Penny's Birthday!

3 years ago..... Bob was messing around on MySpace and left a message on a band's site (Widespread Panic)- something about how excited he was for the Chevrolet Theatre show. Aubrey was also messing around on MySpace and noticed Bob's comment. She then took a leap of faith and sent Bob a message introducing herself and hubby Sean. They were a couple our age, who liked the same music as us, have the same interests as us and just moved here from Colorado. Aubrey's message also told us that they were going to the same concert! She invited us to meet for dinner before the show.......Bob & I took a leap of faith and said - yes! What a great decision! We hit it off and with some sneaky ticket sharing, were able to spend the concert together. We had a booty shakin good time!
Since then we have seen many concerts together (both as couples and boy's / girl's night out). They have quickly become good friends.

When we first met Sean & Aubrey, I was 4 months pregnant. Shortly after Tripp was born, they became pregnant with a little girl. Today we celebrated the 1 year birthday of Penelope Orenstein.

What a cleaver, crafty and great invitation! Not only is it full of adorable pics of Penny, it also has a verse from a favorite Widespread Panic song!

"A little wrangler was born,

Saw her squirming in the saddle all wet and warm.

Such a change of form in her very first year"

We loved her invitation so much, it inspired our card. Adorned with pics of Tripp & Penny's 1st year of friendship.

The birthday girl

We arrived at the party early to install some Marisa Copley original paintings in their home. That's right! The Orenstein Family are the proud owners of Persephone & Artemis from my series of paintings - Mythological Women. Lucky for me, they are more than happy to let me borrow the paintings so I can show them as a series ... as long as some tasteful signs noting that the paintings are on loan from the Orenstein collection are displayed next to them!

Of course, the artist is happy to oblige :-)

These yummy treats were made in honor of Aubrey's sister, Robin... it's her signature dish. Pretzel rods dipped in chocolate and rolled in fruity pebbles - Yummy!

Tripp couldn't wait - he dove right in!

Tripp modeling his Keller William's onesie (another music favorite) - a gift from Sean & Aubrey

Bob gave Penny her lunch. Ahh, it feels like just yesterday he was doing this with Tripp....

Time for presents!

This rider was a huge hit! It's a bouncy toy that is good for kids of all ages!

Time to open your gift from Tripp

Wow! A cool wooden pull along toy!

From one of our favorite kid companies - Melissa & Doug

Tripp picked it out. He immediately was drawn to the smiling frog and started hopping and doing his best to "ribbet", as soon as he saw it in the store - sold! A present she will grow into as she learns to walk and then run!

Time for cake!

The cake was yummy!

Goodie Bags

Tripp, showing off his cool dude rub on tattoo from his goodie bag

More presents! A beautiful quilt made by mommy.

Shortly after Aubrey became pregnant she began plans to make a quilt for her baby. Inspired by Tripp's quilt - made by friend Amber Williams - she had a plan and was on a mission to finish this quilt by Penny's 1st birthday - Mission Accomplished!

Good job momma! It's beautiful!!!!

Opening presents with Grandma

A cool vintage toy from Grandma.

This is a toy from our youth. Sean's mom save a couple of spares to give to her grandchild one day - talk about thinking ahead!

It's a cool toy and Penelope instantly enjoyed playing with it.

Outside time!

Let's put that quilt to good use!

Back inside to clean up and say our good-byes

Penelope grew very fond of Bob during this visit.

She wanted to be held by him and when it was time to go,

she gave him a great big bear hug!

Bob is holding both Tripp & Penny because, Tripp is jealous.

Every time either of us held Penny he would whine to be picked up too!

It was a good day, full of good times and good friends

Bronx Zoo

We had no plans for Mother's Day. We were probably going to spend this Mother's Day just like last, fixing up the front yard and getting summertime / funtime ready. Then our friend Dawn came to town and I decided to shake things up. What could we do to tour Dawn around (she lives in LA) and stay Tripp friendly?......HHmmmm....I know! The Zoo! The Bronx Zoo! This was Tripp, Dawn & Bob's 1st trip to the zoo. It was a beautiful day and we all had a blast!

To build excitement for our adventure, we started listening to and singing "Going to the Zoo" by Raffi between practicing our animals and sounds. Tripp became so excited that it was easy to convince Grands Capano to abandon their Mom's Day plans to join us. All I had to do was let Tripp gleefully yell "ZOO!" into the phone, followed up by his various animal sounds - they were goners!

As we traveled to, through and from the zoo, we sang our song. By the end of the day everyone knew the toddler tune and Tripp loved singing along and dancing every time!

So here is a slide show of our adventures at the zoo to the theme song of the day.

Mom's Day prequel

During the days leading up to Mother's Day......

...we tried to get a good 2 year old picture of Tripp in front of some of the blooming flowers. Unfortunately, Tripp has been "over" the picture thing for quite some time. :-(

He use to be a ham, now he turns away, so we had to try tickling him so the pics are awkward.

Then we decided to get to work on our Mom's Day gifts. We wanted to make something for the women in our lives, but I wanted the majority of the work to be done by Tripp & mail-able. So, we decided to make bookmarks with pressed flowers.

Instead of waiting weeks with our flowers pressed between book pages - we implored a different technique and used the microwave!

• Place fresh flowers in coffee filters
• Place flower filled coffee filter in between 2 paper towels
• Now sandwich it between 2 ceramic tiles
• Rubber band them together
• Microwave for 30 second blasts
• Between "blasts" take the tiles out, stand on them and check your flowers
• Remove the filters from between the tiles
• Let air dry
• Flowers will peel up
• Finished!!

Here are the flowers (from our front yard) ready to go, snuggled in their coffee filters.

While we waited, Tripp enjoyed a Popsicle

Flowers drying

Tripp modge podged the flowers onto the bookmarks

The bookmarks drying.

They have pictures of Tripp with : Grandma, Grandma Amy & Great Granny

Unfortunately the daisies didn't peel up quite right way and the lilacs were too thick for the modge podge. So we stuck with the pretty little yellow flowers.
After that we had them laminated and cut out a slot for the pretty yellow ribbon with orange butterflies that Tripp picked out.

Sorry! I forgot to take a picture of the finale product

We also made the cards with scraps of paper that Tripp picked out.

The next day we bought a new stove. (Ours broke during Easter)
OOOOooooo AAAAAhhhhhh...pretty, isn't she

We went to Best Buy to buy the stove - gotta love that 18 months of no interest!

That's what I call a recession buster!

And of course...Bob took the opportunity to once again try to talk me into buying Tripp a Wii, or X-Box, or Play Station


Tripp playing "Rock Star"

Yes, I know - very cute....

I promise he'll (or should I say They'll) get a game station when Tripp's older.

...until then, coloring books & other imagination stimulating toys will have to do

For Mother's Day, Tripp made me this beautiful small

tote bag complete with outlines of his tiny hands.

I Love it!

Our good friend Dawn came to visit for the weekend! We see Dawn about once every 2 years. She lives in LA with her hubby, 2 boys, horses, dogs, etc..... Why is she in CT? Well, she's not. She's in NYC prepping for the Survivor Finale. Yeah, we've got show business friends :-)

On Mother's Day we met up with Grands Capano & went to the Bronx Zoo.

Don't worry, a big Bronx Zoo post is coming soon!

Artsy Weekend

UCONN Theatre's final show of the season this year was HAIR.

The final show of the season is always the biggest and the best, so Bob did some wheeling and dealing to make sure we could go. Opening night use to be a tradition; dress up, dinner, show and then the after party.

My play outings have been limited since Tripp was born. If I do go, it is on a Wed night, and Bob stays home with Tripp. Or on a field trip. - Every year that I have been at GHS, I have taken my classes to see the final show at UCONN. Thank goodness Bob made sure we could go to opening, because my class field trip was cancelled due to Swine Flu precautions. So without Bob's deal, I wouldn't have seen the show - and it was a great show!

.......why not get a babysitter and go out more often? They're expensive!! I remember getting anywhere between $2 - 5 dollars, depending on the family and they always set the price. Now the kids want $8 -10! So needless to say, we don't go out much.

So, what was this deal? Alice (our daycare lady) and her family, would watch Tripp while we went out and the following Friday we would watch her daughter (Lian), while she and Boyd enjoyed a night out with Bob's extra compt - tickets. It worked out great and we all were able to go some long deserved dates!

This past Friday, May 1st, it was our turn - I mean, my turn, to babysit Lian. Why my turn? Because Bob went to the Dead Show in Philadelphia with his buddy Mason. He left early Friday morning and went straight to Mason's home. Since he left so early (4am), he was able to spend the day with Mason, Kim and their new daughter, Rhys.

Then it was time to head to the show for some tailgating relaxation!

This concert was Mason's groom's gift to Bob - What a great gift!

Back home.......

We made our mini golf course, with books as ramps and Legos as bridges!

Then we decided to settle down and watch a video. Lian picked Caillou. We had never seen it before so both Tripp & I were curious to see what the show was like - we like it! In one of the episodes we watched Caillou paints a picture for his grandma and experiments with Abstract painting.

We were inspired, so out came the paints!

We experimented with straws, toothbrushes, salt.....


...even baby powder!

Later that night at the concert....

Later that night at the home front....

after a short "explore the house" break, we changed into PJs and continued painting! They were loving it! We went through almost 1/2 of a watercolor pad!!!

The next day, we joined our friend Kelly for an art fair in Northampton, Mass.

After we picked up Kelly we decided to stop at a bakery

and grab some cookies for the road - Yummy!

It was an awesome art fair!

Sooooo many ideas - new projects on the horizon!

All of the vendor's were awesome and I was relieved to see many of them are on Etsy!

(So I can shop again later)

Etsy http://www.etsy.com/index.php

is a site were people can buy and sell homemade / handmade items. Love it!

It was also PRIDE Day in Northampton

Northampton, Mass is a college town. It is also a very Green town. Lots of bikes, Natty Food stores, Hemp products, Art Galleries, Music venues, etc....a pretty cool place.

It is a big event and there are vendors, clowns, drag queens, kids, performers, etc...tons of people come out to celebrate diversity & family!

Here we are in front of the giant balloon rainbow.

I have no idea why we are crouching down?!?! We defiantly wanted the balloons in the picture...and I know we started standing up....hhmmm.....curious.

There was even an interpreter for the deaf on stage!

Kelly enjoys her corn dog while Tripp entertains her with a dance

SNAKE!

As you know; Tripp loves Snakes. While at the art fair we ran into a booth full of weird little alien creature and one looks like a snake. Tripp kept yelling Snake! Snake! Snake! and reaching for the plush toy....so Kelly bought it for him as a late birthday gift.

Yup, just another fine lady who's a sucker for the Trippster!

When we got home, Mary & RJ were playing outside and

Tripp greeted them with an enthusiastic Hi!

They played with a big floppy frisbee, ran,

rode bikes and smelled the flowers until it was time to go inside and make dinner.

Bob arrived home later that day, grabbed a nap and headed out to strike. (Strike is when they tear down the play set) Strike went from 10:30pm - 5am. Bob slept until 1pm the next day and was there to get Tripp up from his nap. :-)