Happy Mothers' Day 2014 from Amanda

I love Mom so much

because she is very kind.

Oh, how I love Mom.

Easter 2014

There are those who would say that it was because of the bunny . . .

Mom, however, knows better. First there were the eggs. Normally, the big event is egg coloring. Mom missed the event completely, since Dad took care of it while Mom was off having a girls' day out. Not only that, he also set up Easter baskets for the kids and had an Easter morning devotional with them. All this while he let Mom rest up after her epic girls' day out. Here are the eggs and baskets:

Grammarians in the audience may have noticed the carefully placed apostrophe in "girls' day out," AFTER the "s," clearly indicating the presence of another female besides Mom. It was Mom's cousin and former roommate, Martha, who is shown here with Clarissa.

One of the many fun things about having Martha around was having someone on hand to take a family photo.

And then we took a few more pictures.

Since a certain Studio C sketch, embedded below for your convenience, Jared has been fascinated by photo bombing. Fortunately for the rest of us, he staged his photo bomb after we'd gotten most of the pictures we were after.

Loads of kids

This morning while Jared was at school, Mom took the younger three Muffins out for a little wagon ride. The wagon load of kids just had to be photographed. (Lydia really did like the ride, despite the look here)

 After Jared got home, we had an impromptu trip to a large, unfamiliar store with lots of interesting things for small people to get into trouble with, which meant that we went into the store with a full cart: (Jared asked to be in the cart, by the way)

As Mom was finishing up the store errand, amazingly with all the kids still stationed in the cart, it occurred to her that it's a rare thing to have so many family members able to fit into a shopping cart at the same time. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts. :)

Valentine's Day 2014

We started Valentine's Day this year with a surprise for Mom from Dad perched on top of the fridge (with chocolate inside the card, too). There was also a little something from Mother Nature for all of us: lots of snow on the cars, on the driveway, on the lawn . . . you get the idea. New England winter, you know.

So, instead of going to work, Dad spent the day with us.

Mom made a snow angel.

Amanda and Curtis conquered the snow mountain.

Jared conquered a very large snowball.

Clarissa didn't hit the snow, but she did have fun inside climbing in and out and over things.

Lydia also stuck to the indoors. She especially enjoyed munching on the blueberry muffins that Mom made later in the day.

Ancestor Birthday: John Pollock 1806-1892

John Pollock, a Muffin ancestor on Mom's side, was born on February 6, 1806, in Ireland, probably somewhere in the Donegal area. In December 1823, he married Nancy Blair. He was from the village of Stranolar, Raphoe, Donegal at the time. Sometime between the birth of his first child in 1833 and the births of his other children, he and his family came to America and settled in Philadelphia. There is a likely looking passenger record for a John Pollock and family arriving in Philadelphia aboard the Bark Dorothy on May 23, 1834. John and Nancy had six children, including Ann Jane Pollock, the next ancestor on the Muffin line. He lived until November 30, 1892. As of now, there are no known pictures of him, but we do have a memorial card made at the time of his passing to celebrate the lives of him and his wife, who passed away within two weeks of him: