Kate's 3!!!

Kate turned three last week and we had a fun piglet party for her. There were pink balloons and a pink cake with pink sprinkles and pink candles. The big thing for her birthday was her new bike. She had so much fun riding around the block and I couldn't believe that she could still ride a bike in the middle of December, but that's all done now thanks to mother nature and all this snow! So much fun!

Some fun things about Kate:
*She LOVES makeup and anything to do with dressing up
*She is always following Kira around doing everything her big sister does
*She is miss independent and loves to boss people around
*She can throw the biggest fits of anyone I know if you don't do things her way or "right NOW" as she likes to yell
*She has the sweetest smile and such a tender heart when she wants to
*She is a little version of Dave, teasing everyone mercilessly and loving every minute of it
*She has a HUGE sweet tooth and can often be found hiding in the pantry getting into the latest candy or treat I have bought

She is such a cutie and we love her tons! Happy Birthday Kate!

House Pics Continued...

I figured out that I can upload one picture per post, so here I go to show you our house. I am only going to do a few pics because this is going to take forever, but it will give you an idea of what the house looks like. Here is the front of the house .

The front room all decorated for Christmas. I love this room too because we use it as a reading room and it is just cozy.

Kate's room is Pink - a - licious! She wanted pink and that is what she got! I think it turned out really cute.

Kira's Bedroom is a cool shade of blue and it is so pretty.

Our Cozy Nest

So we've lived in our new house about a month now and I've had lots of people want to see pictures of it, so I took some to show you. It's a rambler with 3 beds upstairs and 2 down. We have 2 bathrooms and a front room and a living room upstairs also and 1 bath and a big family room downstairs. It has been fun for the kids to have a new place to roam around and I have had so much fun with the decorating. I still haven't found places for everything, but I'm working on it. We all love our new house and it's finally starting to feel like home a little bit which is nice.


okay, so we haven't changed our internet yet and I can only get one picture to come up so here it is...ta da...our kitchen and living room. Yay! I'll try to get more later.

Update Time

Here's a little update of our family. We have had so much going on over the last few weeks, one of which is getting used to dial-up internet, which I hate because it takes forever to blog, and so this will be short. Bryce is now 9 months (pics to come later) and we have made the big move. We are getting all settled in to our new house and meeting all of our new neighbors and I can just say that change is really hard and we miss our old home and neighbors SO MUCH!!! but we are doing well and are all adjusting okay and are getting used to our new home. The hard part is going through all of the boxes and finding places for all of our stupid stuff. I think I will be making lots of DI runs because I am SICK TO DEATH of so much stuff. We have painted Kira's room and are moving on to Kate's next. I am excited to be able to decorate and find new places for pictures and things. That part has been so fun. Well, that's us in a nutshell. I'll update more later, but for now that's all.

Happy Halloween

I absolutley love Halloween. The costumes, the decorations, the food, the candy...it is just so much fun and we had a great time last night, especially now that the girls understand all about trick-or-treating and also because it was Bryce's first. Actually, now that I think about it, we're just lucky that Halloween happened at all at our house this year.

Carving pumpkins was postponed because we all had the stomach flu, so we ended up carving only one pumpkin at first, ending up with only two because the other one rotted:( But it was fun when we did get around to it.
Halloween day didn't go exactly as planned either. A fake out for mom on appendicitis and a trip to the emergency room in the morning, with a crazy afternoon of making chili, faxing house buying papers, watching the Polar Express, of all things, and carving another pumpkin, to finally a night of costumes and trick-or-treating fun.

Kira as Princess Alexa from Barbie Diamond Castle

Kate as Princes Liana from the same movie

And Bryce as the cutest, fattest pumpkin ever, even though he didn't think it was so fun at first:)

And...daddy made it home for Halloween night too and that made it extra special for everyone. Yea!

Cornbelly's

We had so much fun going to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point with our cousins Anna and Lilly. There was so much to do and so many things to play on. Here we are checking out the pumpkins.
Anna and Kira meeting the Pumpkin Princess. They were SO EXCITED! Isn't she pretty? I want a dress and a crown like that:)
They even got to sit in the Cinderella carriage. Fun Fun!
Bryce, enjoying the scenery.
Kate, Kira and Anna playing on the train.
Kira loves to milk cows at Wheeler Farm, so she was really excited about milking this cow:)
Kira and Kate had the most fun playing in the farmer's market. Want to buy a pumpkin anyone? Kira, Kate and Daddy riding "bella" and "gertie" on the cow train. It was so funny to see Dave, the only adult, on this little train. Rid'em Cowboy:)
The carved pumpkins were amazing and they were especially fun to see because Dave knows the guy who carved them all. What talent!

I love this one. Aren't they cute!

I love NYC!

So I am finally getting around to posting about my most amazing birthday trip ever to NYC! It took forever to get all the pictures together from all of the cameras and we have over 300 of them, so it took me a while to narrow this down and it still going to be the longest post I've ever written. We had such a fun time walking all over New York and seeing everything there is to see. It was my mom's first time there, so that made it extra fun to see her reaction to everything. Our hotel was right in the middle of Broadway and Times Square so we had easy access to everything we wanted to see, and believe me, we squeezed as much into 4 days as I think is humanly possible. Here are some of my favorite highlights:

The biggest reason I wanted to go to NYC in the first place was to see WICKED on Broadway and it was AMAZING. We got to be up close and personal on about the 15th row and the voices, the music, the set decoration, the costumes, everything was worth every penny. I want to see it again so bad!

I loved this connecting flight we got to take from Cincinati (how do you spell that?). This plane was so small that we got to climb up the stairs like in the olden days and I've always wanted to do that. It was awesome!

We had a fun ride in a taxi from the airport into Manhattan. I can't imagine driving here. I swear we almost got into many, many accidents, but it was fun to see the city at night from the cab.

Our first night we saw The Little Mermaid. We almost missed it because our plane was so late, but we made it and they put on a great show. My girls were so jealous that I got the see the "real" Ariel.

After the show we walked Time Square - what a beautifully overwhelming place with all of the lights and huge posters. I loved it. Then we are dinner at Planet Hollywood where I had the BEST SALAD EVER!

The picture doesn't do it justice. There was spinach, peaches, strawberries, red onion, blue cheese, grilled chicken and crunchy chopstick things. It was to die for.

The next day we went to see the Manhattan Temple which is a lot smaller than I pictured it. It is in a beautiful part of town and it was fun to see it among all of the huge buildings around it.

After that we walked around Central Park in the pouring rain. It was only a drizzle at first, but then we got drenched. I love the park. It is gorgeous and there are so many fun bridges and things. We ate breakfast at a little vendor at the entrance and then we just walked all over. We visited the IMAGINE memorial for John Lennon, saw all the famous fountains and bridges, rode the carousel, and saw the boathouse from the movie 27 DRESSES.

After the park we ate lunch at Carnegie Deli and had their huge sandwiches with the famous cheesecake for dessert. The cheesecake was a dream come true.

That afternoon I got to meet Jennifer Aniston...

Rachel Ray...

and Michael Jordan - Madame Tussauds was SO fun.

WICKED was that night at the Gershwin theatre (1 block from our hotel) and it was so incredible. I wish we would've had tickets for every night we were there.

The Chrylster building is one of my favorites and I loved seeing it lite up at night.

Some of the highlights from day three were seeing my mom on her first subway ride, which was a blast. She was really excited. Can you tell?
Riding the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty,

Walking down Wall Street,

Seeing Ground Zero,

(I loved this memorial near ground zero. It said, "Dedicated to those who fell and to those who carry on...

...may we never forget." I was really touching.),

seeing this beautiful graveyard and Trinity Church,

and standing where "Her Majesty" stood at another church that I can't remember the name of.

Then we hit Gray's Papaya for a quick hot dog on the go (I had to go here because on FOOL'S RUSH IN it says these are the best hot dogs in the world and they were right!)

Then it was on to Chinatown for shopping and Little Italy for eating. There is a story about this car, but I am tired of typing so you'll have to ask me about it late if you want to know...

The guy on the bench with the cigar is the car's owner and the people are dancing behind the car because it is BOOMING Frank Sinatra music out the windows. So FUNNY!

Yummy Food, just like in Big Italy. MMMMMM!

Dinner was on the sidewalk of one of the little Italian restaurants and I had the Gnocchi - also to die for! (Have you noticed that a lot of these pics are of food - just another thing that I love:))

That night we went to the Empire State Building and here is one of the many amazing views from the top.

Our last morning we walked all around uptown. We hit Rockefeller Center,

Peeked in the window of NBC studios to see if we could see any celebs. We just missed Kelly Pickler:(.

Next we powdered our noses and met a Rockette on our tour of Radio City Music Hall,

And just before we had to leave for the airport we had delicious frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity's. All in all it was such a fun trip and I can't wait to do it again! NYC Rocks!