Auntie Deborah is becoming quite the artiste in her photography recently.  Her snapshots are always heads and shoulders over our normal pictures that we take.  One of her latest greatests here.

We took advantage of an 80 degree october weekend to visit our nearby state park with the kids.  Here are some of the snaps.

If nora looks a bit down, she had just found a dead chipmunk in the grass and was quite concerned about its well being (or lack thereof.)

We had a great evening yesterday as friends and family joined us to celebrate Val’s 1st birthday. It was a great evening, and we even managed to get all the kids out of the house for some games in the back yard.

Special Thanks to the Grandparents! Grandma Platts hosted the party for us & Grandma and Grandpa Aquilano helped with all of the logistics!

Nora … Nothing to see here.

School has ended for Rich and he has been in Germany for three weeks.  Marie and the girls survived on their own, but missed him a lot.  The girls have changed so much in that time.  Val has moved from crawling to standing and loves to push her stroller and wave bye-bye.  She says mama and dada and keeps us all laughing with her big personality.

Nora is becoming such a big girl.  She is potty trained, knows her ABCs and can count to 20.  She keeps us laughing with all the funny things she says.  She’s loves to play Candy Land and Memory and often beats her mom and dad at both.

Here’s a few pictures from the summer:

I’m not sure I have anything else to say about this. . .

Valerie is six months (and a week, as I’m late in posting this). This kid is giving her sister a run for her money. She spent the last two weeks doing some sort of baby yoga, alternating with a variation of a pushup. I’m convinced she was training her upper body strength. (Imagine Rocky Theme music now) That determination paid off as she rocketed forward with an amazingly skilled and coordinated (for a Platts) display of baby crawling.

For the record, she is now bored with crawling, and is now intent on pulling herself up to standing on anything that will (or will not) support her weight.

Happy Easter everyone! The girls had a fun morning playing with their Easter treats brought by the Easter Bunny. Things are a bit slow in the Platts house this morning, as Marie was out late (well, late for us these days) for Jenny’s Bachelorette party. In keeping with out entirely non-traditional Easter tradition we are having homemade pasta with portobello mushrooms and shrimp for dinner this evening. Everyone is too tired to do anything more complicated. . .

Look who was invited to tea!