Catch-Up

I have been so behind on blogging! I'll take you through these pictures to bring you up to speed. Above: Sweet Sophie at 7 months. Yes she's sitting up and now she's somewhat crawling, dragging herself around. She's ahead of where the other girls were, at this same age. She is so much more of a mover than Olivia and Maddie were.

Here is Trent with the girls at a neighbors birthday party

Maddie showing her loot from the pinata

Sophie trying to stand-at the same party

Maddie attacking Dora the pinata-does anyone else enjoy seeing this as much as I did? Dora is by far the most annoying children's show on tv-she's always yelling!

Olivia swinging. Liv, you are not going to get very far with one hand and your eyes closed! (and she didn't get far; didn't even make a dent in Dora's big noggin)

This is a picture of what Hurricane Ike did to our yard-we just got some of the after-math, but it was definitely bad. Our county was declared a disaster area. over 60,000 were without power and water for almost 7 days. We luckily were not among these, but the outages started less than a block away. It was unbelievable to us how lucky we were.
Here is a tree that was snapped in half by the wind and knocked onto our house. It hit the house and then rolled down onto the deck. Somehow it did no damage-again we were very lucky/blessed.

Cutting up the tree-we had a fire that night with some of this wood-should have taken pictures-

Now these pictures are all the way from Labor Day-we went biking up to a lake not far from our house. We had a great time and the girls were able to go swimming. Now it is cold and hard to picture all of that (its in the 40's today).

And this is how we roll- gear that we purchased with gift cards this spring from Target. It was probably the smartest gift card usage we have ever made.
Hopefully I'll have another post up with all we've done to get ready for this Halloween!

WICKED

We went to Wicked last night!!!!! I've been so excited for this. We bought the tickets about 2 months ago, and the anticipation this last week or so has been killing me. I've been wanting to see Wicked for quite awhile. When we went to New York last year, we were there for a week and everyday-seriously everyday, we played the lottery to try and get tickets to it-we never got the tickets to Wicked (there were about 500 people doing the same thing as us), so when I saw it was coming to Pittsburgh, I bought them that very night! And let me tell you-it was an amazing, great, great play.
There were a couple other factors in the anticipation of this night-we left all three kids for the first time together. We've actually never even left Sophia with a babysitter before. I was very nervous, but it seems to have all gone very well-it was a very long night for the sitter though-we were gone over 8 hours!!! What a way to leave the baby for the first time-I know.We went with our friends Lisa and Jason, and this is dinner. We are of course at our favorite restaurant Nakamas.-nothing new-

Here are some pictures from inside the Benedum theater. It was the most beautiful theater I've ever seen a play in. Here are some interesting facts I just looked up about it-
1. Built at the turn of the century
2. There are over 90 crystal chandeliers, torchieres and sconces in the theater, all but one are original. The Central Brass Company located in Reading, PA refurbished them.
3. The signature piece of the Benedum Center is the original main chandelier which weighs 4,700 pounds, is 20 feet high and 12 feet wide. It was restored in honor of the late H.J. Heinz II. 4. In 1900, the Benedum cost $3 million to build. In 1987, the Benedum Center cost $43 million to restore.
5. On St. Patrick's Day in 1936, the theater flooded within two feet of the balcony. Several men were trapped for three days until police arrived in a motorboat and rescued them.

I love going to a place like this and then learning about all the history it's made and seen-I guess thats why I love museums-oh I would love to be able to go back to Europe and visit all the old castles and history sites again-I was only 17 when I last went and there is so much I've read and learned since then and I think I would appreciate it so much more.

These pictures we took are illegal btw-since no camera's are allowed inside the performances-Trent took the picures(not me)

Olivia's 1st Day of School

Olivia's first day of school. How strange it is, it seems like it only a little while ago she was still the baby in my arms. I have been trying to talk myself into believing that this is all very good and great, but it's hard for some reason. I have been trying to pin point the reason this has been so hard for me to let her go. I can't fully grab a hold onto what exactly it is but I believe it's somewhere in between her growing up and leaving the little kid stuff behind, and then trusting that no one is going to hurt or make my babe's life hard. I know school is good and her education is very important, so why all the tears and worry from a mom who should be happy and excited when this day finally comes? At least Olivia was ready, very ready. She was all smile through everything and probable could not have loved it more.




Now Maddie on the other hand could have loved it all a lot more if only she could have ridden that darn bus with Liv, it just isn't fair sometimes is it Maddie.









This is me following the bus-I just wanted to see where the other stops were-I'm not paranoid or anything......








And here she is getting off the bus-she's trying to give a thumbs up (I think) she came off the bus looking a little shell shocked.
I'm so proud of her. She's so sweet and special, and I love that she loves school.

Summers Last Hurrah

School started this week for our little Liv, so I thought I'd try and capture a little bit of what she has been doing this past summer. We have a great neighborhood. There are a ton of little kids the same ages as mine and they all come out every evening and play with each other. Here are some pictures taken the night before school started. The kids are all lined up to begin their race. Olivia and Maddie are 2nd and 3rd from the right.And their off!! Maddie does try hard (thats her, barely beating the 14 month old)

And here's sweet Soph's with her little playmate Jace.

And Here's

Idlewild
We went to Idlewild last Saturday-it was the last Saturday before school started. We had soooo much fun. We have been wanting to come here for ages, but just haven't done it for many reasons, mainly the cost-I wasn't sure it would be worth spending $40.00 a person(thats the kids price also). But I would say it's worth that, the kids loved it so much-you would just have to have 2 days there, it's just so big.
It's mainly a great big, huge, children's park. When I say huge, I mean Huge. They have everything you can think of, a storybook forest with all the characters from all the favorite children's storybooks. There is a huge Soakzone water park which was so awesome, blows Seven Peaks out of the water for those that have been to Seven Peaks. And then there is of course every ride imaginable. So here are some of the pictures we took. I wish we took more, but we spent a great part of the day in the soakzone and we didn't bring our camera there-shoot-

here the girls and I are, riding the ferris wheel

Riding the log ride-actually a little scary for a 3 year old-but she amazingly did great-look in close at Olivia's face, she looks like Freddy Kruger grabbed her foot or something

Here's Trent (in the red with the sunglasses to the right) and Liv and Maddie-the girls loved this one-we couldn't believe how brave they were-I think Trent might have been a little scared though

The girls driving a trolley through Mr. Rogers neighborhood

The girls on the homestretch with the trolley

driving bumper cars-running into their friends Julian and Melina

Our friends Jason and Monica came with us and here are their cute kids-very patiently waiting in line

Our only picture from the soakzone-I would have loved to show you a picture of the punk kid who kept squirting me with a huge built-in squirt gun every time I tried to climb up to the slides. I wanted to kick his A-
he totally wrecked my hair for the rest of the day, the little punk

Aprons

We just completed the funnest project! I know there are a ton of pictures, but it was such a big deal to the girls I wanted to capture as much as I could. Our friend Heather (she is actually kind of family. She's my brother Andy's wife's sister) just moved here to Pittsburgh, And invited us over to make aprons. The girls now think they are professional chefs and can use real knives, which we had to explain several times to Liv that it's not okay, they can still cut her. She seems to think if you have the gear, you must be a ble to do it all.
This kind of project would probable take most people a couple hours to do,not me-I literally spent all day working on them. Thanks to Heather though-she's much more skilled than I am, she taught me a lot. I thought this picture was funny-Olivia is the only one with her eyes open

Maddie's was the first one done-oh I forgot to mention, the girls picked out their material entirely on their own. I think this material screams Maddie, it's just so her.

Here's a couple shots of my new sewing box-I guess the gear thing kind of applies to me also-but I love it, so whatever

Olivia semi-patiently waiting while I sewed her pocket on her apron.

Here's the 3 girls when it was time for us to head home-Olivia's wasn't quite done yet, and mine was only cut out at this point, but I wanted them all together in a shot.

Here's their completed aprons-don't look too close-please I'm warning you.

Here's all of ours-I wish I had Heather's and Lily's finished aprons to show. Thanks to Rachel for emailing me copies of her kids aprons-they gave us great ideas-too bad I'm not as talented as her, and her mom. Theirs were so dang cute.

Old Mission, Michigan trip

Okay so we're now back from Old Mission, and we got our camera back in the mail today (thank you aunt Kitty). We left our camera up at my Grandpa and Grandma McDonalds, and my aunt was kind enough to send it back to us. Most all of these pictures in all 5 shows were taken at our beach, the tie dye ones were taken about 4 beaches down at our friends Scarlette and her husband Travis's. I grew up doing tie dye with them and now my kids are able to do it also-I love it! It really is such a fun thing to do, and Scarlette has perfected it using the lake as her rinser and the beach and rocks as the setter. It's perfect and we definitely enjoyed doing it this year. I also think our shirts turned out quite well if I might say so. So enjoy watching our vacation-I hope your comfortable, there are quite a few pictures. Also there are pictures of us on a hike-we went to an old abandoned apricot orchard where the fruit trees have gone wild but the fruit is still delicious. We eventually did find it and the apricots were small, but so very good. It felt like we had uncovered a secret treasure up there. I hope we can find that spot every summer and enjoy the apricots for years to come. Also theses next few pictures were taken with my mom's parents. We stopped by their home in Saginaw on our way down from Old Mission. It was great to spend the afternoon with them and the girls definitely benefited from it-pulling away with about 20 rocks more than what they had already collected from the beach up north. (my grandma LOVES rocks and has quite the collection)
We are so grateful for having this cottage in our family. We absolutely love going up there and I hope my kids can be raised there in the summers like I was. Thanks to my Grandpa Ed for finding this place all those years ago, and giving us all such a beautiful summer refuge.