Friday, June 24, 2011

Caught Up!

Phew!

All caught up from our wonderful trip to Utah. 
There are a dozen or so new posts, so sit and stay awhile and scroll through them all.

Sorry I've been a slacker, hopefully this takes care of your blog quota for a little while.

Oh, and I'll be updating the dates soon, so if you check in and they are all missing, thats why.

Late Night Sarah Speech

At Bedtime:
Me: Okay you two snuggle-bugs, hop into bed.
Sarah: *giggling* Mommy, I'm not a snuggle-bug, and Abby's not a snuggle-bug.
Me: Oh no? Well, what are you?
Sarah: We're humans, silly Mama.

Father's Day Pictures

A couple of days before Father's Day I asked the girls to help me draw some pictures of them and Daddy to give him with breakfast on Father's Day.

Sarah was really excited and went right to work on this masterpiece.
 We think it is pretty funny. 
Notice the one on the left is Sarah, it has the long hair (that is sticking straight up), and Ryan is on the right and has the short hair... and only one visible eye and some awesome chops.
Watch out its Cyclops Dad!

Here it is up close.
Those spider looking things are hands.

Abby loves to color and has learned to make circles.
So I pointed to a spot and she drew the circles and then I added the other parts.

We had a great Father's Day. Ryan got his main gift a week and a half early, and I'm pretty sure he likes it (seeing how he uses it constantly... I miss my husband!)
But we hope he knows how much we love and appreciate him. 

Happy Father's Day Ryan!


Let's Go Bucs!

As in Buccaneers, the Pirates. 
Yes we went to our first ever Pirates baseball game.
Isn't that view incredible. 
You don't really go to a pirates game for the baseball so much (seeing how we are a record LOSING team), but you go for the experience and to be in this beautiful stadium.
Or the free t-shirts they give out on Friday nights (the night we went) or the fireworks and concert they do after the game on Saturdays. I guess they need a lot of help getting fans out.

Anyway, it was really fun. We enjoyed ourselves and the overpriced food.

Say Cheese Sarah! 

Abby was really excited and loved cheering, doing the wave and clapping along with the songs.

Here she is cheering with mama.

We tried to get a nice night shot, but it didn't work out too well, but here's Daddy anyhow.

We've always wanted to go to a game, but it took having some friend, James & Laura coming into town to get us to go. Thanks for getting us in gear to go to the Game J&L. 
We're excited for you guys to move here so we can do more fun stuff with "yins."

Utah Visit: Saying Goodbyes

This is the part of the trip that we like the least... the saying goodbye part. 
Who likes that part, anyhow?

My family got together for one last dinner on memorial day. It wasn't anything big, but it was fun to hang out. My Aunt Jeannine and Uncle Zock and their children were even able to come join in the fun.
It was nice to be surrounded by family. I miss that most in Pittsburgh.

I think I feel silly taking pictures of adults, because as I look through my plethora of photos, it is mostly of the kids... they are the ones who are changing the most anyways, might as well capture it all while I can. But I do wish I had more pictures of the girls with their G'mas & G'pas, Aunts and Uncles. 

It was a rainy day, so we couldn't play in the yard, but luckily Ryan had picked up some bubbles and we headed to the porch to have some fun with the little ones (who were running endless circles around the house). 


Okay, I have to explain these next few pics of JuneBug. 
When my older brother Pat (Junes Dad) was little he used to make a face where he'd look up to the corner and pucker his lips. Kind of like this.
 So when June did it once they made sure to encourage it. Now they ask her, "June, do the look" and she will do it. It is so cute. 
She knows she's being funny.

Its no wonder Abby followed her around and tried to do everything she did.

Oh and I love this sweet William too, always smiles for the camera for me.


We had one last Newey Playdate, on that last Sunny day Utah had while we were in town.
It was actually warm and we could wear some of the summer clothes we had packed.


And of course, no visit it is complete until we all get hair cuts from G'ma Lisa.
 Abby was being a little difficult.

Sarah was amazing. 
Do you see all of that hair we chopped off? We cut a good 4-5 inches. 
It is nice for reducing the tangles, but I kind of miss how long it was. I'm glad I didn't just chop it really short like I was originally thinking. 

 Her new amazing haircut.
 

We had Jord & Em over for dinner on our last night in town and it was nice to have the kids play together one last time. 

*gasp* all kids looking, and semi smiling... I'm in shock!

We sure are going to miss you cousins!

It was such a nice visit. We realized that Abby has spent practically her whole life in Pittsburgh and decided that this trip would be family only so that Abby and Sarah could really spend some quality time getting to know their grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins better. We're so glad we did. We love our friends and were bummed we didn't hang out with any of you, but we'll be back. You can't get rid of us forever. ;)

Thanks Family for such a wonderful visit! 
Can't wait for next time. 

Utah Visit: Hogle Zoo

My sister has a membership to the Hogle Zoo and was able to get most of our family in for free, hooray!
Plus with our membership to the Pittsburgh Zoo we got half off the remaining tickets, practically got in for free. Awesome. 

The last Friday we were in town her kids didn't have school (make up snow day or something) and so we decided to go, despite the crazy crowds we knew would be there. 

Here are the kiddos checking out the giraffes. 

One really cool thing that was going on was that they had a traveling exhibit of dinosaurs all around the zoo, I think they called it zoo-rasic park or something. The really neat thing was that they MOVED!
I think they were the hit of the zoo because of this. Most of the real animals we saw were just sitting there... boring for the kids, but the dinosaurs moved, roared and some even sprayed water (more on that later). 

I think this picture is hilarious. It is one out of half a dozen or so. 
Couldn't for the life of us get the kids to look at the camera, or smile. 
Ella's blurry, Sarah's having drama over me not letting her climb on the rocks, Wimmy is being a dinosaur, and is Jeffery biting my arm? Awesome picture. hahaha

I don't know why, but I love this picture. Ryan is tickling Sarah with Eleanor, and Brooke is giving me a sweet smile while being tackled by William. It just makes me smile.


They had a dinosaur the kids could touch and climb on, so we tried to get a successful picture on it. 
I love William in this picture, Sarah I think is looking at Brooke's camera, and the kid getting eaten is a classic parent pose ("go stick you head in there and act like your getting eaten")

 The lil girl in the striped shirt is pointing out that I'm taking her picture to her mommy, caught you little girl! I love Sarah and Eleanor, such sweet cousins.

Abby wanted to climb on it too but there were tons of kids so Ryan took her down to the tail.

Amazingly the crowd cleared and we had it all to our self for half a minute.
So getting everyone to look at the camera... well, didn't happen (yet again).

Here is the cool dinosaur. It squirted water and the kids thought it was AWESOME!
Here is Sarah standing in the line of fire.

They even had a little baby version that would squirt you right in the face if you weren't careful. This one was a lot less intimidating for the kids. 

It was such a fun day. Thank you so much Brooke for inviting us, I need a little extra encouragement to get out of the house and I appreciate getting to spend that little bit of extra time with you!
Love you, and your sweet, sweet children!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Utah Visit: G'ma Lisa's Birthday

While we were visiting G'ma Lisa had her birthday...

so we decided to surprise her at work with some balloons, pictures and goodies.

I love how her client is just beaming.

I'd tell you how old she turned... but you wouldn't believe me.
 Just like most people don't believe that she is a G'ma of 4.
The girls loved being a part of the surprise.

The adults celebrated later by going to see the new Pirates movie in 3D at the IMAX. 
It was cool and nice to get out with out two crazies in tow.

Thanks for being born Lisa, and for being a dream of a mother in law.
We love you!

Utah Visit: Rachee's Field Day

In Davis County's efforts to fight childhood obesity they held their first ever field day.
Supposedly a head coach from the district had been around all of the schools instructing the PE teachers and classes how to do various athletic activities. 
Then he hosted an event where each school sent four kids (two girls and two boys) out of their class. Four kids from the 4th graders and four from the 5th grade class, which is where my Sister in Law was selected. It was no surprise that she was nominated, she is very talented athletically. 

The only pitfall in this activity is that the information wasn't relayed properly, that and this head coach never visited sweet little South Clearfield. *sigh*

Some schools had matching t-shirts, were bussed to the event and had obviously been working on these events. But for Rach's school they had to get checked out by their parents, and get their own ride over to the event.

So it wasn't a big surprise that only two (out of the eight) kids showed up from Rachee's school. As a result they were disqualified from winning any awards because they didn't have a full group. 
Which was lame, but they still did a stellar job competing.

So awards, schmawards. Who needs 'em, right?

We still had fun cheering on our star athlete!

She choose to where her Steelers shirt because we were there. How cute! 

Some of the events they had to do was a 200 meter dash (half way around the track),

they had to throw a football at a target (they got three tries, Rach only need one. Nailed IT!)

dribble a basketball through cones...

some other things were sit-ups, jump roping, sit n' reach, and randomly cup stacking. 

It was really fun to sit and watch all of the kids compete and we think that Rach did awesome!
Thanks for letting us tag along. 

Utah Visit: How does your Garden Grow?

My Parent's grows with a little help from two excited little ones. 

Here is Sarah pulling the plants over to the garden.

Sarah loved being G'ma's little helper.

She watched intently as G'ma showed her how to break up the roots before you plant.

And apparently she thought that you have to pat the soil with your shovel when you're done, maybe she picked that up from me... I'm not sure.

Abby just loved digging in the dirt.

And enjoying a popsicle after a job well done.

Thanks G'ma & G'pa for allowing some "help"ers plant your garden.

Utah Visit: Gateway

My Sister in Law had an extra set of passes to the Discovery Museum and was sweet enough to invite us to go with her. The girls loved it!

Here is Sarah jamming out on the xylophone thingy.

Abby loved all of the pretend play stations.


They had a cute storytime about dinosaurs that started right after we got there so we signed up to go.
The storytime was kinda lame, but the kids loved making a dinosaur afterward.
Here is Sarah all focused.
 Abby really got into it too.
Even if she needed a little help from Daddy.


Havin' fun.

I think this horse was the highlight of the museum for Sarah. She will still (a month later) ask me if we can go back to the children's museum with the horsey.
And, although it doesn't look like it, I promise, June had fun too...  

Ryan chauffeuring June around town. 

Amazingly enough this was another one of the three days of sunshine while we were in Utah (you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not) and so we stopped at the splash pad before we left the Gateway.

This is how Abby liked it.
eh, not so much. 
Much more fun when Daddy was holding her.

Here is June's reaction.
 Timid at first, but she loved it!
 and definitely was the most stylin' chic at the pad.

Sarah didn't like it when it got in her face, 
 but that didn't stop her from running around and having fun.

And somehow got under the impression that she could control the water.

Which I thought was pretty funny.

It was a beautiful and fun day. It was so nice to have some sunshine.
Thanks again Deb!