Hike to the Potomac

Columbus day activity was visiting the Red Rock Wilderness Overlook Regional Park with our friends the Royers. It was a great little hike for us and the kids and there were also some cool historical buildings to explore. We plan on going back and checking out all the trails.

Resurrection Rolls...

The premise of this little treat is that the marshmallow represents Christs body and you dip it in butter and then in the spices (cinnamon sugar) like Christ's body and place it in the tomb (crescent role courtesy of Pillsbury)and then after you bake it and bite into it...the tomb is empty! So we gave it a try this morning and it was actually successful...usually when I try to be "the crafty creative mom" it flops. This was pretty easy and really hard to mess up and the boys had fun so win/win. Mostly they wanted to just eat the marshmallows instead of making the rolls but we ended up getting it done.

The ingredients

Rolling the marshmallows

Tombs going in the oven

Getting ready to bite into the roll to find the marshmallow...I never told them that it wouldnt still be there.

The empty tomb and a yummy treat!!

Now for the heathen part of Easter...decorating eggs.

Daddy getting in on the egg decorating too...its really a small miracle that no eggs were broken during this process. Happy Easter everyone.!!

Christ's resurection is an exploding flare announcing to all seekers that it is safe to believe.

~Max Lucado

City adventure

We went downtown DC to check out the building museum. They had some pretty cool pillars....

A pretty cool play area for kids.........

....a WAY cool lego exhibit that impressed mommy and daddy...

but the COOLEST by kid boy standards was the lego playroom... R and R could have spent hours in here and we did spend a good solid hour in here since we zoomed right past the lego exhibit to get here. Trump tower made out of legos did not impress but a play room full of legos was by far the reason to spend the 20 dollars it took to get in here. Rocco holding up one of his many creations Another lego creation. After that, John had to jump in the car and head off to ref a game in Alexandria and so the boys and I had our own little adventure around DC........

After finding a few statues to take our pictures on we hopped on the metro and headed to the Zoo....

What are those interesting looking species?!

Red Panda asleep in the tree Mr. and Mrs. Otter were very cute Never new that they had flamingos here! Toucan is just one cool looking bird! Too bad the mesh around his cage affected the picture.. NAKED MOLE RATS!! a tribute picture for R and R's favorite author Mo Willems Panda on the move (which is always inpressive since usually they just sit around sleeping) This one even pooped...but I being a naturalistic minded person, respected his privacy and did not photograph the event. I know you are sad about this.... the male lion never fails to impress however I often feel a sadness for this great beast to be stuck in such an inclosure but its still cool that my kids get to admire him. Still, I'd much rather they see him in his natural habitat and I am sure he'd rather be there too.

This particular beast did not survive in his natural habitat but he still provided plenty of entertainment for R and R regardless.

Merry Christmas!!

The Germani Thanksgiving Acronym

The Germani family is blessed beyond measure. Here is our 2010 Thanksgiving Acronym

Trains (its no secret that our boys are extremely thankful for this form of locomotion)
House (we are indeed very thankful for a roof over our head)
Apple pie (yummy, mommy's favorite)
Navy (and all our armed forces for the freedom they put their lives on the line for everyday GOD BLESS THEM!!)
Kangaroos (they can jump really high)
Savior (the sacrifice of the Almighty God in giving his son so that we might have eternal life is really the only reason we can even begin to be thankful in the first place)
Germani family (we love ourselves, just kidding but we are thankful for each member of our little family)
Ice cream (do we need to explain this?)
Very comfortable beds
Insects (yeah, I guess we are thankful for these since according to Rocco, bees are insects and they make honey!)
Night time (cozy time for sleeping in those very comfortable beds)
Grandparents (what a huge blessing they are!!)

Dion and Diesel (our part time doggies that are very sweet)
Art (we all enjoy exploring our creativity)
Yo yo's (cuz who isnt thankful for yo yo's?!!!!)

Roman's Latest Milestones

As I was updating my blog in the previous post, I realized that our little Roman has had some big miles stones that should be noted because after all he is the BABY and were not hitting these miles stones again with another one (unless God intervenes in some miraculous fashion)so here goes...

already noted in previous post but worth giving a little more attention too. Roman has his OWN bed that does not have four sides holding him in. He transitioned fairly well although it was a challenge to keep him in it for the first couple of weeks. The freedom from the usual cage was just too tempting for him and he kept (and still does on occasion) getting up to go potty or give us kisses (love that one!) or get a drink of water...etc...but pretty much he stays in it now and seems somewhat content.



Roman also had his first day of preschool. He loves it!! He is my high energy extrovert and LOVES being around other kids and well anyone who will give him attention. He is attending a pre-school program at our local high school which is essentially run by high school students so there are plenty of girls to give him plenty of attention!


Roman also went on his first field trip to Pumkinville. He had lots of fun running around with 2 high school girls who gave him tons of attention. Mommy didnt even need to be there (but I still went so I could capture the milestone on camera).

Oh and then there is the potty training thing....which is a huge milestone for all of us because we are essentially done hunting down diaper coupons. Hip Hip HOOORAY!!!! He doesnt even need a pull up at night any more which was a gift WAY beyond my expectations. Its probably because he likes to get up so much and go potty just to enjoy the freedom but whatever...I'll take it!! Whatever shall we use our extra $$ for each month?!! *insert happy face here*

Summer/Fall

Wow, we're a little behind here in the blogosphere so here's a rehash of the last couple of months. Part of the reason I've been having a hard time getting this thing updated is because my husband is a photographer (part time) and when we do anything together as a family he takes the pictures (obviously) but he takes them in raw and by the time he finds time to put them into a format that I can use its long past the date and they are hidden in some file that I cant locate..blah blah blah...anyway I had wanted to put stuff up from Father's day and I have yet to see the pictures taken from that...so we are going to skip that for now and I'll put up some pictures of what I have now from the last several months
Roman finally graduated to a real big boy bed (I think this was back in the late spring early summer. He's been doing great and we have left diapers behind as well. He was a champion potty trainer and it only took him a week and he's never looked back!

Cousin Noah came to visit over Rocco's 6th birthday. Rocco and Roman love their little cousin and are constantly telling me that all their old baby toys are for baby Noah(he's not much of a Baby any more)

The best man from our wedding and his wife came to DC for a conference (they live in Minnesota)so we got to show them around DC a little bit and took them to our favorite restuarant in DC (Meskerem) for some Ethiopian cuisine. It was great to reconnect with them.

Roman had some fun in really cool globe sprinkler sent down from Johns sister "Aunt Lynnie" in our back yard.




We got free tickets to a Joe Gibbs fair in Prince William County (Youth for Tomorrow)thanks to our good friends the Royers and they had monster trucks there which was pretty cool plus all kinds of fun rides for the boys.