January and February Happenings

Cole discovered Dad's cowboy hat.

And an oven mitt.

And read some books in our book corner.

Rachel got covered in mustard. I wish you could see it better, it is all over her face and dress. I have a tendency to get mustard all over me whenever I eat a hot dog, so I know where she gets it from.

Matt and I traded babysitting with some of our friends and got to go to Myrtle Beach, SC without the kids for 6 days! This was the view from our lovely Mariott Hotel.
We saw tons of "Bargain Beachwear" stores there. Finally we went in one to see if there really was nothing over $5.99. Spoiler alert: there were quite a few things over 5.99. Afterwards we saw the fine (very fine) print on the sign that said "certain sections only". Every store has certain sections with everything under 5.99, right? What made this store special? At least we satisfied our curiosity.
The trip was so great, I'm really happy we got to go. Matt's parents visited at the end of February, but I'll leave that for a different post.

Christmas 2010 (or the Year of the Nativities)

Rachel is almost 3 and 1/2 and this is the first year she has really been excited about Christmas. She loved everything about the month of December. Christmas lights, Christmas cookies, Christmas countdown paper chain, wrapping presents (which she called "making presents" and asked to do every day), etc. But her favorite thing by far (well, maybe tied with presents) was nativities. We have a nativity that Matt's mom gave us that the kids are allowed to play with and Rachel was fascinated with the idea. I didn't realize how many places you can see nativities, but she found them all. In fact, anything involving a group of people standing around in different looking clothes became a nativity.
The week before Christmas I changed my Facebook profile picture to the above picture. I'm Mary, in the middle. The others are my sister and cousins. I love this picture from my past! Rachel saw it and said, "A nativity!". I told her I was Mary in the picture and she kept asking to see the picture of Rachel as Mary. So finally, after Christmas, I decided to be a good parent and help her dress up as Mary. You can see I didn't put a ton of effort into it, but she liked it a lot. Kids are so easy to please sometimes!

Cole was baby Jesus, of course!

Rachel also had a lot of fun making a gingerbread house.
Hmmm... I wonder if these candies taste as good as they look?
Yes they do!
All done. That was fun and delicious!
Cole liked looking at the Christmas Day snow.

Christmas pj's (one of my favorite things about Christmas). Something about the red eye flash on our camera makes Cole close his eyes almost every time! It's driving me crazy, but the camera is relatively new, so what can you do?
Christmas exhausted us, so we had a few day-after-Christmas snuggles to regain our strength.
I think Rachel got the better end of this snuggle.

Now I've been to Boston in the fall

Two weekends ago (from the date above, not from today :) I went to visit my friend Sarah in Boston. I went for four days (Matt stayed home with the kiddos) and had a great time. On Friday Sarah had to work, but she let me borrow her car. I drove up to Maine to see the setting for a book I read recently, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. It was set in a tiny town on the coast of Maine. The main character in it was the son of the pastor at this church. It was historical fiction, but the church and town are real. I thought it was pretty brave of me to drive to a town in Maine all by myself in a borrowed car- but maybe I just don't get out much!

The pastor even let me see the inside.

On Saturday I went out sightseeing with Sarah and her boyfriend, Patrick. They were both great sports about driving me around to all the tourist places. Driving there was terrifying and confusing and I was happy that I only had to do it on Friday. Patrick took it all in stride and didn't mind taking several wrong turns! Although the roads are crazy, it seemed like the drivers were more tolerant of each other because of it. I was only honked at only once the whole day and I know I made of lot of mistakes. I'm honked at at least once a day in Northern VA, even if I don't make any mistakes.

This is the sight of the Boston Tea Party.

The Minuteman statue at Lexington.

Friday was pouring down rain, but you can see that Saturday was beautiful.

Here comes my very favorite thing about Boston: the colors of the houses. I have never been in a city with so many different paint colors on the houses. All different shades of red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, pink, and of course boring brown and gray. This blue one below was one of my favorites. I loved sitting in the car looking at all the beautiful colors as Sarah and Patrick tried to figure out which way to go. The little town in Maine had some of the best ones, but the road was quite narrow and the rain deterred me from getting out of the car just for photos. I feel like you couldn't pull these colors off in most suburbs, but something about Boston made them work.
This was one of the only houses I saw where I didn't like the bright color, but it still illustrates what you can do there that you can't most places. This house is huge and looked pretty new and is painted bright (the picture doesn't do it justice) yellow. Very bold.
A purple one! The only other purple house I've seen is my grandma's, and she had it painted purple herself. I saw several in Boston. And a lot of mauve and pink ones too.

Sunday we walked the Freedom Trail, which is a walking tour of Boston that passes most of the famous places in the city's history.
These are apartment buildings in Beacon Hill, an upper class expensive neighborhood in the heart of Boston. Beautiful, but Sarah told me they probably didn't have washers and dryer in the apartments, and maybe not even dishwashers. I wasn't quite as jealous after that.

The capitol building.

We saw a couple of old graveyards. This one had several headstones with interesting engravings.

The little cuties I left behind.

I had a great time. Matt is always willing to be a single dad for a weekend to give me a break and I know I'm lucky to have him. I've wanted to visit Boston for quite a while and I'm glad I got the chance!
Since I didn't label the last half of this post until January, I forgot a lot of the names of the buildings I took pictures of. Maybe Sarah can help me out with that. Also, although I didn't take any pictures of this, we ate out at several delicious restaurants, including a bakery that sold cannoli. I didn't know you could get cannoli that wasn't made with ricotta cheese. I enjoyed my chocolate mousse cannoli much more than the cheese one I had in New York. Cheese isn't a dessert!

Easter

Spring Outfits!

A doggy and overalls: two of my favorite little boy styles combined into one.

Rachel happily examining her pink egg.

(I started this post a month ago...) Our Easter weekend was filled with usual Easter activities: dying eggs, hunting for eggs, trying to take cute pictures of the kids, etc. Since it coincided with conference we threw a little conference watching in as well. I didn't hear nearly as much as I needed to, so as soon as that Ensign comes out I've got to catch up. Matt had the great idea of listening to one conference talk a day on his way home from work. For a while I was doing a good job of reading one a day, but I need to get on track again.
It was fun having Rachel be old enough to understand more of the Easter fun. She loved looking for eggs and really loved dumping the eggs in the dye. And not one cup of dye was spilled! An Easter miracle for sure.

Spring at the Ratto household

We've been going to parks, parks, and more parks these past couple of weeks. The weather has been (mostly) great and I've been trying to get the kids outside as much as possible before the hot summer sets in! I forget the camera every time, of course, but here are some pictures we've taken other times.

This one was taken pre-spring, so he is all bundled up. It was his first time sitting up in a stroller by himself. So cute!
These were taken just a week or two ago on a Sunday afternoon walk. Ah, the joys of a large stick and a big empty field.


Happy Spring everyone! I've heard that it is supposed to be 85 this Friday, which makes me worry what it will be in July and August... At least we got in a couple of good weeks!