Wow!

I let my blog go for 4 months! I needed a break, but am wishing I kept up with it so I would remember all the little things that happened in our lives. After all, that's why I'm blogging anyway. It's like a scrapbook to me. Thinking back, these are some things I want to remember about the past 4 months:
August
-Vacation in Fenwick Island, DE with the Merkers. The big thing that happened that week was that Nicholas seemed to get over his fear of dogs and fear of the ocean. It was like he was a whole different person than last year and he enjoyed himself so much more!
- My 16 year old niece, Alexa, moved in with us. This was supposed to be for a few weeks until my sister sold her house and moved down here to PA, but the house sale fell through and she’s still with us. I love having her here. She's artistic and crafty and loves to bake!
- Kids started school; Nicholas – Kindergarten, Sophie – 4th grade and Alexa 11th grade.

September
- For a Labor Day barbeque we had lots of fun baking mini-cupcakes that look like Hamburgers, complete with a sesame seed bun!

October

- The tooth fairy made her first visit to Nicholas on October 4th.

-Sophie wanted so badly to join the school band and take drums, but there were too many kids wanting the drums and she didn't get picked. She thought about it and after checking out my flute decided to take flute...woot! I can't wait for the day we can play a duet.

- Halloween was fun even in the pouring rain. Thinking back, I can’t remember when it ever rained on Halloween. I don’t think it ever did. Nicholas was “Dark Vader” (as he calls him) and carried a “Life Saver” and Sophie was a candy corn witch like she was last year. We got some ruby slippers in the mail right before Halloween and Sophie said that next year she wants to wear them with Nicholas’ Darth Vader costume to be “Dorothy Vader”! I thought that was pretty clever. Let’s see if she remembers that next year.

November
-Alexa’s 17th birthday which means she got her driver’s license…Woo Hoo!

-Sophie joined the chorus at school and had her first concert at Barnes and Noble.
-We had a very small Thanksgiving celebration. We had just my parents and Krista. I tried “brining” a turkey for the first time. It came out super moist and smelled wonderful while cooking. I used Alton Brown’s recipe. That one’s a keeper (the recipe, not Alton Brown)
-After planning to make my Christmas cards with photoshop to make things easier this year I got a different idea while getting ready for work one morning. I couldn’t wait to get home to figure out how to contruct it and created the prototype. So much for easy this year.
-Decided to decorate the outside of the house right after Thanksgiving to avoid decorating in the freezing cold which I usually end up doing. I got everything out of the basement, tested all the lights, hung it all up, set up the daylight sensors and…the lights didn’t all work. That’s what we call “The D’Ambrosio Factor” . Love that!

December
- Still working on the cards. The idea was to have them look like an ornament from the front with a window to the photo inside.

- Sophie wrote Santa a letter asking for one of those Magic Elves that come to life at night and get into all sorts of mischief and fun. Santa not only left her the elf that she asked for, but left Nicholas a little brother elf. So lets see, they have taken out an old photo album and we found it out on the floor. They were looking at photos of Oakley when he was a puppy. We also found them in a drawer full of plastic cups and bowls. They had watercolor paint sets in the elves’ little sacks. The kids found them in the closet putting together a puzzle this morning. I wonder what they’ll get into tonight

- Tonight Nicholas started a book reading log for school. I decided to let him read as many words as he could on his own while I would fill in the longer, more difficult words. I was so amazed and proud of him. I had no idea he could read that many on his own.