Another Crazy Year

Happy Birthday Mommy!
Before Grandma and Grandpa left to go home to MN, we celebrated Mommy's birthday a little early. In all reality, she can't believe she actually made it to her birthday this year; but of course we knew she had it in her!

The last picture you're going to see of her before our baby sister is born: In spite of being relatively home-bound for almost 8 months, we are happy to report that Mommy has not gone insane. In fact, she was able to enjoy her birthday party and even ate some birthday cake (if you know her, you know this is a BIG deal).

Thanks to our awesome Grandma, we had decorations and party blowers for the big celebration. Fun was had by all!

The party was also a great chance to celebrate and thank our Grandma for all of her love, support, and hard work this summer. Thanks again, Grandma! We love you and miss you already!

Pennsylvania Dutch Country

To make for an even better summer, Grandma and Grandpa took us on a little vacation to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. We took an Amish buggy ride, toured an Amish farm, and went to our first outdoor amusement park called Dutch Wonderland. We had more fun than two 2-yr olds really should be allowed to have! Mommy even came with us to get a change of scenery. She spent a fair amount of time in the hotel resting, but it was great to help her get out of the house.

The Amish barn was kind of smelly (ha!), but it was so fun to get close to the animals.

We also stopped by the Boyds Bear headquarters and store. It was bears, bears, and more bears! We loved it! A rare sighting of Mommy:

We even got to adopt our very own baby bears. The whole process involved picking their names, getting them wrapped in a blanket, promising to take good care of them, and giving them lots of love. We were awarded our very own badges as "Beary New Parents" and are still very proud of our new baby bears! It was good practice for helping with our new baby sister's arrival.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the fun we had at Dutch Wonderland. We loved Duke the dragon, the princess, and all of the rides. It may have been the hottest week of the summer, but we didn't let the dog days of summer get us down!

We would have taken one million pony rides if we could have. We thought the ponies were the best ride at the whole place:

What a cute Amish bunch:

Elyse: This airplane thing is too cool! I want to go on rides everyday!

Elyse: Grandma, do you know that this lady isn't moving? She seems kind of grumpy...

What's a vacation without lots of swimming in the pool?

We even slept in the same bed at the hotel. This is a recipe for trouble for sure:

No Felicity, you have to press this button to make it go.

Grandma, I can see where Mommy got her picture taking obsession. Make sure to take three hundred pictures of me on the horse in case none of them turn out :0)

One thing is for sure, we know how to bulldoze through our vacation with the best of them! Yippee!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Time!

It has been a crazy year for us and this summer has been no exception! We have been so lucky to have our grandma here helping out during our Mommy's pregnancy. Because Mommy has been very "out of touch" with the world the past 8 months, our blogging presence has drastically diminished. (So sad for us!). We figure a few pics of our fun with Grandma (and a few visits from Grandpa) will give you an idea of the fun we've had in spite of the craziness going on around us!

One of Mommy's few outings was to the 4th of July downtown DC on top of Daddy's work building to watch fireworks. It was great to have the whole family together for the big show!What better place to celebrate the nation's birthday than in the capital? We had a great view!

Grandma and Grandpa took us to the National Mall for a picnic and fun at the museums:

If you're in town, there's a super carousel right on the Mall. You must check it out!

The Air and Space Museum was a high-flying adventure:

We've also spent plenty of time this summer in our pool in the backyard:

Grandma took us to a few different zoos and we LOVED it! It has been a scorcher of a summer, but it hasn't stopped us from painting the town.

What a great summer we've had. We feel especially lucky to have had so much time with our grandma. Maybe we wore her right out, but we know she had fun too!

Pretty soon they have to leave us and go back to Minnesota (somebody's gotta work around here!), and we're going to be so sad. We're just lucky we got to have an amazing summer of DC adventures and travels.

Thanks for all of the fun Grandma and Grandpa! We love you!