Apple Picking

We went apple picking back in September at the same orchard we went to last year. To our surprise, there weren't a whole lot of trees that had apples left. We don't know if they were ruined by hail, an early frost, or if the owners simply picked them all and sold them to the local grocery stores, but we had a hard time finding apples to pick (it was a lot warmer this year too). There were lots of granny smith sort of apples, but we really wanted some empire apples and macintosh. So we really searched the trees and found enough of those two apples to fill two bags. The girls had lots of fun.

There were these huge pumpkins out in the grassy meadow before the rows of trees started (where they usually keep sheep) and the girls thought they were awesome and wanted a picture with them. While we were there we also got to see one of the orchard owners gathering eggs from the hens they keep there as well. The girls thought that was neat.

Georgia loved finding apples and putting them in the bags, but loved eating them even more. Georgia loves apples-especially if their small ones that are perfect for a little shmoo to eat them. Even after we got home, she would sneak into the food pantry and grab an apple and start eating without anyone noticing.

My sister joined us again this year. Gwen decided to be her buddy and help her pick apples. Gracie joined her later, but Gwen wanted to be Aunt Mimi's picking buddy.

Gracie decided that she really wanted to try a green apple. Normally the girls don't like green apples because they are a bit more tart than red apples are, but Grace really liked the green apple she tried.

Gwen thought it was really cool that she got to eat an apple that she picked herself. Even better was the fact that it was the perfect size for her. She ate two or three apples while we were at the orchard.

Gwen and Grace had so much fun helping Aunt Mimi find and pick apples. They love their Aunt Mimi. My sister would pick them up and help them pick apples higher up in the tree, and would also point out the ones lower on the branches for them to pick themselves.

Georgia loved the apples so much that we couldn't take them away from her. She would eat them as we were walking around looking for more. We had so much fun picking apples, and I hope that there is an apple orchard near the town where we will hopefully be moving to. This has become a wonderful family tradition.

Pittsburgh Trip-Our Visit and Swimming

We had so much fun at Gigi and Pappy's house. One of things we loved to do while we were there was get all the coloring stuff out and just sit and create.



Georgia really loves coloring now and gets so excited when we tell her let's go color.

The girls loved blowing bubbles out on Gigi and Pappy's patio with their cousins and with my Uncle Paul. They loved spending time with Uncle Paul.

Gracie and Gwen had so much fun with Nate. They did puzzles with him, colored with him, played computer games with him...everything they could think of.

It was so nice to spend so much time with Daddy too. We miss being able to cuddle and play with him as much as we used to. Little girls sure do love their daddy.

Georgia sure loved her Uncle Paul. She spent a lot of time with him, and gave him hugs over and over and over again one night...she just wouldn't stop.

Gwen wanted so badly to have some snuggle time with Pappy, so while we were all resting/taking naps one day, she grabbed her blanket and stuffed animal and snuggled up with Pappy.

They loved spending time with my Aunt Ruth as well (my mom's sister). Gracie kept calling her Nana, which is what they call my mom, but Aunt Ruth didn't mind.

We took the girls swimming almost every afternoon while we were there. They loved the pool so much that I think next summer we might have to get pool passes for the local pool and take the girls a couple times a week. Probably even have the two older girls take swimming lessons. The kiddie pool there was really cool...they had a little slide that looked like a frog. The girls loved spending time at the pool. Gwen was even brave enough to go under the water a couple of times.

Grace refused to go down the slide without someone at the bottom to catch her. The pool wasn't deep enough for her to go under, but it still scared her. Most of the time Pappy was there to catch the kids. Grace even had her second cousin Lily there to help her off the slide this time.

Georgia absolutely loved the pool. Oh my word, it was so hard to get her to come out of the pool when we were ready to leave. Georgia didn't even want me holding her hand most of the time. Sure she slipped a couple of times, and went under the water, but I was right there to grab her. She loved playing in the pool with toys, and going down the slide over and over and over again.

We had such a wonderful time in Pittsburgh, and it was hard to leave. The girls are constantly asking me when we can go back. Thank you to Gigi and Pappy, and to all the rest of my family, for making this such a wonderful vacation for our little family, for being so loving towards my girls, and for just spending time with us. We love you all so much!!

Pittsburgh Trip-The Zoo

One thing that the girls really looked forward to our whole trip was the zoo. It was one of the last things we did before coming back home, and the girls were so excited!! The Pittsburgh Zoo is awesome, and even Robbie said he's never been to a zoo that big before. The girls loved it! Here are some of the animals we saw:

The two baby elephants were taking baths when we got there. The girls loved to see them splashing around and shaking their ears and playing with each other in the water.

The gorillas were awesome!! They have this huge viewing area where the glass goes from floor to ceiling, so the gorillas can walk right up to the glass if they want to. That's exactly what this gorilla did. Within seconds of the girls getting their turn up at the glass, this HUGE gorilla came over to the plate of veggies by the glass, picked up a bunch of brocolli, stuffed it into his mouth, then walked back and forth in front of the glass with the brocolli hanging out of his mouth. The girls were thrilled!!

The bears were cool and sad at the same time. We found out that during the previous night, one of the brown bears had passed away from old age. It was a bummer not to get to see any of the brown bears, but they loved watching this black bear take a bath.

I think these were gazelles, but I almost think they were called something else. Just another neat animal the girls had never seen before.

The girls loved the giraffes. They couldn't believe how tall they were and had so much fun watching them walk around.

We didn't think we'd get to see the lions at first, because they were napping high up on a ledge and you couldn't really see them. Then the male woke up and poked his head up, and the girls finally got to see a lion. So glad though that Robbie has such an awesome camera, so he could get such a good picture of the lions for the girls to look at.

The ostrich wasn't moving much at first either. The girls didn't show much interest in it thanks to it being in the same enclosure as the giraffe, but once we started talking about how fast it could run and that it couldn't fly, Gwen at least showed a bit more interest in it.

The rhino has always been one of Gwen's favorites. She has loved rhinos since she was about 2 (I know...a weird animal to have as a favorite). It was fun to get to see some rhinos again.

A new part of the zoo are those tunnels that you can walk under and the fish/animals swim around it. They had one for the polar bears, and then a short walk down the path there was another tunnel filled with sharks. Gwen and Grace loved it! They loved watching the sharks swim so close and know that the sharks couldn't hurt them. Gwen loved looking at their teeth and Grace would wave over and over again and say "Hi shark." That was one of my favorite parts of the zoo.

The sea lions were a lot of fun to watch. The girls got to sit right by the window, and some of the sea lions kept swimming back and forth in front of the window, which just made the girls giggle with excitement.

The otters were so cute...they've always been one of my favorite animals.

The polar bear is something new that they've added since I was last there. It was so cool to see a polar bear. And we got there while the polar bear was having some play time with his ball. He was pouncing on it, batting it back and forth between his front paws, and knocking it into the pool and then swimming after it. So much fun to watch the polar bear playing.

We saw so many other animals too. There was a whole monkey house filled with lemurs and baboons and many other different monkeys. We saw penguins and different fish, and the girls even got to touch some sting rays. We saw camels and meerkats and just so many many other animals. We all had such a blast at the zoo. I'm so glad we were able to take them. They still talk about it and all the cool animals they saw.

They had misters positioned here and there throughout the zoo to help cool people off, and the girls loved running through them. Gwen and Grace would run back and forth until they had water dripping from their hair.

Georgia was most content to sit in the cool little stroller we rented from the zoo that looked like a safari jeep.

The girls were so thrilled to have their second cousin Nate come with us to the zoo. They love Nate.

They had lots of fun with their second cousins Joanie and Ricky too.

We had a wonderful time at the zoo. More updates still to come!!

Pittsburgh PA Visit-Park Play

While we were in Pittsburgh, we took the girls to two different parks just to get out and play for a while. They had so much fun!!

With their second cousins

Gwen






Grace

Georgia

More updates to come soon!!

Finally Updating-Trip To Pennsylvania-Science Center

I am finally updating the blog. Robbie has gotten the computer to work...as well as it can, which means that I got the pictures off, and it will let me get on sometimes, but it's really hard to get it to stay on (lots of problems with the charging cord and the charging jack). So, lets hope it lasts long enough to update. I am going to update about the things that have happened in the past few months (our trip to Pittsburgh, PA; Apple Picking; Halloween; Thanksgiving) before I update about the house, cause right now that's a big mess and maybe by the time I finish updating, things will be better.

One of the things we did while visiting my grandparents in Pittsburgh was go to the Carnegie Science Center. We went there almost every visit while growing up, and it was so much fun. They had different exhibits, a planetarium, an Imax theater, live shows about electricity and weather and all different kinds of stuff, a model train room, and even a tour of a real submarine. And that's all still there. It's mostly for kids 7 and up, but they added a new section for younger kids on the top floor, so we took the girls to that and then went and looked around the rest of the science center. Robbie even got to take a tour of the submarine (did it when I was younger...didn't like the small spaces, so I stayed with the girls). We didn't see any of the shows because only Gwen and Grace would really be able to sit through something like that, so we just walked around and looked at everything. But they had so much fun!!

Gwen was looking at a model train that was right outside of the model train room. She thought it was neat that she could touch and play with it.

Up in the kids section they had this huge spot in the room to build with these giant foam blocks. Robbie and Gwen built this cool building...that was Gwen's favorite part of the room. She kept going back there to build things over and over again.

Part of the room was fenced off into this section with a bunch of those balls you see in a ball pit. You could gather them up in one of these wagons or just in your hands, and they had all these cool different ways to get them up into this huge bucket about halfway up the room, and when the bucket was full, it dumped the balls down onto the kids. Robbie and I loved playing in there with the girls too thanks too all the cool sling shots, air tubes, and bucket systems that took the balls to the top. Gracie loved it too.

Most of the room was filled with this huge huge huge water table. That by far was Grace (and Georgia's) favorite part of the room. Grace loved sticking the balls into the different tubes and trying to push them down as far as she could. Thanks to the water pressure (shooting the water up and out of the tube like a water fountain) Gracie got pretty wet, but she didn't care. (Notice the climbing wall in the back? Gwen was the only one brave enough to try that out...but the picture of her doing it came out bad...)

Right by the rock climbing wall was a section that was all about construction. They had one of those toy diggers that kids can sit on and control digging with two different levers, and dig into a bunch of plastic blocks. There were also kid sized hard hats available for them to wear too. And then there was the construction tunnel. Georgia loved climbing around inside of that.

Once Georgia found the water table though we couldn't get her to do anything else. She loved playing there in the water with all the balls and seeing what all the different levers and fountains could do. She also loved taking the buckets and shovels and cups and dumping water everywhere.

They had a lot of different sections there. There was a hands on section where you could experience what an earthquake was like, a wind tunnel was like, experiment with sounds and vibrations, with hot and cold, play with your shadow, and create "hurricanes" and "tornados." There was also a section with a bunch of aquarium tanks and lots of ocean fish/coral. We even got to see a bunch of baby sea horses, and we saw a sea urchin move. And then there was the robot section. The girls really liked all the cool robots that were there to try out and watch, and they really loved the robot that was programmed to shoot a basketball and try to get it through the hoop. They cheered and got so excited when it actually made a good shot. This picture is of the robot who greeted us as we entered the robot area.

The part that I have always loved going back to see is the model train room. They have this huge room with the biggest model train set I have ever seen. They divided it up into four sections, one for each of the different seasons of the year, and then did the models of important places in Pittsburgh/what it was like in the past when trains were still a main source of transportation and important for different companies in the area. There's a lot of little moving parts, like a couple dancing inside of a house, a rocking chair that rocks, people shoveling, a guy taking a bath in an outdoor tub, and so many more things. It is so neat and the girls loved it, especially when each of them got to blow the train whistle by the conductors seat.

The old baseball stadium

A model of the Frank Lloyd Wright house located near Pittsburgh. This was something we had wanted to see during our visit, but it was a bit of a drive, and we ran out of time.

The fair that they had...my grandparents said that they even remembered some of the rides that they did models of for the display.

They even had a Thomas the Train engine...thought that was really cute!!

The science center was so much fun and I'm so glad that we got to take the girls there and that they got to spend time with their Gigi and Pappy at such a fun place. Hopefully we'll be able to take the girls back there someday. More updates from our trip to come soon!!