Garrity Vacation!

(I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO POST THIS BEFORE WE LEFT!! BUT HERE IT IS!)

We are getting ready to leave for the Poconos (FINALLY!!!) and I wanted to get these photos from our Garrity vacation a couple of weeks ago up on the blog. We had a great time, as always -- as you can see from these faces!

We made s'mores. It took a loooooong time because we used charcoal instead of wood, but the end result was the same. Lots of sticky smiles!

Lizzie actually had the patience to sit there and get her marshmallow perfectly browned:

For those of you not on facebook, Hannah is wearing an eyepatch because of an altercation with her sister, of which I have only sketchy details. The result of the altercation was two corneal abrasions and a seven-day course of antibiotics. Which, as you can see from this photo, didn't bother Hannah at all.

 

Waiting (and waiting) for the fire to toast the marshmallows. Aunt Ann was ready with the chocolate and graham crackers:

 

Rob finally took over the fire pit and made enough heat to get things going.

We also took a tour around Somers, the town where my brother lives and where I grew up (well from the 4th grade!) Here's Lizzie at King Kone, deciding if she should eat the rest of my cone or her cone first:

Here's everyone at King Kone. When we were kids we'd take a Sunday drive and somehow this was always our last stop ... tasty memories!!

 

Here are my daughters showing off how strong they are at Reis Park. I used to go camping in this park back in the dark ages. One year it was so cold we huddled in the bathrooms to stay warm.

The town mascot is the Elephant, in honor of Old Bet, who was owned and taken around the country as part of a menagerie act by Hachaliah Bailey, who happened to live in Somers. The menagerie is the precursor to the modern circus, so Somers is considered the cradle of the American Circus (see, my blog is now educational!)

And speaking of educational, here's my elementary school. Rob is quizzing the girls on the different states and they were pretty good and walking to the correct states. However ROb was MOST impressive as he started on the west coast and walked the entire United States naming each state as he stepped on it.

The girls also had fun on Brenna's battery operated ATV. Here she is with Lizzie...

And then with Hannah... a great time was had by all for the weekend!! Thanks so much to our hosts Ann (and the unpictured unless you count his back in the King Kong photo) T.A.

The Whole Tooth

When I sent Hannah and Lizzie to camp I told them to listen to the counselors, be on their best behavior, make friends, have fun and not miss me (too much!) I apparently forgot to mention that they should come home in ONE PIECE.

So Hannah (being Hannah) did the one thing I forgot to mention. She came home in TWO pieces.

I got the call on Monday night that she'd been doing back flips in the pool and hit her mouth on the side of the pool and left a little piece of her at the bottom of the pool. That piece came from her front tooth.

So here is how Hannah looked a couple of weeks before I sent her to camp:

And this is how she looked when the camp director called me Monday night:

Now as you can see, she's SMILING, and somehow (in her totally Hannah way!) she did not injure her lip or her nose or chin. She ONLY broke her tooth. Since she was smiling and since she begged me to let her stay at camp, I made the executive decision to give her some advil and let her stay The next morning I called the dentist and pretty much told them that she was at camp (I didn't mention that the camp was 10 minutes from the dentist!) and she'd see the dentist when she was home. So today we went to the dentist and I got a little  yelled at for waiting a week to get the tooth treated (I seem to always get yelled at by this dentist, who, I believe would have us move in with him to monitor the girls' teeth if he could!) and a mere 30 minutes later Hannah looked like this:

Hannah's thrilled to have her smile back and the dentist told me it did not look like there was any root involvement at all. He said the tooth and the incisor next to it were both a little loose, but he figured they'd tighten up in the next two weeks when we have to go back just for a quick check. I think it's cool that he even put the little groove back in the bottom of her tooth!

We've got a consult with the orthodontist in a couple of weeks and will begin the process of getting braces, but for now all is well with Hannah's teeth.

Hershey Park!!

Another year at Hershey Park, thanks to Rob's company is in the books (and on the blog!) ROb's company treats us to a day at Hershey Park (food and parking included!) as their company picnic. We missed it last year, but made up for it this year. The park was celebrating Christmas in July so we heard a lot of holiday music and the characters were all dressed in their Christmas finery. It wasn't too hot, either. Previous years it's been well into the 90s, so we were grateful for high 80s. We also changed it up a little this year by inviting ROb's brother Sholto (Uncle Dude to the girls) to come along and take the girls on the rides that my neck couldn't handle. The girls had a great time as usual and didn't want to leave. In fact, the only thing that got them out of the park was the excitement that the next day they'd be going to their first year of sleep-away camp. Here they are with the Christmas Candy Bar:    

 Here's Lizzie on the Merry Go Round, which is the last ride that we do in the park. This helped get her ready for Horse Camp. :) You can see from this picture that this was NOT a scary ride (at least until I decided to get off the horse and lost my balance and well ... it wasn't graceful, but at least I didn't fall off the horse!)

 Here is Hannah on her trusty steed. Rob was riding behind me, so I don't have a picture of him, but he actually rode a horse that went up and down this year. He's so bold!

 This is the view from the Kissing Tower. It's not as good as the view from the London Eye, but then again, it's not in London. It was a great ride because it was AIR CONDITIONED!!

 Lizzie and Hannah getting ready to get started on their first roller coaster ride. I picked a moderate ride for their first time and they loved it, so I'm sure there will be more in their future.

Here's Uncle Dude who chaperoned the first coaster ride. I had the excuse of a bad neck. Be sure to ask Rob what HIS excuse was...:

 Both girls said this was their favorite ride, though. It was a flying thing and you could steer it. Hannah sure looks like she's having a great time!!

 Lizzie's not sure if she wants to let Hannah take the rudder or not...

 And she's a lot more nervous just before it started, but she did have a great time on the ride:

 Here is Rob and Sholto's favorite part -- reading the Hershey Park Map:

 Another fun ride. THey ended up on it with two older kids who spun it around in the air. It was so funny to watch them!

 Lizzie's pretty sure she's not going to like this!

 Help me! But it was too late, they were off and around and she loved it:

 

And here's the giant pirate ship and yet another great facial expression by Lizzie:

 Here's another fun aspect of the day for Rob. Free food! We usually go back a second time before the buffet closes at 4 p.m. and this day was no exception. What WAS different is that the gang got stuck in a line so we had to sprint across the park to get to the buffet with enough time to spare to down a couple more burgers and dogs and BBQ chicken! Can't wait until next year!!

Summer begins

Here's our 4th of July weekend (and a few other days, too!) in pictures. I've got a separate post for our trip to Hershey Park, so stay tuned for that.

We used to spend a lot more time at playgrounds, but now the girls (Lizzie, actually) worries that it's babyish to go to a playground, so we ONLY go to playgrounds where there is NO ONE else around. Luckily the playground at poole forge is usually empty, so we went there to play:

 

The ice cream parlor that we've been going to for years closed over the winter and there was much sadness in the Rasmussen family. However someone bought the place in the spring AND kept it as an ice cream parlor so we did our best to support them on the 4th of July:

And, of course we NEVER miss a chance to support Yocco's so we drove out there on the 4th, too. Don't you love ROb's hat? Lizzie does NOT but she was loving the Yocco's so much that she barely noticed he was wearing it during lunch:

 

Cash was enjoying the summer weekend, too, as it was cool enough to drive with the windows open and what dog doesn't like that?

This was a momentous occasion this summer. I FINALLY got my clothesline. We're still working out some of the kinks ... like how to keep the heavy towels off the ground ... but I LOVE it. And for once the bathing suits and wet towels are not all over my floor or my deck. Summer WIN!!!

As I write this, the girls are at camp. They needed ALL new shoes for camp, so here they are. The good news is that (not including Lizzie's cowboy boots which were bought elsewhere) I got all seven of these shoes shipped to my house from Payless (those are my sneakers at the bottom of the picture, which are also new!)

THe girls LOVE Sonic and ROb hates Sonic, so we take summer lunchtime as Sonic time.

Here are some shots from our pool. As you can see Rob loves to do a little light reading. THat's Hannah in the background. I have no idea what she is doing! The dark spot underwater to her left is Lizzie:

We did go to WalMart and purchase some pool toys and here's the whale we got. Lizzie's holding him, but Hannah wants everyone to know that SHE was the one who blew him up, which was pretty impressive:

Our summer has been marred by some sadness, as Sunshine, our most beloved hamster (because she has never bitten anyone) passed away a week or so ago. We were all very sad, but Sunshine lived a good life and brought us lots of joy. She had a nice funeral and is resting peacefully in a hair color box in her grave out by the creek in our front yard.

THe girls each made grave markers for their hamsters. (Cotton died a year or more ago and has since been replaced by Cinnamon who bites EVERYONE). I had to mix the plaster. The kit came with this nifty mask, which I think makes me look like a surgeon ... oh what might have been...:

We finished off 4th of July weekend at Aunt Terry's pool/barbecue. It stopped raining for about 10 minutes so the girls took full advantage of the pool. Here they are being their usual serious selves:

While they were swimming Lizzie looked up and saw the sun shining through the clouds and said it was Sunshine saying hello, so I snapped a picture of it:

Next up ... Hershey Park with Uncle Dude!!!

 

The End of Spring

I know, I know ... it's been a month since I posted anything. Well let me tell you not only have things been their usual crazy busy around here, I also had computer problems. It would take HOURS for photos to load into blogger.
So, I solved that problem by purchasing a new computer. I'm trying to move some photos over, but I think I've got enough to let you know what we've been doing for the past couple of months.

Lizzie is obsessed with hummingbirds. I have no idea why, but when Rob took her to the store and said she could buy herself something special, she picked a hummingbird feeder. She and I made the solution (sugar water) and set the thing out. I had NO confidence that any hummingbirds would show up, but by the next day we were a regular truck stop for hummingbirds. Lizzie was thrilled:

The Girl Scout Father Daughter dance took up a lot of my time at the end of May. It was a terrific time though according to ME. I was the DJ as well as the host, but luckily I had a couple of crafty moms to help out with the decorations. Here are Rob and Hannah dancing. Lizzie wasn't into dancing as much as she was complaining that Hannah was hogging daddy all the time, but I think complaining makes her happy, so she had a good time, too.

Here's the gym at the girls elementary school that we turned into the dance hall. The white building with the pink door was the photo booth we hired for the night and it was a HUGE hit. The table in the foreground has a craft project that were bookmarks that could be made and decorated with the set of photos from the photo booth.

Here's my gang at the dance. They are standing in front of the balloon arch that the other moms made. It also was a huge hit, especially at the end of the evening when we took it apart and the girls got to take balloons home:

Here's the snack table with the chocolate fountain. By the time the girls and their dads all arrived this table was filled with snacks all great for dipping in the chocolate. Yum!

No sooner had the Father Daughter Dance ended then we had another girl scout event. THe Leader Daughter activity is just for leaders and their daughters to thank them for sharing us with the troop for the year. We've done cooking and line dancing and theater games and this year we made fairy gardens. Here is Hannah and her garden:

Lizzie's fairy garden:

A closer look at Hannah's garden:

A closer look at Lizzie's garden:

 We didn't get to have our last day of school picnic on the last day of school because it was pouring (and frankly it feels like it's been pouring ever since!) so the next day we celebrated with cinnamon buns on the deck.

Stay tuned for more posts now that I've got the computer up and running!!