A New York State of Mind

I thought I better finally add something to my blog about my New York trip.  I had a great time and thankfully had lots of energy to keep up with all of our planned activities.  Maybe those who do read my blog have seen all the pictures on Facebook but I am putting some out here anyway.  

I got to have a girl trip with my sister, my mom and my aunt to go visit my cousin and do all the tourist-y New York things we could do :)

 Molly asked me who drives the plane so when we got off in NY, I asked the pilot if I could take a picture with him to show my girls!  He was so nice and I even got to sit in the cockpit!  I tried to document all kinds of things for the girls, from the plane I was on to the  type of tour bus we rode on to the boat we took our sight seeing cruise on.  It was fun taking all the pictures of things I thought they would enjoy.

 We got to enjoy some New York style pizza!  I could have eaten at least a slice a day while I was there!  So Yummy!

 One of Molly and Gracie's souvenir's was a wall hanging of their name done all fancy.  I had these done in Chinatown.  Sydney already has one, so i thought it would be cool if the other girls had one too.  It only took this guy about 10 minutes to do both of their names.

 Me at Rockefeller Center!  Sorry you have to look at me in the pic :)

 Checking out the huge binoculars at The Top of the Rock.  What a gorgeous view of the city!

 The Empire State Building!

 Another great view from The Top of the Rock.

 The Freedom Tower, now at Ground Zero.  Also now known as World Trade Center 1.  I couldn't get enough pictures of this, it is just beautiful!

 Me and my sis on our little tourist cruise, we had beautiful views of the city skylines and buildings from the water!  And of course, The Statue of Liberty in the background.

All of us on our nice cruise.  Even though my cousin lives in NY now he did a great job of being our tour guide and being a tourist right along with the rest of us!

This, of course, is the perfect end to my trip.  What was waiting for me when I got off the plane!  My wonderful family with homemade signs!  It was a great weekend but there is no place I would rather be than with Barry and my girls :)

Beach Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

First Day of School!

Here are the girls' first day of school pictures!  I think they were all really excited to get started!  I was ready to get back to our school schedule... and two weeks later we are still working on it :)

Sydney's first day of Fourth Grade!  I still can't believe I have a fourth grader!  

 Gracie's First day of Kindergarten.  She was so excited and is having a great time and loves her teacher!

 Molly started preschool this year, she goes three mornings a week and is loving having her "own school" to go to!

I hope your school year is off to a great start!  

It's Time for School!!!

School starts on Monday for Sydney and on Wednesday for Gracie!  I went school supply shopping for both of them this week and this is what I came home with!  I am pretty sure that this time of year is the only time you need to buy glue sticks in bulk.
Happy School Year!!!

It's true!  We are having a boy!  It might just turn this household upside down :)  So I guess that means I need to get busy and clean out a bunch of girl clothes to make room for some boy things!!  We are all very excited about this little boy and look forward to meeting him in December.

Our Colorado Vacation

We just returned from a great Colorado vacation.  We spent a week at family camp at Horn Creek with lots of other friends from church and churches in our denomination.  I know I don't usually post this many pictures on my blog but for those who won't see my Facebook pics I thought I would put some more up :)

Sydney and Barry went on a horseback ride one afternoon.  This has kind of become a tradition for them and they both have lots of fun!

Gracie is enjoying a mid afternoon snack on top of the playground with her friend Lydia.  This pic was too cute to pass up!

One afternoon while Barry was doing some mountain bike riding I took the girls, along with Grandma and Grandpa, bowling.  There were a lot of gutter balls, but they still had fun!

Of course, one of the highlights of the vacation is the waterslides... I think this is the first year Gracie really enjoyed them.  I think Molly went down once or twice and that was enough for her and she spent the rest of the time playing at the bottom.

The girls on Western Night!  This is always a highlight....

The last night of camp and we actually manged to get a pretty good family picture!

We also had a wonderful speaker at camp this year.  The talks on sin were rough to listen to at times but a great reminder of the hope we have in Christ!



One of the most exciting parts of our Colorado vacation is getting to spend time with Tony, Heather, Hadley and Leila.  All the girls had fun playing together and it was great listing to the little ones talk so much this time.

Our last night in Colorado and of course the beautiful view we got to enjoy in Colorado Springs.

We got back home late Monday night and are now trying to get back into a routine... oh who am I kidding, we have no routine!!  School starts in TWO WEEKS and we are just enjoying the rest of our summer with friends and pool time :)  

Catching Up....

I need to do some catching up here on my blog... probably most of you that read this know all the new info or have seen the pictures but I have to post it anyway :)

The latest news... well the most exciting news lately is that we are having another baby !!!!! This little one has been long awaited and I am sure that this timing is all in God's perfect plan. This baby is expected December 18th so now I must get my Christmas shopping done before hand! :) We are all so excited and the girls are thrilled! I think a lot of people are hoping we will have a boy and even the girls are kind of hoping for a little brother but Barry and I are sure that whatever the baby 'is' is what God wants for our family. Oh I should mention that we will find out at the end of July so stay tuned.

Now for some recent happenings....

Happy Father's Day!!

We had a wonderful Father's Day celebration cook out last Saturday with my family and we enjoyed Sunday spending the day with Barry! What a great Daddy he is :)

BEACH VACATION!!!

We enjoyed a wonderful, relaxing, fantastic vacation to Topsail Beach, NC at the end of May to the beginning of June. We went with some wonderful friends and the week was just great! We ate, we played, the kids slept great each night! We can't wait to do it again :)

A pic of our two families! We are planning our next beach vacation for the summer of 2013! Never hurts to plan ahead :)

Sydney turned 9!!!!!

Well, my baby turned 9 on June 11th. How can that be? I don't know! She had an American Girl party complete with a houseful of other 9 year olds and their dolls. It was a great party! Sydney is growing up so quickly and turning into a sweet, lovely, smart young lady... I could go on ;)

All the party friends and their American Girl dolls! It was a little crazy but Sydney had a blast!

Well those are our updates as of now! We are enjoying our summer and trying to hit the pool as often as we can. We just finished up a fun week of VBS at church, it was a great week!

HAPPY SUMMER!!