginger ale from the flight attendants. The two hour layover in Chicago was spent traveling on the people-movers between the gates.













The day after we arrived we celebrated Toby's 6th birthday, his cousin's 1st birthday, and Father's Day with a Johnson family gathering. The kids had so much fun playing tag and wrestling together! We also had an unbelieveable amount of cake, including Toby's DQ blizzard ice cream cake.













After a few relaxing days enjoying my parents' back yard (and acclimating to altitude and time zone changes) we headed to the Springs to visit BJ's side of the family. We had a picnic at the B 52 on the Air Force Academy and are now staying at BJ's brother's house with his 5 kiddos. Toby and Norah are running themselves ragged playing all the time, and even with one or two kids napping at any given point there's always someone willing to start a game or a craft.

My Art Gallery

Toby has created things throughout the year that find their way to the shelf in my kitchen. A little clay penguin, some shells from a beach walk, a grass-haired-sock creature, and a valentine made out of a red party cup.
So cute.

My Socialite

Naptimes are slowly fading away in the Strawser household, but there are days when a good rest is required to get through the remainder of the day.
We were having one of those days when Norah would not stop playing to rest, and her object of interest was an old phone we had stashed away in the attic. She brought it to her room and proceeded to spend the morning calling different people and telling them her plans for today.
I thought it was a good sign when her conversations included the comment "No, you can't come over now because I'm going to nap." So I set the phone aside and put her to bed. A few hours later I went to wake her up to see that she had climbed out of her crib in order to put the phone in with her.
Sometimes you've got to hand it to her for her determination to get her way.

My Blog's Third Birthday

Happy 3rd Birthday to Abbi's Family Blog.
Three years ago yesterday I started this little site to post pictures of the kids and tell stories of our adventures here in Connecticut.
We've seen Toby's 3rd, 4th and 5th birthday parties, Norah's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd birthdays, a few memorable anniversaries, vacations, and tons of every day memories.
Thanks for coming along for the ride!

P.S.  While trying to write this post with all of these links (click on each red word to see an old blog post) Norah came and gave me a hug, spilling my coffee all over the table and Toby.  I jump up to mop up the mess and Toby says "Ugh, now I have to clean off my toe!"

My Mistake

This morning I made sausage links to go with our usual weekend pancakes.
I don't typically make sausage links, and I bought these in the organic section of the grocery store, therefore when the sausage lacked the greasy sizzle one associates with skillet-cooked links I didn't question as maybe I should have.
This was the report from Norah: "I thought the sausage would be yummy yummy yummy, bit instead it taste yuhk."

A closer inspection of the package revealed that these weren't exactly organic sausage links.
They were vegetarian.



And if there's one thing our vegetarian friends have taught us, it's that any meat product engineered to be vegetarian (think tofu turkey or tofurkey) is going to taste... yuhk.