Moran Family Fun

My memory of my childhood is sometimes spotty, especially on the specifics, but I do have fond memories of exploring in the woods after school from the time I was seven or eight until I was around eleven and I decided I was too old to play in the woods anymore. If I wasn't off gathering pinecones in the woods I was roaming the neighborhood playing with friends or hanging out at the playground. Okay, there is a point to all this happy reminiscing. Across the street from our house is a community park where the girls occasionally have their own after school adventures and on the other side of the park is a sort of forest - not enough trees to be a real forest, but too many to really call it anything else. The kids just call it the woods. Earlier this month Natalie noticed a little path and a bridge heading into the woods and she immediately started lobbying me to let her go "on an adventure" in the woods. After a couple of days I finally gave in and we ventured into the...

As I was organizing one of our bedrooms earlier this week the thought came to me that it was the six month anniversary of our departure from Germany. I know it's not really an occasion to celebrate, but sometimes dates really stick in your mind, you know? I keep thinking that to really feel like Maryland is our home I should probably stop talking about/missing/wishing we'd never left Germany. I'm sure it doesn't make the people around here feel too hot that we keep saying things like, "Back in Germany..." So I thought I'd list some things that we are enjoying about life in Maryland to add a little balance and perspective. Convenience. We still live pretty far from everything and many of the places we go are a half hour drive away but we are still enjoying 24-hour gas stations where we can pay at the pump, grocery stores that are open until midnight, streaming TV without a VPN, Target, and fabric stores. I'll freely admit that the last one is mos...

A few days before the New Year Jared mentioned that we could have a bonfire on New Year's Eve. Natalie jumped at the idea and would not let it go so we definitely had to have the bonfire. I wasn't sure how we were going to make it happen since Jared was scheduled to work that evening and I stink at making fires, but then Jared called around 6:30 to say he was on his way home and the plans for a fire were a go. Hooray! At first the only person who was really excited about the whole thing was Natalie, but the rest of the girls warmed up (figuratively and literally) and started to have fun after a little while. See the fun they're having? All it takes is some fire and a little bit of silliness. This is my new favorite picture of our lovely Madison I snapped this photo of Emily, Samantha, and Natalie right after they finished up a pretty epic fire dance that included shouting in both Japanese and English. I felt bad for our poor neighbors. Abigail felt kin...

We had a pretty wonderful day this past Saturday. We had all of Jared's family here visiting and we also had two of my sisters and their families come to visit.  There was a great reason for all of this family togetherness - Natalie was being baptized! She has been looking forward to her baptism for a long time and for the past month or so has invited anyone she meets to come to her baptism. We are so grateful that Natalie chose to be baptized and that she was as excited about her choice as we were! I'm also feeling grateful that this little white dress somehow made it through five girls and two transatlantic moves in one piece and still looks somewhat decent! Of all our children, Natalie was the least nervous/most excited about her baptism. She was ready to jump right in before the font was even filled. Well almost ready, she wasn't took happy about Jared pretending to throw her in! Because the baptism was just two days after Christmas, we weren...

This year was our first Christmas in our new home and keeping our same traditions going, as well as making some new ones, seemed especially important this season. That fondness for familiar things takes on new significance when everything is new and different. It all started back in November when we got out the decorations and set up the tree and continued through December as we baked cookies and went caroling. Deciding where we would put the tree in this house, figuring out (after some blown fuses) exactly how many strands of lights each outdoor plug could handle, and for the first time ever having a mantle where we could hang our stockings were all part of the fun this year.   There are a few traditions we carry on from year to year. On Christmas Eve we have our big Christmas dinner, the girls put on a Nativity play, and they open their gifts from their secret Santa and pajamas from mom and dad.  Now that we're back in the States, we were lucky enough to have some...

At the end of November Jared, Abigail, and I spent a day at Jared's mom's place going through her home and helping her clear out and make room. One of the things we took out of her home that day was some old quilts. Some were completed and in need of repair, some were in progress, and one was just a completed quilt top. I didn't really look at them that day but when I got home and was going through everything I pulled out this beautiful hand-stitched quilt top. I immediately knew I had to find a way to complete this quilt because it would make the perfect Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. I bought some soft flannel for the back and some lovely grey binding and got to work.  I'm really not much of a quilter and this is only the second quilt I've ever made; or at least the second I've ever made correctly. Up until about three months ago every quilt I've made has been sort of thrown together in the easiest way I could figure out and the end results were...

We have a Christmas Eve birthday girl in our family and we love her so very much! Samantha turned 10 this year and having a two digit age makes her an official big girl in our household.  So that her big celebration doesn't get lost in the Christmas festivities we start partying at lunch on Christmas Eve. After a birthday lunch of shredded pork tacos (Sam's favorite meal) she opened her presents which we always make sure are NOT wrapped in Christmas paper. Lucky Samantha hits the present jackpot for two days straight every December! Books from Abigail Webkinz from her sisters. She still loves Webkinz, even though it's no longer 2009! We took a little break after opening presents so Samantha could play with her new things and change her clothes for the third time that afternoon - I'm not sure what that was about but the usual rules don't apply for the birthday girl.  We had to get to the cake fairly quickly though because if we waited too long we wo...