Powered Up! Cookout

The church had a picnic at a farm for our last Powered Up! event. They had hayrides and even individual horse rides. The picture above is when the farmer took out the wagon to unlock the fence for the hayrides. I guess this is the pre-hayride. We didn't mind.
They had a barn with many horses. Pryor even handed one of the horses hay off the ground and she ate it. He loved that!Grady was the only one of our children to get on a horse. To his credit, he wanted to wait in the horse line for a ride in stead of going ahead and getting dinner. Unfortunately, shortly after his ride, they ended the horse rides. Alice and Pryor got dinner instead!

We already miss Powered Up! and look forward to it starting again in the fall.

A Capitol Weekend Part Two

This day in DC was quick but action (and monument) packed! We started off walking to the White House and got these pics. It's a shame they have the additional fence in front of the wrought-iron fence. It certainly makes the pictures not look quite as nice!

We had a hard time getting Pryor to cooperate with all of the pictures. He had been up late the night before and woke up everyone at 6 AM - ouch!

What I see when I look at these pictures is their hair! Everyone got a hair cut the following week! The children were very excited to see the Lincoln memorial because we have read books about Abe and they were studying coins (the penny has the memorial on the back.)

It threatened to rain and drizzled on us a bit, but the weather held up for us while we were outside. We left DC and drove to Dulles to the National Air & Space museum there. Holy cow, it is massive! We were most impressed. They have hundreds of aircraft inside this mammoth hanger including the space shuttle, Enterprise, and the Enola Gay. Of course the significance of most of the airplanes were completely lost on the children, but they loved looking at everything.
We had a fabulous time in DC and plan on going back!

A Capitol Weekend Part One

We decided to go to Washington DC for the weekend a couple of weeks ago. WOW - what a fantastic time! We took the day off from school & work on Friday, and got on the road by seven in the morning.

We parked our car at the metro station in Annapolis and went took the train straight to the Mall.

I think this was the children's favorite part of the entire trip! We probably could have gone home right after this and the children would have been satisfied. We visited the Museum of American History and took the train back afterwards.

We spent the rest of the day with our good friends, Chris and Christy Morgan who live in Annapolis. Chris teaches at the Naval Academy and we were able to get a driving tour of the beautiful campus. Of course, our children loved getting ice cream and feeding the ducks in downtown Annapolis!

We loved playing with Caleb and Charlotte! The Morgans were such gracious hosts. We hope they come and visit us in Pittsburgh!
Pictures of DC Day Two soon!

Father/Daughter Dance

Alice had a Girl Scout Father/Daughter Dance back in April. It was a "Sock Hop" theme hence the white socks for Stephen. GrandPatti helped Alice do her "make-up." She was so happy! Unfortunately for these pictures, we had just had some of Grady's birthday cake - with black icing!!

Finally - pictures!

Well, I piddled with my computer before downloading my pictures - only to have it download them all again! This was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Oh well! Moving on...

When GrandPatti & Papa were here (yes, I know it they came in *April*) we did a downtown "Ducky Boat" tour. The above picture is while we were driving through downtown.

This picture shows when Alice "drove" the boat once it went down a ramp onto the river. Who knew that Pittsburgh was a pretty city?

We did a Ducky Boat tour back in August when we first moved. This was Pryor's first time "driving" the boat. Behind him you can see Heinz Field where the Steeler's play.
I promise to update more frequently now that my computer is up and running. Hopefully it will stay this way! However, once summer comes, I'm on vacation!

A Big Thank You!

Thank you to my family who donated to Grady & Alice's school Walk-a-thon fund raiser. I do not know how much they raised individually, but the school as a whole raised almost $5200.

Grady won "most money" raised in his class and Alice won the donation from "furthest away." He received 2 Pittsburgh Pirate tickets to a game of our choice!! I didn't find out about Alice till I just read the newsletter - so I don't know if she won anything or not. I would guess not since she didn't talk about it!

They love school and this has been a great year for us. This morning I had to leave to run errands right after dropping them off at the bus stop. It was a glorious morning, so they wanted to walk. So Pryor and I drove while Grady & Alice walked. They got a bit of a head start since I had to go get the car. When I caught up to them - I saw they were holding hands. Just precious!!

Happy Mother's Day

Well, I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. Still don't have all my computer stuff worked out yet - but I will get onto that project now that my Bible study is over.

Grady came home with a little book he had made at school where the teacher gives them a prompt and they finish the sentence and draw a picture. This is the CUTEST thing and I just had to share. I wish I had a scanner and could show you the pics. Here goes: (typos and misspellings included)

My favorite thing to do with my Mom is doing a action packed spider-man 3 puzzle. It has a hundred pieces.

I love when my mom cooks scrumptous, delicous, marvelous brownies. She has a secret recipe.

I make my mom happiest when I keep a secret and wait to tell my family. They jump for joy. My mom is so happy. She wants to cry. (This is from December when his tooth fell out but he waited an hour to tell the rest of the family till we were all together. It did make me cloud up that he was that thoughtful about it.)

My mom looks prettiest when she wears a dress. She looks stunning. She wears earrings and a necklace too. (He tried telling which dress he was talking about - but said I wore it with jeans. Not sure what he's talking about... but I'd like to figure it out!!)

The last page is a photograph of him with a bouquet of flowers. It is just precious!!