LOVESAGNA

GIVEAWAY!

2010-01-28T08:32:00.002-05:00

I have an AWESOME blog I follow! Go check out her most recent giveaway! It's from the promotions team at CSN from their store www.allmodern.com so go see Julie's blog to enter! http://not-to-shabby.blogspot.com/2010/01/giveaway.html

-Cath

Father Daughter Dance

2009-03-07T22:46:00.008-05:00

Well two of my sweets got dressed up for fun tonight. It was the annual Girl Scout Father Daughter Dance and this year's theme was square dancin'! They seemed to have a pretty good time and I'm glad because this has become something Emma looks forward to doing with her dad every year now. I'm glad she's enjoying the scouting program as much as she is!

We were INVADED!!

2009-02-20T21:02:00.002-05:00

It was a CRAZY past week here in the Squires home. We took delivery of 78 cases of Girl Scout cookies which I sorted that afternoon so they could be picked up by the girls/parents after their meeting as well as sorting the 160+ that Emma sold for her to deliver mostly to Dwayne's office the next day! Of course in my horrible procrastination, I had found what I thought were the cutest valentines idea Luv Bugs from Oriental Trading Company. They arrived Wednesday (same day as the cookies) so they had to be made Thursday to deliver to class Friday. Well it would've been nice to have had more specifics, they came with all the pieces and I mean ALL THE LITTLE PIECES! Yes it was definitely an assembly required project with lots of tacky glue and tape. We made enough for Peyton's, Emma's and my preschool classes!! Was it worth it? Yeah ....of course it was! It was a crazy week but a fun week and we survived the invasion of cookies and Luv Bugs!

I'm baaack!

2009-02-20T20:49:00.006-05:00

I know, I know I'm HORRIBLE at posting here and I vowed I would be better in the new year. Here's another try. So we've been busy as usual. We've been ice skating together for the first time which was fun and funny all in one. It was something we did with Emma's brownie troop and it was so much fun we've (read: kids) been begging to go every weekend since!

I also took several videos which are fun and I will try to post those later.

Family Pictures

2009-01-11T13:27:00.002-05:00

While we were in Georgia for Christmas we had a wonderful photographer Suellen Kay come over to Mom and Dad's house to get the big family portarait as well as lots of others, Suellen has updated her blog with a few of the images from that day. They are of Peyton, Meghan (one of Lauri's girls) and Brock (Jenn's stepson), they are awesome I can't wait to see the rest! Thanks again Suellen!

http://suellenkay.wordpress.com/

The second grade gingerbread man

2008-12-10T21:53:00.005-05:00

Okay, here's the story. The entire second grade was sent home with a blank gingerbread man and told they had two weeks to do whatever they wanted to these guys/gals and that they had to have a story and to BE CREATIVE! They will all be hung up at the school, this is Peyton's...

Hi, my name is Noah. I started out as a piece of dough. I got cooked in the oven at my house in Germany by Peyton. Once I was out of the oven I was terrified!! That's why I had this crazy idea, I had to escape far far away from Peyton and his family so they wouldn't eat me! The furthest place I could think of going to was Hawaii. Now I live the aloha spirit. I surf, box, play beach volleyball, tennis and golf. I still have to be careful and sleep with one eye open so that Peyton and his family don't ambush me!

Okay, I have to work on this...

2008-11-12T22:26:00.004-05:00

I know I know, it's been a while and I have SO MUCH I could've posted but life gets so busy feeling sometimes!! We had Peyton's birthday mid October, then his baptism which Nana and Papa Matteson were able to come up for YEA! It was a completely awesome experience and Peyton was SO HAPPY and EXCITED to have his very own scriptures (which by family tradition were given to him by Nana and Papa) and which we have been reading as a family together every night YEA!!!!! I'm so proud of us! We hit up Cox Farm while the Nana and Papa were here too which is good ol Northern Virginia yearly Fall tradition. Then of course Halloween SO MUCH FUN! Now November is upon us, yesterday we spent Veteran's Day at Mt. Vernon with Peyton's Cub Scout Den where they layed a wreath IN George Washington's tomb. Yes, they unlocked the tomb for them to lay the wreath inside. VERY cool experience, one I hope he never forgets! And today I spent the afternoon in .... you guessed it COOKIE TRAINING after work!!! I am the cookie mom for Emma's troop and WOO HOO I'll be talking COOKIES until April!! YIKES! What we do for the ones we love. But I really truly crazy do! I guess my next post will be all pictures of these things I have slacked in updating! For now a few of our family pictures we took while walking the trails out behind our houses with the Jensen's. Yup, you guessed it again, you'll be seeing one of these on our Christmas card! hahaha

Cub Scout World

2008-10-07T22:01:00.010-04:00

Okay, so I've been crazy busy and haven't updated I KNOW! We had a lot of fun this past weekend, we went to Cub Scout World Day at Camp Snyder. The kids had a lot of fun and I was so happy they let Emma participate! Here are a few fun photos of our day.

Throwing fishing lines into a hula hoop

Digging for gold

Eating english muffin pizzas they made in a box oven
BB gun range

Oooooo this is FUN!

Sling shots at pie tins

As if we didn't have enough to do!

2008-09-30T19:49:00.002-04:00

HA! So this weekend we're out and about and I say to Dwayne, I need to get some food for the gerbils, let's run into Petsmart. We walked out with a 46 gallon fish tank and the whole setup, and of course the gerbil food (we're not complete flakes!). Yeah, so we can't add the actual fish for at least two weeks the water needs to balance out so the fish we do buy don't just die. Though evidently our children won't be completely heartbroken if and when we do have a fish die because they were laughing HYSTERICALLY at the dead fish in one of the tanks at Petsmart!! Emma (in her sick little giggle that I adore!) kept saying where's the dead fish again? That dead fish is SO FUNNY! Can we get the dead fish? People around us must have thought we were freaks. So until mid October this is what we have to look at, a fishless fishtank! It is looking quite nice though. The kids picked the gravel color, Dwayne (and I, I guess) chose the large coral piece, Emma chose the bubbling treasure diver who's treasure chest goes UP and down, and Peyton chose the animal skull. He seems to think the bala shark we're going to put in the tank will like to sleep in the skull. HA.

I am a total book nerd right now!

2008-09-11T09:08:00.002-04:00

Okay, so Jamie Jensen and I meet up and walk the kids to school and back every day. We're just shy of one mile from the school so we have almost 4 miles to chat everyday. She started talking about this Twilight book series, and I had been starting to hear rumblings recently so I had to hear what it was all about, because Jamie had read them all of course. I was really interested and Jamie said I'll let you borrow it (Twilight, there are 4 books total at the moment in the series) of course Jamie being the good friend she is, is too much like me and couldn't find the book anywhere in the house ha ha ha ha. No big deal, I went to Target and picked up the first two in the series, Twilight and New Moon on Sunday afternoon. Today is Thursday and I have five chapters to go in New Moon. Emma was home sick with a double ear infection (yeah, fun!) yesterday which of course meant we had to go to Target to get her prescription filled, which of course means I got the other two books in the series. I am hooked, I have turned off the TV and the house is quiet at night. Dwayne is laughing at me telling me I need to go to bed and sleep. And Jamie....well Jamie is funny and says I can now be a member of her Edward Cullen fan club! HA HA HA (He's one of the main characters). But I am very grateful to Jamie, it had been a long time since I made time for myself and picked up a book and it really does feel GOOD! Me time, ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

First Day of School 2008!!

2008-09-02T19:30:00.003-04:00

Well it's official the kids are back in school!! Today was a cute day, I can't believe I have a first and second grader it's SO WEIRD! We started off on our walk to school and soon caught up to our friends the Jensen's from church who live around the corner. Grace and Emma are both first graders, different teachers but their classrooms are next door to each other. This is Grace's first year at Cedar Point, she went to Bristow Run last year because they were living in a different house and she was a bit nervous to be at a new school. Emma, being the good caring friend she is ran up to Grace on the path and next thing you know they were holding hands and never let go until it was time to part ways and go to class. Emma gave me a big kiss and hug then barely waved to me she was so excited to be back at school and in her classroom (which coincidentally was Peyton's first grade classroom just a different teacher) she's like a fish to water at school. Peyton wanted to hold hands with who else but me his Momma! hee hee So we held hands on our walk, but man once we were at school forget it! He's a big ol second grader, classroom in the second and third grade hallway! No more bathrooms in the classroom for him, his bathrooms are community and in the hallway, they have two in their hallway in fact! So nope...no need to walk me to class Mom (still got a big hug and kiss), I got it, I go right, then left, then right, classroom's on the corner! There went my big boy! WOW! After I knew Emma was settled I had to run take a peak at Peyton, he saw me and waved with a very BIG SMILE and yelled, "Hey Mom guess what Rahmann is in my class!!!" They were in first grade together, I said, "NO WAY!!!!" He said, "yup LOOK!" and ran over next to him and pointed ha ha ha! I said, "very cool Peyton, have a great first day!" to which he simply said, "I love you!" I hope he never stops saying that! I said I love you too! And that was it, I had my day all to myself! To do laundry, go grocery shopping, get dinner made, etc. etc. etc. but I got to do it....all by myself until it was time to pick them up of course! ha ha ha ha It was a goo first day of school!

National Zoo D.C.

2008-08-31T13:58:00.020-04:00

Ahhhhhh......so we went to the National Zoo yesterday. Had good weather (it was hot but no rain) can't complain. So we went to the zoo because Emma has been pretty bent since one of Peyton's three first grade field trips was the National Zoo (the other two were Mount Vernon and the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum) and she didn't get to go. She'll get to go this year but of course that's not good enough AND the Zoo is their last field trip of the year so it will be a while. It's great though and we were all excited to go. You can't beat DC, most everything is free and the National Zoo is one of those, it's part of the Smithsonian. I have to say yesterday was great compared to the field trip day because it was no where near as crowded and we weren't rushed for time so we saw EVERYTHING and got to stop and really do some fun stuff! My favorite was watching my two goofballs at the Cheethas. There was a bold yellow line painted on the ground followed by two staggered white squares, a big jump further two more with staggered squares and way way down the pathway another bold yellow line. This was to demonstrate a cheetah's stride and distance at top speed. From the one yellow line to the other would take a cheetah one second and the white squares it's stride. The kids tried the run several times and it of course took them longer than saying one! A very cool fun experiment I'm sure they will share at school since their mascot is....you guessed it the cheetah! These were their highlight photos...

This hippo is HUGE! They're looking for a new home for it though because of the new Elephant house and trails they're building.
Two of the many elephants
Peyton and Emma on the eagle
The flamingos...ahhh the memories of waking up in the morning to having our front lawn flamingo'd

One of our favorite birds in the birdhouse
Awesome iguana
Cute bird

Owl
We all liked the toucan
Posing with the panda

The best view we got of the panda unfortunately
These river otters were cute and frisky
Posing with the otters

Posing with the bear
The bear
One of the several cheethas

These are tamarin and they're endangered they have many of them at the National Zoo and they are very cool! This was a new baby they had this summer with it's Mom.
Lounging lemur
Lemur dining on watermelon

Another tamarin
Gorilla dining on the leftover bag that had popcorn in it earlier
Not interested in you at all!

This gator was cool and looked fake!
Komodo dragon
Komodo dragon close up

Crazy cool spiders and there is no barrier between you and them
LUNCH!
Octopus

Emma's thinking she's having stone crab this night.
Stone crab close up
Being groomed by the chimp

Another grooming
Who's smarter????

Baboons

Tiger
Lion

Prairie dog

They're Green Belts!!!

2008-08-28T21:47:00.010-04:00

Breaking news!!! Peyton and Emma tested tonight, and they are officially green belts now! This of course means they will now be doing numchuck training as well as full contact sparring (with protective gear of course). I think we're in for even more fun than we've already had! We're so proud of these two!

Demonstrating their form
Demonstrating their kicking combination.
Emma breaking her board with jumping front snap kick
And she did it!!

Peyton breaking his board also with jumping front snap kick.
Did he do it???
Of course he did YEA!!!!

Green belts Peyton and Emma with Masters Choi and Hoonie.

Outdoor Fun

2008-08-25T12:23:00.018-04:00

Saturday, we took a fun walk along the trails in our neighborhood and down by the creek. Good times. Next time the kids want to go all the way in the creek.

On our way to the trail.

The trail head.

And they're off!

First bridge.

Next stop the creek.

Trying to cross the creek.

Touching the little fish and shell fish.

This was a crane (hard to see).

A BIG tree, probably came down during the tornado watch.

Peyton and Emma.

The other end of the trail, time to go back.

One of the MANY butterflies we saw that day.

Ahhhhhh......we're home!

The yearly picture

2008-08-22T19:58:00.009-04:00

Ever since the kids were in preschool we've had this phenomenal photographer Nancy who comes every year to the school to do Fall and Spring pictures. I've so far manged to keep getting my two done together by her even though they've moved into Elementary. Hopefully, all works out again this year because these are so fun to look back on.

Thanksgiving in Hawaii

2008-08-20T19:52:00.018-04:00

WOW! So I know there are a TON of pictures in this post, trust me this is the short version. We were fortunate enough to be in Hawaii for 10 days over the Thanksgiving holiday this past year. It was nothing short of amazing! It honestly was better than I had ever imagined. I found myself very emotional and thinking of the people I love who weren't there and how I wished they could see what I was seeing through my eyes. It was probably Dwayne's favorite place he was stationed throughout his Army career and he was excited to share things with us as well as explore new things he had never done.

Nicole, Jerry, Noah and baby Paige our dear friends that welcomed us into their home and lives for ten days! Thanks guys we love you!

Waimea Falls, okay so we were dorks and hiked all the way to the falls only to find out we could swim and didn't have our suits!!!

Kids and I at Waimea Falls

Sunset Beach (North Shore), the Triple Crown of surfing was going on while we were there AWESOME! Events were held here and at Haleiwa.

When we wished we had a better camera lense!

Our CHEESY Hawaiian photo op, c'mon we HAD to!!

This is Rainbow Falls, (Hilo) on the Big Island

Hiking around Rainbow Falls.

Emma found a pretty flower, she LOVED doing this while we were there.

Pretty peacock at Waimea Falls, they walk right up to you like nothing (and they'll steal your food too!)

The girl peacocks shopping of course!

Sea turtles resting at Punalu'u black sand beach on the Big Island

Our coconut postcard we sent to my parents hee hee!

They got a good chuckle!

Emma with her plumeria flower the lady selling the coconut postcards gave her (from her very own tree). She wanted to keep it forever!

Kids and I at Rainbow Falls.

Arriving at Punalu'u

Punalu'u black sand obviously because of the lava rock

Sea turtle resting on Punalu'u

Peyton and Emma keeping the required distance from the turtles

I hopped in to join them

The kids sitting near a broken lava rock bubble

Thurston Lava Tube at Kilauea

Dwayne and Emma entering the lava tube

In the lava tube

These are steam vents at the top of Kilauea and they are HOT!

Just took over everything!

New growth coming through
Hiking out across the lava fields is pretty dangerous, it sounds like glass breaking under your feet, and this was a BIG OL Hole.

Pretty view of the lava rock and ocean

Cool to look back up at how the lava has flowed down

The end of Chain of Craters Road and beginning of our hike

This was just cool looking lava rock
We couldn't believe these crazy palm trees sticking up through the lava rock

Extreme danger beyond this point, gee ya think?

Starting out.

Steam vents (and the smell of sulfur).

Kilauea Caldera

An offering to Pele'

Chain of Craters Road

Ahhhhh starting to get closer to the shore and fresh air!

At the Polynesian Cultural Center luau (which from here on out is referred to as PCC)

Dumb Dumb want gum gum.

This was a shot Dwayne got at the night time Horizons show at PCC (VERY COOL)!

Ummm you can read what this is HA HA

The kids learning the story of Pele' and Kilauea

Emma playing drums in Tonga (PCC)

Dwayne got to rub two sticks together to make fire and husk coconuts in Samoa (PCC)

This guy in Samoa (PCC) was AWESOME! Coconut juice NOT MILK!

NOW...with the cocunut shredded you get milk.

Samoan with Emma and Peyton

Fiji (PCC)

Inside the Fijian exhibit (PCC)

When I say Moo you say My, Moo, My, Mo, My, Mooooooooo, Myyyyyyyyyyy

Peyton and Emma get a raft ride with our "Cousin" Jasmine

I can't believe they let Peyton steer for a quick second!!!

Aotearoa (New Zealand) PCC. Offering Dwayne the peace leaf.

Dwayne came in peace and was Chief for the day.

Emma with her Hula teacher after Hula lesson (PCC).

Hawaiian bowling (us girls won OF COURSE!)

Hawaiian checkers (PCC).

Pearl Harbor, I can't even describe.

It's sooooo quiet out there.

Leaving the memorial.

Hanauma Bay, the snorkeling here was AWESOME and the kids did so well! Poor Emma had a faulty snorkel which we didn't find out until we were out in the water, they were dry snorkels and she could breathe out but not in. Once I realized and we got her a good one she was able stay under and got soooo excited, she came up snorkel in mouth yelling,"I SAW MY FIRST FISH!" stuck her head back down came up immediately again and said,"I SAW MY SECOND FISH!!!" (it was the same fish but we just clapped and said YEA!!!!!!)

The beach at Hanauma Bay

Leaving WAY TOO early in the morning to go deep sea fishing for the day!

The sunrise was worth it!

Emma, Daddy, and deckhand Gary waiting for the BIG fish.

No caption necessary

Peyton and Emma learning about the USS Arizona. Peyton was suprisingly VERY interested in this, after watching the film before heading out on the boat to the memorial he said, "I hope we whooped their asses!!" To which I had to have talk with him about language!!!!

This was our ten days in a nutshell, educational, lifelong memories, fun, warm, relaxing, family, friends and of course ALOHA! It was AWESOME!

We're here!

2008-08-20T14:51:00.007-04:00

Okay, well since I am finding more and more people I know are here and they have said DO IT! I am creating our blog. You all are great at this by the way! So our header.....Lovesagna. The kids have chosen it, and it has sentimental value. Dwayne's favorite food...lasagna, I make for him on special occasions to let him know he's thought of as well as sprinkling it in here or there. But it's the special days that I hope it means more. When I made it for Valentine's Day this year Peyton said, "So it's kind of like LOVEsagna!" I said Peyton you are brilliant and that's what we will call it! So there you have it! I will be adding lots of past pictures and blogs as I can think of them as well as the new ones. Thanks for visiting us!