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!