First Swim

Andrew went for his first swim out on the lake and loved it!!

First Music Lesson

It is never too early to get started on music lessons but when you weigh less than twenty pounds the selection of musical instruments becomes limited. Considering that Andrew has already mastered percussion via rattle Mommy decided to direct him towards a more harmonious option, piccolo.

Waiting in anticipation to get started, we listen to a Mozart sonata.
First, Andrew learns how to tune the instrument by adjusting the head joint.

...but we need to work on posture.

Sitting in playing position Andrew demonstrates for the camera how to hold the piccolo with both hands. I would like to note that he was able to place his left index finger correctly without any assistance.

The horizontal hold was a little heavy so Mommy helped out.

His embouchure technique is remarkable!

The Choissers Explore New Harmony,Indiana

We went to New Harmony Indiana last weekend to support Bryan's Stepmother Alice, in an Art/Craft Fair. She makes garden art such as fountains, bird feeders, and charms out of copper. The photo below is a macro shot of one of her stunning lily pad wreaths.

Grandma Alice, Grandpa Randy, and Baby Andrew pose in front of their Copper Penny Garden Art Booth.

Three Generations of Choisser Men smile pretty for the camera

According to my brochure:

"A community that began almost two hundred years ahead of its time,New Harmony was first a spiritual sanctuary that later became a haven for international scientists, scholars, and educators who sought equality in communal living."

We enjoyed the day exploring the historic sites and got creative with some photography.

Here are some photos of our quickly growing family

Leave it to my Husband and Mother to turn a beautiful serene ivy garden into a playground. This is what I get to deal with since I married someone just like my Mom!

Thankfully, this adorable "Father son shot" and "Grammy with baby" make up for their silly behavior.

Alright, my turn to have some fun in the ivy garden.
Now you see me
Now you don't (Heh, gonna have to photo shop my hands out of this

Three generations


....and now and important message brought to you by the Harmonites, "A culture that does not teach prayer soon runs mad with desire".

Ohh another pretty fountain to pose at, I even managed to keep my Husband and Mother from jumping in!

Attachment parenting at its finest
Just call us the Bush family(ducks and hides from democrat husband)
My Mom ran away
Over the Wabash and into Illinois
Finally, I leave you with this loving image of husband and wife hugging along the Wabash River under a tree tunnel. Awww...

Thunder Over Louisville

Thunder Over Louisville is a day long celebration geared to kick off the Kentucky Derby some of the highlights include continuous flybys of our U.S. military aircrafts, yummy carnival food, and the Nations largest firework display! We made our journey to the Bluegrass state, along with 600,000 others, this past weekend to get in on the events and celebrate my husband's birthday.

The Drive to Louisville Kentucky is beautiful, The highway weaves along the rolling hills of Eastern Indiana's Hoosier National Forrest and because I was driving it flew past in a blur of green, I hope to go visit someday but this particular trip had a different mission, "to get four adults, 1 infant, 1 toddler, and supplies parked along the Ohio River without having any major meltdowns and much to our surprise we pulled it off!

Behold Louisville
(The weather was nice despite the overcast conditions)

Bella enjoying herself

Andrew's not so secret talent

Look, there is an Apache helicopter stirring Ohio River water mist into my face, ewww!

I have about 100 pictures of random planes but I'm going to spare posting them since I couldn't begin to tell you what kind they are and leave you with this image. This is a representation flyby of the advancements in U.S Military aeronautical engineering.


Andrew and Mom decide to blow all of her Weight Watcher points on splitting a funnel cake with friends, yay funnel cake!
Daddy rocks tired baby to sleep
Family shot before firework begin
Fireworks, don't worry--Andrew loved the fireworks he was just scared of the camera!
And finally, a video of the firework show brought to you in high definition by David Harpe

Rainbow Fun

My latest project may not taste like Skittles but you can still, "taste the rainbow". Today's adventure is brought to you thanks to my husband's love for silly cakes. Speaking of silly cakes, there is some good stuff over at www.cakewrecks.com and now without further ado I present the technical process of baking rainbow cupcakes.

Normally, I would make my own cake batter but the 3month old requires me to budget time wisely so I had my dear old friend Betty whip some white cake batter up for me.



For taste test purposes I stuck my clean finger in the bowl, took a lick, and proceeded to pour what looked like evenly divide batter into 5 glasses.


...and now the real fun begins thanks once again to my friend Betty and her handy-dandy gel food color tubes.

I swirled the dye on purely for aesthetic purposes, ooh pretty!

As you can see in the picture below I created a ROYGBIV color spectrum with my gel color tubes minus the IV because I'm a busy housewife and don't have time to work with 7 colors, we are a 5 color household.

Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore. Here are the beautiful mixing results!

Now that the primary rainbow spectrum batter is mixed it is time to move on to the layering process.
#1 Wrappers

#2 Layer the colors (I layered in reverse rainbow order BGYOR), just keep laying until you have used up all the batter


#3 Bake according to cake recipe directions


#4 While the cupcakes cool, take an adorable picture of nearest baby


#5 Slap on the icing(hopefully your better at it than me)








#6 Dissect




#7 Eat!

#8- Bonus! As I was writing this my husband sent me a photo of the beautiful rainbow he captured through his window at work!