Thanksgiving in Arizona

So we didn't take a vacation during the summer like we normally do, but instead we have been planning all our traveling during these last 4 months of the year.  Between buying and moving into a new house, and then taking our scheduled trips at the end of the year, we have been super busy lately!

Over Thanksgiving week, we planned a visit to see my Dad in Arizona.  They moved down to the warm weather, which is great because now we have someplace warm to visit when it's cold up here in the North!  Our trip just happened to be during a little colder week for what they typically have, so the weather was only a high in the 60's during the day.  But I would take that anyday over snow, which I heard Ohio had while we were gone.

We did some sightseeing around the city of Phoenix.  Saw LOTS of cactus, which were pretty interesting!  We took a picture next to one that was at least 3 times taller than we were!  Mountains surround the entire city and it's such a beautiful view!  When the sun sets, the mountains display the most amazing colors!

One day while we were there, we planned a train ride through canyons north of Phoenix.  The views were breathtakingly beautiful!  The train ride was 4 hours long round trip, and we rode through very remote areas of Arizona.  We saw an eagle's nest tucked onto a rock ledge, heard history stories of the area, and viewed the rock formations.  We took some amazing pictures, went through a cool tunnel, and enjoyed our first train ride through the countryside!

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on all the things we are thankful for, and this trip really showed God's artwork in His beautiful creation!  Among many other things, I am so thankful for that!  God is good!

Overall, we had a great visit!  The grandparents were able to see how much Elise had grown in the past 8 months!  Lots of fun!!

Disney World Trip

What a trip!  We spent 6 fun filled days in Orlando, Florida during mid October on a family vacation to Disney World!!!

This was a first time trip to Disney for everyone except me and my husband.  Derek's parents, my cousin Kristen, and the four of us all went on this trip together.  I must say, Disney World parks are super crowded and yet at the same time the smoothest experience EVER visiting an amusement park.  We thought October would be less crowded than the summer months, and boy were we wrong!  With the Halloween celebrations at Magic Kingdom and the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, we still had to fight the crowds and wait in long lines.

Four of our six day vacation were spent visiting the Disney parks!  We had found a GREAT deal on a 3-bedroom condo only 5 minutes from the parks, which turned out to be sooo nice for our big group!

Out of all the rides and roller coasters we went on, we thought that the Rock-n-Roller Coaster was by far the BEST ride out of them all!!

Here are some pictures of our trip.  Enjoy!

Summer 2010

Has it really been 4 months since my last post??

We had a very busy summer this year, and I am finally catching up on our blog!  To recap some of the highlights from our summer, we celebrated birthday month in June, had some of our family visit us from Philadelphia, and took the kids to Kings Island for a fun filled day!!  Many more fun times in between, however, I will not try to list them all.

Here is a fun photo of Derek blowing out his birthday candles this year!  The kids were both ready to help him.  :)

Papa and Nanny Santan came to visit from Philly for Derek and Logan's birthdays!  We loved having them here!!

Logan had his 8th birthday this year and we celebrated it with a Super Mario themed pool party!  He had some school and church friends, along with several family members, join him to celebrate his birthday!  He received some great gifts, but his absolute favorite present was his iPod touch!!!

Derek's sister Wendy, her husband Chris, and daughter Avery (and little baby boy in her belly) came to visit us from Philly over the 4th of July weekend!  We went to watch the Dublin parade, and the kids had tons of fun playing in the water at the splash park!!  The cousins got along great and had so much fun playing together!

Another fun day this past summer was the day we took the family to Kings Island!!!  Logan loved all the roller coasters so much (even the huge hills and upside down ones), and Derek conquered his fear of them!  And little Elise just loved to see Snoopy!  The kids rides and play area all were a Snoopy theme, and we also went to the Snoopy Rocks on Ice show!  She just loved it all!!!

There were many fun memories this summer, in which I cannot even begin to name them all, and we are now on to the new school year again.  Logan has started 3rd grade this year!  Next month Elise is getting ready to move up to the next class at daycare, she will be 18 months already!

Looking forward, we have a fun family vacation planned to Disney World next month!  Yea!!!  We are SO excited!  Look for a blog post on our Disney trip soon!