Beached Shifflers

Caroline, the picture of childhood bliss

Hatteras Lighthouse

Brooke and Jude on the Okracoke Ferry

Some sort of alien flower on Okracoke. Anyone know what this is?

These girls LOVE ice cream.

Johanna

Isobel

Jude, meet Ocean

These last three were taken by Nicole Shiffler. Doesn't she do beautiful work?

In which we commune with nature. Twice!

I have a mental list of about a thousand things I've been putting off for the last few weeks, but instead of doing those things I am composing a blog post. Check out these two lovely ladies:

Jenny
and

Claire

When Jenny came to visit a few weeks ago, we decided to check out Hanging Rock State Park. We hiked, we splashed in waterfalls, we swam, we frolicked. A great time was had by all.

So, the next week when Claire was here, we decided to go there again. This time we wanted to see the actual hanging rock, and that entailed a more strenuous hike. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into.

Isobel says "Nature is so stupid."

Jude says "Nature ROCKS!"

The views from the rock were totally worth all of Isobel's bellyaching.

Colorado and Two Good Things

I know, I know, long time no blog. This has been one wonderfully busy Summer. We visited my family in Colorado, then we moved to a new house, and for the last week we've had my sister Jenny visiting us. And the good times keep on rollin': next week we have our friend Claire coming to visit, and the week after that is the Shiffler family's Outer Banks vacation. THEN, the week after that, Isobel will be starting preschool at B'nai Shalom Day School. So much good stuff is going on up in here! How did we get so lucky?
Anyway, here are a few photos from our Colorado trip last month. Isobel had her first hair cut while we were there, and I like this "before" photo better than any of the "after"s. Her hair does look healthier after having about 3 inches chopped off, but the change isn't particularly dramatic.

We love swimming!



Jude is 5 months old! Actually, he's 5 and a half months now, but that picture is from his 5-month birthday. My, my, he's one handsome little man.
Every time we go to Colorado we go to the zoo and I take tons of photos of the children playing and climbing on things and sitting on statues. So here you go: Kimball, Simon, Eleanor, and Isobel on a giant spiderweb.

Stay tuned for photos from the week-long PARTY we had with Jenny! Till then, here are a couple of good things I've been wanting to share:
There's good:
Jenny and I made two recipes from this cookbook this week- the Shrimp and Grits, and the Crème Brulée French Toast, and they were both AMAZING.
And then there's even better:

Our first date

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Meet Gudrun!

Check out the latest addition to the Shiffler household! That's right, Jude is no longer the baby of the family. Gudrun is. And she is one sweet, sweet baby.

"Shake it like a Polaroid picture. You know what to do!"

Ok, this post is probably going to sound like a commercial, but I'm so excited about this app I can't help it. It's called ShakeItPhoto, and it was introduced to me by the lovely and hip Allison. (check her out!)

It turns your iphone into a Polaroid camera! Not literally (alas) but functionally. Isn't it cool? I feel like this photo could be me running around, it looks so legit 80's.

This is what Brooke looked like when I said I had spent 99 of his hard-earned cents on this app.

Just kidding. He digs it. Isobel is a fan, too, because it dispenses the photo onto the screen with a polaroidy sound and then you can shake the phone and watch it jiggle while you wait for the image to develop.
Here's my favorite:

(I applied the effect twice for this one. Don't you just want to poke that little tummy?)

4 months

That's right, it's been FOUR months since this boy came into the world. According to my unscientific home scale baby weighing method, he weighs about 13 lbs.- not too shabby! He's due for a well baby checkup, but we won't be having one for another couple of weeks since we begin our Pennsylvania sojourn tomorrow. Fine by me! I'm in no hurry to have my perfectly healthy and happy baby scrutinized.
Well, he isn't always happy.

But when he's in a good mood he's quite energetic and very interested in social interaction. Usually he loves to check out that handsome baby in the mirror, but when I tried to catch it on camera he wasn't all that interested in doing anything but swimming out of my arms and over to Daddy and the camera.