Aunt Julie Comes to Visit!

7/22/09

My sister was our first official visitor from Colorado, it was fantastic to see her! We all anticipated her arrival for a few weeks now so we made list of things to do and prepared the best we could with a baby who is teething (that's a whole other post) and 2 girls who were so excited between Aunt Julie and camp ( another post to come) they couldn't see straight.

Day 1
Well she did take the red eye so she fly through the night so she was a little tired when we got her here. We took her to Friendly's which is a restaurant that is on every corner out here and has pretty good food and fantastic desserts. So we showed her around town a bit and let her rest for awhile.We had Hawaiian Chicken for dinner our favorite mom dish. Scott went in search of a beer...Bud Select was requested as part of my sisters vacation, believe me this was not an easy feat! They only sell Liquor at the liquor stores in PA - no beer! You have to go into a restaurant & order it from the bar! They have beer warehouses where you can buy a case of warm beer at a time - in 10oz cans no less! Strange I tell you.

Day 2
Mom made sister her favorite french toast for breakfast then we did a touristy thing we went to Hershey, PA! We went to the World of Chocolate. It was so much fun! We got to learn all about Milton Hershey and his trials & tribulations he had to go through to become world famous. They had such a cool gift shop, we literally spent hours in it! Then we went and ate at The Kit Kat Cafe. The girls & Mom & Jill shared a build your own sundae... I had a Hershey's Chocolate milk - yum yum! We only did a few things and there was so much more to do not including the amusement park we definitely will take all visitors here so prepare yourselves for the love of chocolate!

Day 3

Sister and I took the baby to the Crayola factory while the girls stayed at the house with Grammy to get ready for their camping trips. My sister was so amazed at all the colors they have "this is so many more crayon colors than when I was little... what color do you think "Awesome" is? It's like a pinkish red color. What about "Happy ever after" - it's like a lite blue color. Who knew?" She said Then we went to Ice Cream World... after dinner. They had soft serve & hard ice cream and the best flavors the crazy thing - they had ice cream cones made out of pretzels! This is the pretzel capital I tell you and we surely have done a pretzel tour, we missed the pretzel doughnuts, that will be added to the next tour!

Day 4
We got up early & headed to the "Jersey Shore" - we ended up in Atlantic City. The traffic was awful & it took 6 hours and was a 2 1/2 hour drive! The boardwalk was really cool with all the shops. The beach... well it was crowded, and the happened to have abundance of "clam worms" yuck- o that didn't stop us we closed our eyes and ran passed them to jump waves. Sissy and Scott went to a casino and she taught him how to lose at Roulette.While we stayed at the "wormy ocean" & played in the ocean for a few hours then we decided to head back. The traffic was insane as we went back through Philly... apparently a Philadelphia Philly's game had just let out. I tell you we just can't win a good stress free trip to the ocean.

Day 5
Sunday the girls got ready for girl scout camp & Sister and Mom went out for brunch. Finally they were ready and left - the Girl Scout camp which was called Laughing Waters - but has no body of water on it... not even a river - is about 30 minutes away. The girls went right to their groups, I was very grateful I had them at the same camp, just different programs, that way they had each other if they needed each other. Sister and Mom went to the Philadelphia Pretzel Factory - an actual Soft Pretzel Store! They made theirs FRESH and they were totally cheap! Sister even bought shirt from there (pretzel tour, I tell you).

Day 6

We went into Philadelphia early to do some touristy things and we got to see the real Liberty Bell! (During the Civil War it was hid in Allentown, PA) It was really cool - they even have security with a metal detector there! There was so much stuff to do there - tons of history in that town. That's where George Washington lived while he was president & John Adams - the actual floor plan is laid out on the grass to see where the rooms were. It was really educational I can't wait to take the kids back! Our last meal with Sister we had to wait a really long time for but it was gooood a Philly Cheese steak, and she tried and she liked it yeah! We then took her to the airport with out getting too lost and sent her on her way. It was so great to have her here, now she knows all the crazy things I say about Pennsylvania are true!

Fun around home

7/12/09
We had planned on going to the shore but Hope wasn't up for it so we decided to just stay around here and do a few fun things.

There is a fish hatchery down the river a short way from us so we went and checked it out it is very old and was started in the early 1900's it houses several different kinds of trout from 12 inches long to about 3 feet long. Yes we do have lots of these trout in our river cool uh!

We went into our river with inter tubes! This was really fun Faith tied the raft to the tree and walked out to the middle of the river and rode down as far the rope would go. Then Hope got on with her and Scott tried as well (he mostly got wet didn't go very far). Scoot held on to rope as Faith rode down a ways, I think the neighbors probably think we are crazy we were screamin' and yellin' it was great fun!

Vacation Bible School

The first week of July the girls went to VBS at Concordia Lutheran Church. It was quite a production, I think about 160 kids it was crazy, but so awesome. The theme was Gadgets Garage, it was based on a guy who built a robot, so there was text messages to read and stuff the kids thought it was great.

We also became members of this church the following week it is a very comfortable place and Hope told us the first time we visited this was going to be our new church and she was right.

Kutztown Folk Festival

We went to the Kutztown Folk Festival it is huge, it lasts for 10 days and people talk about it all year around. It is based on Pennsylvania Dutch and their traditions, crafts, food, dance etc... There were craft vendors of every sort and several demonstrations the girls love watching these things, they even got to make a bees wax candle. There were tons of quilts just every kind you can imagine and I kid you not there some that started auction a $1,000,000 like 15-20 of them! I kept thinking who would pay that for a quilt and I hope the money is donated to a good cause! They were really beautiful and the detail was intricate but really 1 mill. The girls quilted a community quilt they were excited they wrote their names in them I really do think they both have the talent but not the stamina maybe someday! We ate funnel cakes and flavored soda(that was very similar to Faygo) and sampled all the jams and butters ( a lavender jelly which was very good, several herb jellies maybe I can make with the herbs I planted!) It was a fun filled day and we learned alot too!

13 Years Ago...June 29th

I married my best friend and we enjoyed ourselves with a quick trip to the ice cream store by ourselves! There is a restaurant called Friendly's and the dessert selection is unbelievable. Scott had a strawberry smoothie or something simple but wait till you hear what I had Peanut butter banana sundae with Reese ice cream peanut butter sauce chocolate sauce marshmallow sauce and bananas! Oh MY was it good and I tell you I paid for every bit of it my little Levi doesn't like peanut butter remember, so yep he was a mess all night and the next day, bad mom award right here!

The Jersey Shore!

We did it we went to the ocean in a mere 2 hours we were on a beach! Sunday we decided to do something fun Scott has been working way too much and we thought it would be fun to see the ocean. So we loaded yes 2 cars and drove there (I will get a bigger car someday!) We went to Ocean Avenue and drove until we hit a public beach we ended up at Ashbury Park with boardwalk and everything! It was so fun to watch the girls get in the water and just want to stay there they love jumping waves which is quite tiring I might say. Hope kept saying "this is the best time I have ever had," and when she saw a wave coming right at her she said "it is just so beautiful momma." And when I asked Scott what he was thinking about staring into the ocean and he said "nothing, and that's the best part," it made the trip to the ocean worth everything. To walk along the boardwalk and hear the strong accents was so fun it was like a movie. The girls caught baby crabs in their hands and played in the sand for hours. Levi liked the water he wasn't to sure about all the sand everywhere! We ended our 5 hour day with "Beach Fries" wow were they yummy, kinda like boardwalk fries in the Crossroads Mall (funny I remember food at a mall) and we were on the boardwalk, hee hee. The drive back was not as quick or fun as going, we took detours and ended up being about 4 1/2 hours home.

So here are a few of things we have been doing...

I started writing things down that we were doing just so I would remember, ah my brain has still not returned after the last baby. How the lady with 18 kids is still remembering anything is beyond me.

The girls have been visiting Scott's work a bit with him on the weekends, it is fun for them to go and spend time with him so they take turns frequently. We visited the farmers market again and I was so excited to meat and seafood and kinda grocery shopped what variety to choose from!

For Father day we went to Bob Evans Restaurant and it is as good as it was when I was little! We were invited to our neighbors for a cookout that night too so it was great to visit with them they are from the area and gave us a tremendous amount of information and yummy food and I learned a bit more of what pretzels to buy, this is very important, what a difference from Rold Gold!

We finally have had a few days of just sunshine which is great fro the girls to get out and play hard all day. We even went to a pool party and didn't get rained out, they have a "township" pool that is fun an pretty close to the house I think we will visit it often.

We planted a garden there is a bare spot amongst the green and our neighbor had planted some fun stuff there and took it all out for us to plant a garden. So we planted a few Herbs which will be really fun to actually use them and tomatoes, peppers and some flowers.

We had a bonfire in our back yard with this great fire pit roasted marshmallows ans made s'mores.

These are few of things we have been doing I will try to add more pics from my phone too.

Crayola Factory!

Well we did it we did something touristy, the Crayola Factory is Easton, PA. was so awesome! We went with Scott's bosses wife their 2 kids and one of their girls friends, it was great go with someone who knows the area a little bit, the girls are 4 and 7. The kids had so much fun learning about how crayons were made and all the products the have and sampling them. The gift shop was of course great but a little ding in the wallet.


We also went to the Allentown Farmers Market yesterday and that really cool for me not so much for the kids. I will definitely take my grocery list there, it is indoors and nearly the size if a mall! everything from veggies to meat to ready made food to many to list really good prices and they are only open Thursday - Saturday but so fun!

The Great Move Across Country

Well we did it we moved to Pennsylvania! We are by no means settled, just sitting amongst 300 boxes not sure where to start or if will ever end. People often say keep in touch tell us what your doing when you make a move like this so a friend and I decided maybe I should keep a blog of things we do or adventures we have that some in the west have not seen yet. So here it is!

It is very green here and enormous trees everywhere, there is a reason for this RAIN RAIN. Although Colorado may be a bit more green this year, it seems to rain rain there a lot these days. So many things are just a little different to throw you for a loop.

You know where most things are if you know all of the highway names
A lot of roads do a horseshoe loop? If you get turned around you end up
there a different way.

The have rolls that taste like pretzels, perogies are on the menu at restaurants
(2 of my favorites)

Some days you can cut the humidity with a knife.

There are Townships and Boroughs and it really does matter which one your in.

People ask you where your from because you don't talk like them and I say
Colorado and they look at me strange, I haven't quite figured out why.

Home schooling is Not very common out here and oh the rules

There really are a lot of restaurants that sell Philly cheese steak sandwiches

These are just a few but we are enjoying going on adventures right now most of it is just to the Target or Walmart with out getting lost but we will go on more soon.

Stay tuned ....

This is the attic of the house it was an old grist mill