recovering from vacation and a recap...

After a week of GO GO GO on our vacation last week we are home. A few times on our way up to Philadelphia Josh and I took turns saying, "are we there yet?" because traveling with children during the daylight hours is much more difficult when everyone is in such close proximity to each other in the car. (I think you get my drift.) I think I did learn a few things for our next vacation that I'm going to share:
1. pack pants and jackets even in August! (It was cold the first half of the week, in the low 60s during the day!)
2. make sure that camera actually stayed on the charger long enough to get charged. (I got no pictures of us in Philadelphia, I was sad=( )
3. have 2 dvd players, girls and boys don't always enjoy watching the same things, and it does become an issue on a longer than 3 hour drive.
4. drive at night so the kids are asleep, it makes the trip go much faster. It's much more difficult on the parents, but a lot better for the trip!


Overall it was a fun trip. I will post our pictures later. Here's a brief recap of our trip....
went to Phildelphia downtown On Tuesday and saw Independence hall and went through it where the declaration of independance was signed, saw the liberty bell, ate a REALLY good cheese steak sandwhich (gotta do that in Philly right? )
Went to New York City Wednesday , went to the observation deck in the Empire State Building, went to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty from afar (wasn't a good day to ride the ferry in the morning), went to the Disney store which was so cool, went to the FAO Schwartz (the one from the Movie Big with Tom Hanks and the giant keyboard!), went to Little Italy and had some really awesome Pizza from a small place that had cute outdoor seating on the sidewalk, saw lots of knock off bags, and lots of I heart NY shirts, went to Central Park and visited strawberry fileds, went over to the Alice in Wonderland statue and the water there, saw Times Square at night and ate at the McDonalds there before heading back to our hotel in Philadelphia. And we got to get on and off the subway a lot, and it was cleaner than I expected!
We went to the Crayola Factory on Thursday and saw how Crayola crayons were made, and the kids got to color on stuff and play!
Friday we went to Sesame Place, and Eliza called every single character she saw "Elmo". It was so cute, she had so much fun, but when we had dinner with the characters she was afraid to get close to them!
Saturday we went over to Trenton, NJ to visit Josh's cousin Michael, his wife Chrissy, and son Christopher. They fed us lunch, the kids played and then it was time to make our journey home.
We returned home at 11:30p.m. Saturday night.
Today was spent doing laundry and just spending a relaxing day at home. =)

Birthday, Busch Gardens, and Beaches just pictures

My list of things I've been doing

Because of lack of time at the moment to write a proper post I will list some things I've been up to, and will post some pictures SOON!
-went to Busch Gardens with some of my friends to celebrate Nicole's birthday
-went to the DC temple with the kids for a primary activity, also saw my sister Marilyn while there
-have had my other sister Christine and her two children visiting, we're playing lots of Mormon Bridge (our families card game played with Rook Cards),went to Busch Gardens (again) yesterday and have plans to go to the beach today
-Getting back to school supplies
-Cleaning kids rooms and toy room, trying to declutter
-Getting ready to leave on Vacation next week!!

First signs of life

Just a quick post, today I had doctors appointment and got to hear my baby's heartbeat for the first time. After doing this 3 times, it still is such a beautiful thing to experience hearing the heart beating of your unborn child inside you and know that there is life. At this point I'm not even showing that I'm pregnant being only 12 weeks. It's nice to know that there is something going on in there. =)

Fun in the sun..

Its been awhile(okay a month, but that's awhile for us!) since we've been to Watercountry, so this morning after we had breakfast I posed the question to the kids, " do you guys want to go to Watercountry today?" and received a very excited YES from all three. Within minutes the bathing suits were on, towels were loaded up, sunscreen was lathered and we were out the door. We had a fun time, and the day went by fast. We enjoyed our favorite slide Big Daddy Falls first, and then headed over to the kiddie cove where the kids played for at least 45 minutes in this yellow raft which they shared and did so happily for most of that time. I love days like this when you get out of the house, do something fun that everyone enjoys and then come home tired but happy. It was also a nice quiet ride home since the girls both fell asleep while we waited in some traffic trying to cross the Hampton Roads Bridge tunnel. Hopefully everyone will fall asleep fast and easy tonight!