Nephew Photo Shoot

Had to grab some pictures with my cute nephews before we left. They look much cuter than me, I was dealing with sunburn and a bang-cutting incident! Either way, it was funny trying to get both of them to look (you can see we were unsuccessful).

Before we left, Ari read me a story "Go Dog Go" by P.D. Eastman. He hadn't read it in about a month and either still had it memorized or he was really reading it! He knows all of his letter sounds, and so when there was a word he didn't know, he would try to sound it out! Being a teacher, I was so proud of him!

He also took a stab at drawing pictures of people. He would say, "I don't know how!" and then we would talk about circles for heads, lines for bodies, etc. He added in glasses himself. It was very cute.

He also told me a story about "fans that have hands to grab him" being something that is scary! Oh, the minds of 4-year-olds!

Lake Tobias Wildlife Park

On Thursday, the whole family went to Lake Tobias Wildlife Park, which is this fun little park a guy started on 140 acres 60 years ago or so. His first animals were a wolf, a baby buffalo, and a baby bobcat he brought over in his station wagon from the great state of...Kansas. I can't imagine putting those animals in a car with me! Anyway, it's a really nice park where the animals have lots of space to roam free. Our first stop was to hop on the safari bus and take a trip of the area.

My brother Jacob is 14 and too cool to smile for the camera :)

Just wanna eat those cheeks!

 At 8-point elk that really wanted our crackers! You could feed most of the animals, so that was fun!

 Texas Longhorns!

 The bus threw Ari for a second :)

 Asian water buffaloes.

At the petting zoo, they had this teeny tiny baby goat that was so cute!

After Lake Tobias, we headed to a park and had a great picnic courtesy of my mom. Then, after we'd been home a few hours we got some shish kabobs and my dad grilled them just as a crazy thunderstorm rolled in. After the drought here in Kansas, it was great to see some rain!

Ikea

After our 2nd beach day, we headed up to B-more to Ikea and met up with my mom, sister and nephews. Yes, those boys endured Ikea for THREE hours like champs. Seriously.

The only pictures I got were of the boys and my Mom finishing up their meals. Good times :)

Granny!

While visiting Ocean City, we stayed with my Granny who lives in Ocean Pines, which is only a 10 minute drive from the beach. We got to be there during her birthday, which meant we got to see a few uncles and aunts as well (bonus!)

My Granny turned 92! I have been so blessed to be able have such wonderful, loving, fun Grandma. When we got there, she had my favorite cookies ready to go. I sort of feel guilty eating those cookies because she is getting up there in years, but that's just the kind of person she is...she likes to do for other people!

Here she is blowing out the candles on her Smith Island cake (another Eastern Shore staple). 

Ocean City, MD

I am a beach girl. So you can imagine what it's like being in Kansas (for that matter, being in Utah!) I had been itching to get back to the beach, which we finally did for two wonderful days.

The waves were great, in fact, so great that they were sucking people out into the ocean all day. Not kidding. In all my experience, I have never seen so many lifeguards have to jump into the water and grab people out of the rip currents. In fact, we even had a pow wow so the lifeguard could explain why it was happening so often that day (something to do with the tide changing) and how to see the currents and avoid them. So anyway, it was an exciting day to be at the beach.

I am all squinty because it was SO BRIGHT! I am not complaining that all (I'll let my red skin do the complaining for me). It really was gorgeous. Todd went for the bigger waves, while I wimped out and stayed closer to shore with my boogie board. It was so fun to just lay on and let the waves crash around me. Day 2, the waves were much stronger and bigger and so it wasn't a "relaxing" beach day, but a "keep on your toes" beach day.

We had a great time, and even got our Thrasher's fries (twice), Dolle's and Fisher's popcorn, and saltwater taffy. Some of it came home so we could have a taste of the beach in KS.

Old Mill Crab House

One of my goals for our vacation was to go to Old Mill Crab House in the town I grew up in, Delmar, DE.

On the Eastern Shore, the most authentic way to eat crabs is to get them hot and steaming and dumped out on the table in front of you. They are covered in Old Bay, and then you take the mallet to them and basically dissect them until you get to the meat.

Or, if you are like me, and have discovered a recent aversion to dealing with animal bits and parts, you order the snow crab legs so you only have to deal with that part. So yummy!

Along with your meal, you get hush puppies, fried clams, fried chicken, steamed shrimp, fried shrimp, and fresh sweet corn. 

What a great way to celebrate!

National Civil War Museum

Todd and I visited the National Civil War Museum while we were in Harrisburg. We really enjoyed it, and liked that it presented both sides of the conflict. I had recently read a historical fiction book taking place during the Civil War and was interested to see how it matched up. It was really close! I found it interesting that at this point women were not accepted as nurses. The US Sanitary Commission was created during the Civil War to give women a way to help, and a few became nurses. Also, about 400 women disguised themselves as men to go fight. It seemed to me that most of the wounded died from disease and sickness AFTER they were wounded, not simply from a war injury. Medicine has come a long way since then, thankfully.

The flags in the picture above us represent the number of men killed in just ONE of the battles. I couldn't believe how many there were, and how far across the US they spanned. The bricks we were standing on also listed each state, how many men fought for that state, and how many died. I was reminded Utah wasn't a state yet; it's numbers were combined with a couple of other territories at the time.

Nephews

We spent a lot of time cuddling nephews on our trip! They took to Todd very quickly, even though it has been several years since Todd has traveled to PA with me. Ari was VERY little the last time he was there! 

Ari enlisted Todd's help beating him in a game--surprising, because that kid is better with technology than I am!

Cutie Deklyn. He is such a darling little kid!

You can see BOTH boys wanted his attention :)

Summer School

I taught 4th grade summer school this year again. I had a VERY rambunctious, silly group of kids. At first, I was a little overwhelmed considering how TALL and LOUD they were, but I got to know them, and really enjoyed them :)

My kiddoes are the first four rows of the train. They were really sweet, and my parents got to see them when we were all at the Topeka Zoo at the same time. Oh, and my mom gave away my real name.

I think kids sometimes forget that their teachers have parents too :)

First Day of Work

This was taken very early, at 6:30 am, before Todd left for his first day of work a month ago. I think he is already sick of the commute, but that will all be over in four days! So far, he likes it, and he's been doing a lot of work in bankruptcy and family law. He has his own office and he's now on the business cards :) I would say it's going well!

Mi familia de PA

My family came for a fun four days in Topeka, KC, and Manhattan. We jetted all over Topeka, then headed to Manhattan to see our future home, and then spent a day (with Todd too!) in KC. It was lots of fun, and we get to head THEIR way in a couple of weeks!

Good Friends

I got together with a few of my good Topeka friends to have a send-off dinner. I am so grateful for them! I have been so blessed to have good friends both at church and at work. I am sad to leave them (okay, so it's not that far away, we're not moving to China or anything).