Sierra Paige Dancy's baptism

Sierra Paige Dancy was baptized on July 25, 2010. Abram and I were her godparents. She was baptized at St. Rose of Lima parish in Northboro, MA. This is the stained glass window of St. Rose.

I was amazed when she was born on our anniversary. Then Jenna told us that they had picked July 25th as her baptism date at the 11:30 mass. Unbeknown to Jenna, Tobin and Carmen were assigned to serve at that mass


and Abram to lector. How amazing!

She fell asleep during the mass. She looked so peaceful.

Here she is being baptized

Awake with Jenna

Abram and I gave Sierra a cross to wear for her baptism with the hope that she will wear it on her first communion as well. Aidan was well entertained by opening and closing the case during mass.

The final blessing. Abram has her baptism candle. I think it is funny that Isaac and I are together and Abram and Jenna are together. It reminds me of Joey's baptism when the priest referred to Isaac and I as Mr and Mrs. Dancy. Oops, wrong couple!

A nice picture of Jenna, Aidan, Sierra and Isaac. Jenna's good, she had everyone matching. I've never been that coordinated in any our our family pictures.


Here's my family picture. Thanks Nettie for telling Rachel to move over a bit. I am in the shorter half of the family and need space so I'm not dwarfed by my children!

Sierra's godparents: Abram and myself

Aidan discovered the stairs during the baptismal blessing. He was very unhappy that he could not climb them over and over during mass. But now, after mass he was in heaven hanging out on them. I love his gelled hair.

Nico, Aidan and Luke checking out the font. Our parish has a smaller, higher infant font which is attached to a large pool used during the Easter vigil for catechumens.

Carmen got a great hug from Aidan.

Notice that in the above picture Carmen is wearing flip-flops. The servers in our parish have been told to not wear flip-flops for fear of loosing or tripping in them on the altar. Carmen wore these purple converse with her dress for mass while she served, but changed for pictures. All of us loved the converse look so I took a picture of them. Yes, she wrote her name on them.

Congratulations Sierra! Welcome to God's family.


After mass some people came to my house to meet the new cats while Jenna got Aidan to take his nap. Then we all ventured over for food and socializing. Here is Sierra sound asleep with Marie.

Aidan kept putting on and off his hard hat. I believe they are watching Aidan's favorite movie: Cars.


Jenna and Isaac's new kittens were a huge attraction. Luke had Mercedes (I call her grey cat or Cede) in his lap most of the day.

Ah, Sarai is in heaven with Cede.

More Cede time

We used Sierra's cake to sing happy birthday to the July girls and Jacinta.

Carmen is 12 now.


Rachel is 9

Jenna is 26

Jacinta is turning 7. We had to use a 1 and turn is backwards to look like a 7.

Sophie has Cede time.


Jacinta must have tasty fingers. Silvie is liking her fingers. Cede is hanging out under her.

The moment Abram sat in this chair the kittens were all over him. This picture just has Silvie with him, but Cede was hanging on his lap too.

I believe there are more funny cousins photos I have to go through. I wanted to post this so I am not too far behind in my updates on the blog.

Ben and Jerry Photos

Remember this photo from one of my cape blog? When I posted this picture I was under the impression that this was the only one taken. I was wrong. Abram was reading some of the blogs I had posted and told me that he had several more of these pictures on his iPhone!


So here are the other photos Abram took with his phone from the Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop.

There was Luke and Theresa


Jacinta and Rachel

Joey and Rachel

And backwards Joey with Teresa. Joey thought it would be funny to show his backside instead of his head!

If anyone else has photots the would like to share with me I am always happy to receive them and use them. My blog has become my way to create a memory/photo album. I do not have time to create photo albums. I stopped doing that when Sarai was a baby! I just printed the 2009 blogs in a book. I like that the blog enables me to include the thoughts and feelings that are connected with the pictures. As I get better ( and gain more free time; it will be awhile) I will begin to make books about the past so we have continuous photo albums of some kind.

Thanks for reading.

Leigh Turns 37

I had a great birthday.


It began with a 35 mile bike ride around the Wachusett Resevore in the morning. We often pass by a house that has these statues at the end of the driveway. They are always dressed up seasonally. I love them. I will try to take pictures when their outfits change. At Halloween they wear costumes.







While biking I decided that I wanted to get my hair cut. I hadn't done anything with my hair since April. At the end of the year, the families in my afternoon class gave me a gift certificate to a local spa and salon. I called them and they had an opening a half hour later!


Sarai decorated my present. She used white out to write the words. This was a Scagen watch. Abram took me on Carmen 's birthday to pick out a watch. I wanted a dressier watch. It's titanium silver and very shinny. The lady selling the watch asked if I wanted to wear it out of the store. I was about to say yes, when Abram said no, it was my birthday present. I forgot that I had to wait 8 more days!






Here is another one of my birthday presents, Marley! He is a wonderful cat. He gets along with everyone. He also acts like the big papa in the family. He plays with Friday, the baby and will smack Cappi if he whines too much at me! Marley decided to climb into the carrier on his own. I leave it open for them to hide in.




Carmen gives everyone this crown to wear on their birthday. She brings it to school for friends to wear. She spent the whole day looking for it for me. Eventually we found it. I was a princess for the evening. I was embarrassing Sarai too much by wearing it outside. I realize that my hair doesn't look like I had it just done hours before hand. The hair dresser had used a skinny flat iron to make ringlets in my hair. As soon as he finished it began to rain. My hair is usually curly, but I think it went limp from the straight iron. I loved it when it was done. My curls were back!




Speaking of Sarai, her she is with her favorite cat - Zori. Aidan was being very gentle with her.





Isaac, Jenna, Aidan and Sierra came over for dinner and dessert on my birthday. Aidan discovered a scooter we had in the garage. He spent a long time pushing it around the driveway! Too cute.



Remember the Elmo shirt Carmen wore on her birthday? Here it is on me! We had tried to find a size we could all wear. Well, it fits me too. I believe wearing an Elmo shirt with the princess crown was the last straw for Sarai, way too embarrassing.

Dessert was strawberry rhubarb pie made by Tobin! I taught him how to make it the night before. His pie crust was made from scratch and excellent! I think pie is always better the day after, so we cooked it late the night before and reheated it on my birthday. I think this picture shows my hair the best.

Later in the week, I recieved another present. Abram had bought wonderful saddles for our tandem last summer. These were black; I believe the more common color. He called the company, Selle An-Atomica, a week before my birthday and asked them to custom make a brown leather one for my single bike! I love it! I looks great on my burnt orange bike and I now will never had a sore bottom from biking. Thanks hunny!

Monday, I recieved another present from Jenna and Isaac - a self standing, full length mirror that matches my bedroom set! Now I don't have to stand on the jaccuzzi tub side to see my work outfits!

Wow, I like getting birthday presents spread out over time.

Rachel's 9th Birthday

Rachel turned 9 on July 22nd. She went to the Franklin Park Zoo with her uncle Noah, his girlfriend Heidi and Carmen.





I gave Carmen and Rachel one of my cameras to take pictures. It is always fun to see what pictures the kids take of a trip. Carmen and Rachel helped me write this blog since I did not go to the zoo with them.


Here are Noah and Heidi:

Rachel had the camera and took this photo of Noah. They had a great time.


Noah and Rachel had a plan to go to the zoo at Christmas time. They wanted to scare the hippos and see gorillas. The Franklin Park Zoo had both.

Well, it had a Pygmy hippo who didn't move the entire time they hung out near it. I hear they yelled at it and did many things to wake it up, but to no avail. A bit disappointing, but I'm sure Rachel and Noah entertained those who were nearby!



The gorillas provided much more entertainment. Not photographed but well remembered was a young gorilla. According to Rachel, he would run across the room sliding on his butt and then rub it as if it hurt. but he continued to repeat these actions over and over again. Many of the gorillas were eating orange peels. the young gorilla did take a break from his sliding to sit in a pink chair for a snack.




Here is the big grandpa dude! He mainly chewed on straw and orange peels and rarely moved. I hear everyone spent a long time in the gorilla area.



Carmen did like the zebras. This picture is quite tranquil.



Until I read this sign Carmen photographed, I had no idea that a giraffe could weigh more than 2 tons! The giraffes at the Franklin park zoo can grow up to 19 ft and live for 30 years. wow!

OK, more zebras and an ostrich.

I liked this picture of a zebra. They are beautiful.

The comedians are posing. They found a sign with Rachel's name on it.


Here is the close up.


And now to compare Rachel's wing span to an Andean Condor. That's one big bird!



Noah and Rachel had fun climbing on these trees. Rachel said that Noah is a better monkey than she.



OK, she's not happy that Carmen is torturing her with the camera.


In the words of Rachel: I know the ostrich. He is a very nice man. He lets you look through his eyes, walk under his belly and climb on top of him without him making a sound. He's so quiet, he's like a statue. PS. He's actually a statue.

This ostrich was so cool. There was a tube that went up the statue's neck so you could see like an ostrich could. It had the same details that a real ostrich would. It let you stand right next to an ostrich without being hurt.

Here is a real ostrich. It is not as nice as the statue one. It yelled at you as if it wanted to talk to you as you walked by.

Carmen was excited to know that there were kangaroos at the zoo. but disappointed to learn it was only a tree kangaroo called a wallaby.


Cat nap time. The lion was boring because he just slept the whole time they were there. Sounds like my cats on a warm day.

Lions are huge and majestic.

I thought this picture was artistic. Poor Rachel couldn't get away from the camera, even in the bathroom. This takes teasing your sister to a new level!

Bird time

This bird landed on Rachel's arm.

The zoo said that flamingos bond by bickering. Rachel says they would squawk at each other. Someone would get mad and peck an other's butt. Then other would start pecking. At some point they'd stop and begin fighting over who could sit in the mud to heal their butts! Sounds loud and bothersome yet entertaining!

Yes there were horses at the zoo too. Fake ones and...

real ones. Rachel has a calm demeanour around animals. She wants to be a vet. She said that the horses were happy to get her attention and then the huge donkeys came in and pushed the horses out of the stall.

This donkey is huge. I must imagine mules when I think of donkeys. Rachel confirmed that the donkeys were huge.

Camel time. There was a mommy and a daddy camel. The mommy ate just right and had nice upright humps. The daddy camel over ate and his hump was floppy. Camel store fat in their humps, that why they stay upright. If you overeat and have too much fat then the hump fat is not stored in the there and flops over.

While Rachel and Carmen were at the zoo, I was able to wrap presents and prepare her birthday dinner: baby back ribs and mash potatoes with skins. She had made her Fun Fetti cupcakes the night before. Mainly so she could like the batter from the bowl! I made chocolate cupcakes during the day.

Rachel asked for Duplo legos for her birthday. She especially liked the collection of families I found for her Duplo homes. She prefers making multi-story houses with Duplos. With the new collection of people we have more kids. Most of the people we had were zoo keepers from when Tobin was into Duplos and preferred all the animals to the building blocks.

Happy Birthday Rachel!

I love the tower of cupcakes.

I had to include this picture of Tobin. He has embraced the Coleman jug so much so that I affectionately call it his "buddy". I offered it to Sarai and Carmen when they were at the Holy Cross camps, but they were too embarrassed to use it. Not Tobin! He loves it since it holds much more water than the average water bottle. It travels with him to practices, side jobs and around the house.

I thought this was an elegant picture of Carmen. She is rarely photographed in this blog since she had the camera much of the time.

Jenna gave Rachel a present of doing a sewing class at a new place in Northboro. It is called Ready Set Sew. Rachel chose a class that taught you how to make pj bottoms. Before taking the class Rachel had a short lesson on how to use a sewing machine. This sewing center has been a wonderful experience for her. After he brief lesson at the store, she came home and was practicing sewing circles I drew on fabric. Circles helps her learn to follow a curve carefully. She took the pj class with 3 other girls. Rachel said that the instructor said she sewed the straightest! the pj class was 4 hours long.

Here are the pjs she made. She did a great job!

Once she had finished her first sewing class she asked to do more. I signed her up for two more classes. One to make a pillow learning some quilting techniques and another to make a messenger bag she can use as her book bag for school. In the time between creating the pjs and making the quilted pillow, she used my sewing machine and made a pillow with a ruffled edge for her bed. I had bought material a few years ago that matched their curtains so I could create pillows. I didn't get too far.

Here's the pillow with the ruffled edge. I created much of the ruffle, but pinned it so she could sew it together. She likes sewing much better than hand sewing because her creations stay together longer.

This is the pillow she made in her second class. She used fleece pieces.

I like the method used here on the back. All the pillows I've created needed buttons or zippers to allow you to take the cover off so you could wash it. I am learning new techniques from Rachel going to these classes too.

While waiting to take classes and learn new skills, Rachel and I purchased another sewing machine. I hope this will free up a machine that I could use to sew my curtains on.

Rachel also went clothing shopping with Grammie. Of course all the girls went and did a bit of shopping too for school clothes. I do believe Rachel had a wonderful birthday.