Chase-Salerno Family Events

What a great couple of snowstorms we’ve gotten recently!

Trudging through the deep snow.

D digging his new interest – snowboarding!

Making marshmallow and toothpick creations with buddy Liv.

D and Liv during their first sleepover together at our house. They did pretty well, lasted until 3am when they woke up looking for their respective parents.

Repeat performance with that cornstarch slime, this time with Livi and Daniel.

Quinny and buddy Norah making music during Luca’s birthday party – he just turned 2!

Cupola!

Windows!

D loves to cook, but who knew what a natural he’d be with pie crust? Also, some updated pix of our garage.

Making a crust for Mommy’s quiche.

Mr. Fix-It looking to do some “repairs” on our basement steps.

We did this cool science experiment mixing 2 parts corn starch to 1 part water, and it becomes this neat liquid AND solid. If you bang on it, it feels solid in the bowl. If you hold it in your hand, it’s a liquid. The kids had a blast with it!

Busy girl!

Here’s a look at our builder’s signature diagonal framing.

Sal and Mike working hard.

Shiplap siding begins.

Here’s what it looks like so far! Next week….windows, interior stairs, and a cupola!

Declan named himself “Saw Thrower” during a recent game of “good versus evil” right in our own kitchen! Well, more like Declan fighting imaginary bad guys while Quinny ran behind him yelling things.

The “saw” part appears in the next photo – the powerful spinning-pot-lid-“saw” that the villains never see coming!

Here’s Quinny wearing her helmet as she helps to bring the criminals to justice…which basically looks like running laps around the kitchen island.

I’m hosting a monthly HudsonValleyParents.com Open House for members of the website that Mike and I own, and this month we did Valentine’s Day crafts. Declan felt inspired to make “Buckeyes” candy, a chocolate-covered-peanut-butter confection. We got the recipe from the cool magnet Mike gave to Declan during his recent business trip to Ohio. The kids had a great time, including buddies Callie (age 10) and Nora (age 3).

Here’s D making a Valentine ornament craft.

Quinn loves stamping, especially with her hands.

The garage is coming along, and it’s looking great. Bob from the work crew has finished his part of the job, and Dan and George will be wrapping things up after taking a break for the next week or two. It’s all so exciting!

Putting up the roof trusses.

Getting ready for the roof.

From a tiny paper sample to what “Rustic Red” looks like in real life – love it!

Framing out the windows.

Olga made lunch for the entire work crew this week – what a feast! Thank you, Gemma! Here is a pic of some post-meal laughs.

Here’s Declan trying to beat his previous record of 62 seconds of balancing on a tree root in the stream.

Singing and tickling the ivories with buddy Daniel.

The kids had a blast playing outside on the tiniest bit of snow left in our yard.

Quinny doing a little toddler reorg.

The garage construction has begun! Info in the captions accompanying the first several photos.

Some Declan-isms to share……
– while he was showering this week, Declan said he had washed his “legpits” — can anyone guess where he was referencing? (*Answer below!)
– Declan has been interested in doing lots of writing lately, including numeric equations. He likes to write things like 1+8, 2+3, etc. but not solve them, just write them up and talk about them. At one point after writing out a whole series of them, he turned to me with this look of love and said, “Isn’t ‘plussing’ fun, Mom?!”

Step one — the wood delivery! (That’s Mike and Sal on the bottom right.)

The first posts get raised.

I’ve been making lunch for the guys – clockwise, you see Sal with Quinny eating his lunch; George Abetti, our builder from Vermont, a former pastor; Mike; Bob, crewmember, from Michigan, father to 4, an assistant priest in the orthodox church; and Dan, crewmember, from Ithaca, a ceramics artist, used to teach Arabic, married to a woman studying for her doctorate in economics at Cornell, met her while living in Palestine for 3 years. It’s been nice getting to know these folks a little bit since they’ve been here.

A shot of Mike and Sal on-the-job. Mike’s been pretty tied up at work lately, and Sal’s been here every day pitching in labor as well as tools – thanks, Sal!!

Here’s a shot of Mike shoveling off the latest round of sleet/freezing rain while D hammers in a few popped nails.

Just to give you guys a sense of placement of this thing – our house is there on the left, and the garage will be around the circle on the right.

Now, for the people who prefer kid pix to garage updates….

Declan helped me clean the other day, so proud of making “shiny” letters with his mop.

Quinn’s expressions along with the two ponytails really got me one morning – she’s just beaming.

*LEGPITS, as defined by Declan, are the areas behind our knees. But then you knew that!

Two especially exciting bits of good news this week:
1. The crew for our garage arrives on Monday to begin construction! Yippee!
2. We just learned that my friend Nathalie and her family will be coming to visit from France this August!!

A shot of Mike, Sal, and buddy Mike backfilling the foundation in anticipation of the builders’ arrival Monday.

Our friend Tarie invited the kids to join her family (Cici, Finn) for a playdate at Kids Kingdom, an indoor children’s wonderland. Here’s a shot of Quinn enjoying some sandbox time there.

Declan and Cianan zooming around Kids Kingdom

Poor Quinn. She got all dressed to go outside to help Daddy and Declan bring the garbage down the driveway, but she had to stay behind.

Winter soccer league action!

Each week I post pictures here of some of our family’s goings-on. But there are lots of cute moments that get missed by the camera. Here are a few:

1. This week, Quinn got her first haircut! It’s just a trim, and you can’t really tell the difference, but it looks a little healthier and doesn’t snarl as much. She went to my regular hairdresser and got a certificate with a hair cutting attached, so cute! Speaking of haircuts, under the category of “be careful what you wish for,” Declan got a haircut too! By *him.* (With my permission.) After a while, at some point I couldn’t resist any longer and in the name of “helping” tried to offer some assistance. He bailed shortly after my intervention and now it kind of looks, well, um, shall we say artsy? Part long, part short, part very short. I sobbed for a few hours, let it go, and now I have declared “boy hair” as Mike’s department.
2. Another fun moment happened last night while getting ready for bed, Quinn lined up some rubber duckies and brushed all of their teeth.
3. Declan just asked me to make him an octagon-shaped sandwich.

Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming….

Our garage series continues!
Mike, Sal, our friend Mike, and our cement guys have been working hard on getting things ready for our builder. The foundation has been poured, the forms removed, and Mike, Mike, and Sal will do some backfill this week, as well as insulation and wiring stuff. Here’s what things look like right now.

Declan and Liv catching snowflakes on their tongues. Right after this shot, they made a cool snowman. The snow was perfect for building and they rolled the balls themselves! It felt like major UN negotiations after that point, though. Liv wanted a girl snowperson, Declan wanted a robot. I suggested a Girl Robot which eventually morphed into a Mermaid Robot (the fastest and most powerful mermaid in the world, and the most beautiful robot there ever was). The accessories at the top were also worked out. Sort of. Declan called the extra snow on the head the “antennae” and Liv called it the “crown.” They were both happy with their creation, but it was fun to ask each kid the same questions and get completely different answers.

We went sliding sans sleds in the fields behind Liv’s house. Quinn LOVED doing this!

Liv and Declan performed an impromptu show this week called “Get The Monster” – three guesses as to who played the role of “Monster!”

Fingerpainting fun! Quinn has done some fingerpainting almost every morning after breakfast. Lots and lots of circles and color-mixing.

We were looking forward to sharing with you our excitement about our new 10 gallon fish tank which we got from friends recently, complete with fish. We decided to personalize it by adding some new marine life to the family of tetras, suckerfish, and catfish our tank came with, and we bought a snail and a goldfish that D picked out.

Unfortunately, it seems that our new goldfish (technically, her accompanying water) has infected our entire tank with the fishy disease “Ich” and within a matter of hours of noticing the white spots on all of the fish, we lost our 4 tetras. We have since treated the tank and are hoping not to lose anyone else.

Quinn and Declan love the tank, we all do, and we spend lots of time in the foyer watching what’s going on in there. My favorite tank-member is our new snail that Declan named “Puffy Muppy” – so cool to see the mouth at work all along the walls of the tank.

(PLEASE NOTE: I changed the picture of Grandma Chandler with a much more flattering one in the last blog. Thanks for the great photos, Mom!!)
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“Beware of ICH!”

You can see here that Quinny’s getting the hang of snowball fights. This was an especially warm winter day last week – we even picnicked outside!

Declan loves to clean – here he is in action!

Relay race fun during a visit with Gemma

D and buddy Olin during a recent playdate

After lots of down time chilling out with the “chicken pops” as Declan calls them, we are all systems go! here in 2008!

This week…
– Declan and Quinn were finally able to resume playdates
– We began the prep work for our new garage
– Erica went to Florida to visit Grandma Chandler

Enjoy the pix!

D sledding with buddy Liv

Dan-dan (Daniel, Liv’s brother) playing peek-a-boo with Quinn

We are building a garage! It’s basically a space for Mike’s tractor, motorcycle, tools, and workshop, but with the design we’ve agreed on, now there’s a second floor where I will be able to use some space too. Our builder is George Abetti. Olga saw an article about him in a local magazine and it turned out to be just the structure we were looking for! You can check out some of the work he does at Geobarns.com

Photo 1 of the garage series — this is the spot where it’s going

Photo 2 — digging the trench for the foundation while Papa and our friend Mike look on

I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit my Grandma Chandler in Florida this week. I figured that since I’d drop everything and go down if there were a problem, why not drop everything and visit while she’s fine? My mom was down there too, and it was lots of fun to spend time with her as well. Grandma told some great stories, made us yummy meals, and received some energy-healing. My mom and I did some shopping at some favorite area thrift stores and outlets, and the weather finally warmed up enough for us to enjoy some awesome pool time.

I made the brief, overnight trip to the Sunshine State alone – Mike and the kids stayed home. I missed them so much! But in addition to being able to spend some quality time with Grandma and Mom, I felt lucky to be able to catch up on some reading, watch lots of episodes of “What Not To Wear,” and take advantage of some special oceanside meditation.

As we embark on this new year, I am launching a new blog that offers more personal, in-depth reflections of my parenting experience, and beyond. You’re invited to come check it out at http://www.KitchenOrTheEgg.com.

This is an addition to our blog family – I’ll still be keeping up with the weekly photo updates here.

Love,

Erica