Labor Day Fun

Since it's not enough to refinish floors over a weekend, we invited a crew of people over for a Labor Day picnic in the new place! Uncle D, Aunt Cedes, and Tommy came over. And Grammy, Papa, Tim, Mrs. Kathy, and JOE (!!!) drove down for the day. The children were ECSTATIC!

The kids were VERY surprised when Joe walked in,since we are smart enough to not TELL THEM when things like that are happening. They then monopolized Joe's time playing in their rooms for a very, very long time. It was very loud up there...but I still don't know exactly what they were up to! Everyone else enjoyed a tour of the new house and admired Daddy's new floor.

After a pretty yummy lunch (if I do say so myself), we asked Mrs. K to take some quick pictures for us. I wanted a family picture to put on a change of address card to mail out. Thankfully, Mrs. K was happy to oblige.

(We didn't use that one, but it amuses me.)


Oh look, JOE!



We also got a nice picture of Grammy with all three of her grandbabies. I think she was happy to have one to show off!




And then the children got a hold of the camera and documented the rest of the day.













This is Colin and Joe in the dark, with a light saber.









Fun day. Good company. Silly photographers! We hope to have many, many more family picnics here!

Thomas and his Friends!

Look who it is!


Last weekend we had a great adventure! We traveled to Lancaster to go to the "Day Out With Thomas" at the Strasburg Railroad. It was our second time to visit Thomas, and it was just as much fun as the first time!

On Saturday we headed across the state on the turnpike and much to Colin's delight our trip was filled with toll booths and tunnels. We had an easy trip and made it to our hotel just in time to settle in and have a swim! Before jumping in the pool we set up the kids air mattresses in the bedroom of our suite. I had to get a picture because we were all squeezed in one room so tightly, it was pretty funny!


We swam in the pool until the kids were shivering and blue lipped. And then we ALL soaked in the hot tub. Gillian was in HEAVEN. She wants to be that warm ALWAYS. It took Colin a while to get into the "warm" thing, but eventually he seemed to like it. Daddy and I sure did!

After our swim the kids got a quick bath and then this happened:



You can tell they "like living in a hotel" as Colin told us. Even BlueBlue liked living in a hotel.

We had a great dinner with our friends Tim and Betsy and their son Luke. They traveled from the DC area to meet up with us for some Thomas fun! The men ate sausages and drank smoked beer, the kids ate SOMETHING, and Betsy and I had a nice visit. Love good friends like that!

Sunday morning we were up and up 'em early (After Mommy ended up sleeping on the couch because the kids tossing and turning was driving me bonkers. Sigh) and we were off to see Thomas!

Parking lot shot...


Engineers!


We took some shots with Thomas! We bought one from the photographer and miraculously it is a WONDERFUL picture of the four of us! Woo hoo!


Cute one of Tim, Betsy, and Luke!


Then we took our ride on the THOMAS!



Three cute kiddos!




Horrible picture of me, but it's a fantastic picture of Gillian, so I'm including it.


After our 15 minute ride on Thomas we took in all the other FUN that came with our tickets...rides, train tables, and such!





Colin wanted his picture with the Diesels.


Daddy got lots of pictures coming and going from the station too.






He's so cool, right?

We had a very fun time! The kids really enjoyed themselves and we love seeing them have so much fun! Thomas WE LOVE YOU!