Labor Day!

Our new friends Taylor and Stacia are both from Parawon, Utah.  Being a San Juan girl we don't always associate with those Parawon kids but we have made some exceptions and have decided this family is pretty awesome! ;)  Although, they do have some weird traditions such as celebrating Labor Day!  I guess in Parawon they have a HUGE celebration and Stacia was feeling a little homesick being away from family and fun.  So in order to make her feel better we all agreed to have a party...it took A LOT of persuasion! ;)

Some how segregation always happens! Women inside surrounding the food and men outside playing with the children.

The food was delicious...

We ate until we were all stuffed.... (I am so sad this picture is blurry!)

Some of the children...

Trampoline craziness...

Darin was nominated to cook the meat...

He did a good job despite almost starting the neighborhood on fire! ;)

mmmm....Kosher!

The kids even liked it!

Plenty of good conversation...

A LOT of running around!  It was funny to watch the 2 year olds play with the older kids, they had no clue what they were doing, just ran in circles.  Poor Amy had to endure being chased by Nash the entire time!

Nash LOVES baby Dawson...

As well as sitting in random places ALONE...

Now I would like to introduce you to Nash's new little crush, Ada!  This little girl is so stinking cute and Nash LOVES her.  He is constantly talking about Ada and when he is around her he is hugging her, he even planted a big - fat - kiss on her a few weeks ago....UH- OH!

Labor day was so fun! Thanks again Stacia for hosting! We love getting together with friends and partying...even with ones from Parawon! :)

Allentown Fair

We joined the Dowling's for a fun time at the Allentown Fair.  The fair was pretty busy with a TON of strange "carnie" people.  Last year I avoided the fair and let Darin and Nash have a day out while I enjoyed a relaxing run in the Parkway.  Not so lucky this year.  Although, it was fun hanging out with Kristen and Nick, we don't get to do that too often anymore!

Nash felt like he was the boss of carnival...

Nash is so into animals lately we started off with the small livestock.  He was so excited...

to see bunnies, roosters...

and crazy looking chickens!

Then we moved to the larger livestock...

Nash was not at all afraid to touch the animals and this goat was more then happy to get a good rub down!!!

He was a little sad when we left...

Oh the excitement of LIVESTOCK! :)

COWS...

This cow got a little fresh...

check out that tongue!!!

PIGS....

And then we saw a LION....

And of course Nash spent the entire time ROARING at the Lion...

What would a fair be with out a GIGANTIC PUMPKIN...or two!

BUBBLES....

Thank goodness Nash is too young to really want to go on any rides so we didn't stand in any lines besides the smoothy refills which Darin and Nick had plenty of!

We even found out that if you have a Lehigh Valley Hospital tag you could get into the fair free!  Nick had his but sadly Darin didn't. :(

No Good Bad Week!

A few weeks ago it seemed like our week was just one of those "NO GOOD BAD WEEKS!"  Both Darin and I agreed that nothing was going well and we were ready for the week to be OVER!  One day we were on our way out to do a family activity together.  When I opened the door the air pressure popped our screen door and shattered the bottom glass....SO WEIRD!  

We really can't figure this one out.  Our front door is on the side of the house away from walk ways, roads or passing traffic so there isn't anyway someone could have hit it with something with out walking over and deliberately doing it, so we are thinking it was just air pressure....or our old landlord Bruce...who we are in small claims court with! ;)
We removed the glass then Darin pushed the screen down to cover the bottom so we were able to salvage the door.

FLOWBEE

Darin for about a year now has been begging me to get him a FLOWBEE.  For those of you who do not know what a FLOWBEE is it is a haircutting device that you connect to your vacuum.  It was big in the late 80's and early 90's...

Well one of the new families in our ward had one!  When I told Darin he of course ran to ask if we could borrow it.
I usually cut Darin's hair but life has been extremely busy lately and I have been slacking on my job.  His hair was so long and was ready to try the FLOWBEE!
In this next picture he was posing for me saying "this better not go on the blog!"  bahahahaha!

So he hooked it up and began VACUUMING his hair!

I know I poked fun of him but the clean up was OUTSTANDING and the cut really didn't turn out too bad. I just need to clean up his sides.  We even tried it on Nash, who is terrified of the vacuum.  I held him and Darin did the FLOWBEE magic.  His haircut was done in seconds!

I never got a picture of the final product but this was take a few days after.  No I never cleaned up his sides....  That is my job today.  I am a true believer of the FLOWBEE now and we are ordering one off of ebay!!!

New York City Temple

Darin and I decided a few weeks ago that it was time that we went to the temple!  It had been well over 2 years since we had been to the temple together.  Our temple district here in Pennsylvania is Washington DC which is about 3 hours away.  New York City is +/- 2 hours so we decided to take a trip into the city.  Our good friend Stacia offered to watch Nash for us.  He was so excited to go to her house and play.  The plan was to run into the city do a session eat some lunch and come home.  We figured we would be back by the time he woke up from his nap.  Boy were we wrong!  

We started off realizing that our GPS decided to quit on us, so we stopped at Sams Club and bought a new one.  We then forgot the temple address so we called my mom to look it up for us. (Sadly I do this often!)  Well we made GREAT time to the city only to walk into the front desk at the temple only to find out it was CLOSED!  WHAT?!?  ...Soooo we snapped some pictures to remember that we TRIED and decided to take in some quick sites of NYC and head back home.

This temple is just so odd.  If you were walking by and didn't know it was a temple you would never notice it.


We had never gone to the Empire State building so we decided that it might be fun just to walk by it, then go to Time Square and do some shopping.  First off we both were confused on which building was the Empire State Building...okay I WAS CONFUSED and led us to the Chrysler Building.  Once we got that all straightened out, my feet were KILLING me because I wore Sunday shoes and we made a quick stop at Pay Less to purchase some inexpensive comfy shoes... not to mention a bit ugly...Mission accomplished!  We then got a coupon from a street person for Subway and decided to take advantage of that...I KNOW, I KNOW we are in NYC and we should eat New York food.  Well we were cheap and in a hurry!  When we left Subway I left my old shoes there....GRRRR!!!
Finally we made it to the Empire State Building.  There were some guys on the street selling tickets to the Building and the SkyRide. We were told that with these tickets we would get right in to the IMAX theater ride and then straight up to the top, totaling 30 minutes max....WHATEVER!
This "IMAX" theater ride was a joke.  It was a tiny theater, where you sit on a platform that raises up, down, back and forth.  The film was not well done and I was car sick through the whole thing.  Darin was ticked, he loves IMAX theaters.    After recovering from the movie we were herded like cattle for 2 HOURS up to the top of the building.  We found out that Thursday's and Saturday's were the busiest days in the city....mental note taken!

On the positive side the views were GORGEOUS!

I wasn't able to stay out there very long with my skirt.  It was a bit windy and I was showing everyone a little more then I wanted. :)

Because we were in the Empire State Building for so long we didn't get to do the other things we wanted to do.  We had crazy time getting back to the temple riding the metro and kept getting on the wrong train. Then we took a few wrong turns on the way home.  We ended up not picking Nash up until 7:30pm! 

Nothing went right on this trip and I was a bit preoccupied with being away from Nash.  I had never been away from him for that many hours.  I know he was safe and having a fun time but still it was a new experience.  I am happy I was able to spend the day with my sweetheart and I am grateful we made the effort to go to the temple....hopefully next time we will know if it was open or not!

Thanks again Stacia!  ...and mom for looking up the directions!