Hershey Zoo!

We drove a couple hours to visit Hershey last weekend and had SO MUCH fun. Seriously, it was a perfect day with Chris and Ella! Here are a couple pics of part one: the zoo.

This porcupine was totally passed out and didn't even twitch while we stood there. Doesn't look comfortable to me but Chris pointed out that if you're a porcupine you're probably rarely "comfortable." Touche.

I think I was answering Ella's questions about why the prairie dogs sound like squeaky mice and are called "dogs" but don't look like either.

This bear was really big and really close to us-cool!!

They had a southwest exhibit and I got all nostalgic telling Ella how we saw those animals all the time when we lived in Arizona. Kind of miss the roadrunners, quail, and jack rabbits but I'm cool without scorpions and black widows.

Ella's Photographic Trip around the house

The other day we gave Ella the camera and told her she could go around the house and take some pictures of whatever she wanted. Mostly she followed us around. Here are some of the results :-)


The bottom of Chris' foot-guess he needs some new socks...

Us pretending to nap (apparently people's legs look really long when you're 3 feet tall)

Raleigh's eye-very artistic composition :-)

self-explanatory

us :-)

Factory Tour

A couple of people in our Lifegroup (small group from church) own a grout company and a bunch of us went down this week for a tour! It was so much fun to do something totally out of the ordinary, learn about an entire industry I knew nothing about, and get to see a project and a place Karen and Chris are passionate about! We got to meet employees, learn about grout chemistry, and basically see how their product is revolutionizing the industry (I'm totally serious! It's awesome!). It was also cool to see how they run the company with God at the center. It was evident in the decor, the relationships, the employees, everything. It was also great to meet some of the guys who work there who were homeless and in need of help in the recent past. Chris and Karen have an awesome ministry to those men and it was evident. It was cool to put faces to the stories. So, the moral of the story is Go Buy Some Starquartz Grout!!

The group at lunch-eating seafood on the water, who can ask for more??

This machine makes all the grout!

Some of the grout in stock-my favorite color names were dark mocha, linen, and caramel :-)

Our friend Chris is the inventor of their product-showing us how they came up with it!

Garden Update!

Ella is quite the capable plant water-er

Our grape tomatoes are the first to turn red! Yay!

That plant along the whole the right side is a pumpkin plant that is already 10 feet long!! In the front left is an enormous zucchini plant and behind it are lettuce and broccoli.

Our Green peppers are tiny but growing!

Our first zucchinis are out! We have about 4 that are about 6 inches long.

Some of the big tomatoes. I have no clue what the actual name is-I'm not the gardener, I just water and take pictures and cheer Chris on!

Looks like this experiment is yielding some "fruit" so we're excited for the eating-our-own-produce phase!

Father's Day 2009!

My dad and Chris are GREAT, GREAT dads and I'm so thankful for both of them. We had a fun day and Chris got some new garden gadgets, a gardening class, and I made some tear-jerker DVD slideshows for him and my dad. It feels great to have a day set aside to make sure they know they're doing a good job in an area that really counts for eternity-investing in the hearts of little (and big) girls.

Breakfast in bed :-)

Ella helped Chris open the Father's Day Present she made at school almost 2 months ago and left stapled closed in a bag and wouldn't tell ANYONE what was in it! She's a good secret keeper! (It was a cute baseball mitt picture frame she made with herself in the middle as the ball)

Church was awesome-it's hard to tell but I got bold and took a picture while they were praying-all of the dads left their seats to kneel and pray and commit themselves to honoring God with how they love their families. SO moving. You can see our pastor, DA kneeling in the screen in the upper left.

On to the pool! Another afternoon at Aunt Bobbi's house :-) This time with a BBQ

This is the only pic of my dad from the day so I had to include it! He was too busy taking his own pictures of all of us :-)

My 90 year old grandmother chillin by the pool :-)

Marissa and Stella her new puppy :-)

Post-burger nap


I love this one!

Day at the Pool!

I am THRILLED my Aunt and Uncle bought a house on the bay about 45 minutes from us! We went and spent the day lounging around their pool on Saturday and it was blissful. Ella LOVES the pool, the weather was great, company was great and it was more restful than any Saturday I've had in a long time. Thanks God for answering our very specific prayers for a fun, relaxing day!

This week...

We went to an art class with Holly and Hope-good times!


We adopted a turtle for a few days! We found it on a walk and brought it home and fed it lettuce :-) I'm not kidding when I say I LOVE creatures!

Ella found a new place to play (just kidding, she is forbidden to climb in there again)

Gardening with Dad (do you see those big squash blossoms in the foreground? stuff is really growing!)

Ella dressed up like Daddy! Hat, shorts, and size 15 shoes!

Street Fair!

We've been to a lot of fairs, carnivals, festivals etcetera in our 3+ years of parenting. It's usually a fun way to spend an afternoon and great family time. Well, this past Saturday we intentionally had nothing planned with friends/family just to get some time together. Chris randomly searched the internet to see if anything cool was going on and we ended up at THE MOST FUN FAIR we've been to! There was really good food: I had Indian food for $3 a plate-where can you get that?, Chris had his fave: pizza, and Ella was extremely happy to have vanilla ice cream. By the way-how am I, the queen of condiments and a lover of BOLD flavors raising a kid who wants something as plain as vanilla? I practically begged her to try something else and read the list of flavors twice, but I digress...Anyway, super fun day and here are the pics to prove it!

We got a kick out of this lion statue and decided to growl back

Checking out the fountain

My master gardeners

At least she was looking at the camera, that's rare. Maybe next year she'll smile at it.

Glitter Art! (I thought of you Erin O)

Mid-snack kiss

There was a steel drum band on stage in this pic, after that we watched a jazz/ballet troupe of little girls and a Persian Dance group (they were really good!)

Heading home with hands full of sand art, plants, puppets, animal footprints, a handmade fan, full tummy's and ready for bed!

Outer Banks!

Last week was our family vacation with Chris' side of the family (plus about 10 people from Amy's husband's family). There were 25 of us in the nicest, biggest beach house I've ever seen! There were 14 bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room that was about the size of my house, an impressive theater room, about 30 TVs (it was excessive), a pool, and a private "boardwalk" out to the beach. You can tell, we were impressed by the house. Anyway, we did a "formal" family photo shoot on the beach (coordinating outfits and everything!) so those pics will be coming soon. Here are some of the more fun pics of people and stuff we did.


I think this was my nephew Silas' first ice cream cone :-)

A close-up of our little beauty-kinda scary!

Erin, Dave, and Chris on "Adventure Night" (think teams, sand dunes, mini-golf with "special rules", beer, and Chris' truck stuck in the sand for 30 minutes)

Matt was the creator of "Adventure Night" :-)

Ella was obsessed with this umbrella

The cousins had the time of their lives playing ALL DAY EVERY DAY!

Chris and I on top of he Wright Brother's Memorial


That's the Memorial up on the hill behind them

Ella spent lots of time in the pool-last summer she needed the floating bathing suit but she does great with just the "water wings" or "blow-bluffers" as my family calls them

Chris' rents having fun when we were out to dinner for some seafood

Getting ready for the beach. Yes, Chris is wearing Ella's shorts on his head.

A really fun game of Catch Phrase once the kids were asleep.

Ella and Christopher got a little carried away in Nana's bathtub!

On the drive Ella did GREAT. She watched DVDs a lot of the time and it was SO cute to hear her laughing out loud at the movies or telling Curious George to "watch out!"

Watch for some of the good pics from the family photo shoot soon!