Cali: Days 1 and 2

So I was worried about Karissa flying. My ears are really sensitive when we fly and they usually pop a lot and sometimes even cause pain. I was praying hers would not bother her the way mine bother me. We got to the airport, through security (why do they tell you that you need to "declare" formula and baby food in your carry on bags if they aren't even going to care...I had to yell to even get the lady's attention and she barely acknowledged it when I told her), and to our gate right as they were part way through boarding. My plan was to put an overnight diaper on Karissa just before the flight so that the chances of me having to change her on the plane decreased, but since we were running late, I didn't have time. For those that have never had to change a baby on an airplane - be thankful.  The plane is moving and you have to try to hold your baby with one hand and change her with the other hand, meanwhile Karissa was screaming because she was scared (I can't blame her, she probably felt like she was about to roll off the table).  I had planned on Dave helping, but the bathroom of course is too small and for him to stand at the door would block the other bathroom that people were using.  What a pain!  The flight actually went well. Karissa didn't seem to have any problems with her ears and was pretty happy most of the flight. She did get a little squirmy at times, but I would just pull out a different toy and she was fine. The only times she cried was when I could tell she was tired and I tried to make her take a nap, so I gave up on trying. She did fall asleep twice for a few minutes each time, so not much, but oh well. When we landed a few people said how good she was.

After we landed, we had to find baggage claim and the rental car shuttles. I was always afraid of LAX and JFK and other really big airports. LAX really is huge, but we didn't have any problems finding where we needed to go, it was just difficult getting through the huge crowds of people with all of our stuff.

At the rental car place, we found out they didn't have any "midsize" vehicles left (it totally reminded me of the "Seinfeld" episode with Jerry renting a car: "You don't have a problem taking the reservation, just keeping the reservation...") so they offered us a minivan. It meant more money spent on gas, but it was kind of nice to have even more room for all of the driving we did during the week.

Finally, it was off to our resort. Let me tell you, TV and all other media are not exaggerating about LA traffic. Anytime we went anywhere, there was a ton of traffic even though almost all of the roads we were on were 8 or more lanes. It took us about an hour to get to Oxnard (the next town over was Ventura Beach). We got checked in and unpacked some stuff. Our apt. was very nice and we were only about 1/2 block to the beach. We checked out the beach and discovered swings and a slide on the beach so Karissa loved that. Then the only other thing we did was go for groceries and then crashed for the night.

On Tuesday, Dave's mom was joining us. We had to go to the airport to pick her up and one of the things I was interested in doing was the LA Zoo, so we figured we'd do that as we were in LA to get Dave's mom. We were late to get his mom because of course we had to sit in more bumper to bumper traffic and I was a nervous wreck because Dave would try to change lanes and people out there don't use signals or give you notice, they just jump from lane to lane without looking or anything. Thankfully, I wasn't driving. We got his mom and headed to the zoo. The zoo was really nice. It was big and had a lot, but not overwhelmingly huge. I haven't been to the Philly Zoo in years, but it kinda reminded me of that only WAY cheaper and free parking. :) Karissa loved to sit up in her stroller to check out the animals. She found many of them funny and would giggle at them. However, the last animal that I expected to be standing in front of for several minutes was the bighorn sheep. Karissa found them hilarious when they would jump from one "mountain" to the other. She would laugh and laugh. Eventually, the other sheep had to come get a better look at her because of all the noise she was making. It was so cute!

We also discovered there was a gorgeous park a few blocks away from our resort with lots of palm trees.  We walked down there and Karissa enjoyed the swings, a dolphin toy (dolphins are my fave) and a sea turtle (Dave's fave...except I cut off the turtle's head...oops).

I was really looking forward to this vacation, but I didn't think California was all that...I kinda thought "It'll be cool to see once, but that'll probably be it." But so far, I was very impressed with the place!

Cali Vacation: Before we left

Hey everyone! I am separating our vacation blog into several smaller ones...less time for me to get it typed out and less overwhelming for the readers...if we have any. :)

Before I get to our actual vacation, I need to vent. I debated about not even doing a blog about the vacation. I was actually VERY close to not blogging about it and not saying anything on Facebook about it. It seems like this year EVERYBODY is giving us a hard time about our vacations. We really didn't go on much more this year than any other year so I don't know if it is because everybody says when you have kids all of the traveling stops and we are proving them wrong or what. Let me back up to before Dave and I were married: we agreed before we walked down the aisle that vacations were very important to us. They didn't have to be super fancy or expensive, but getting away from the stresses of everyday life and work and reconnecting as a couple (and family in the future) were very important. In today's world with the divorce rate so high, we want to protect our marriage as much as possible and we knew a vacation away from stress and time to just spend together was very important. So not too long after we had been married, we had the opportunity to purchase a time share. We went into the presentation thinking it would be a rip off, but Dave crunched the numbers (if you know him, you know how good he is at that)and found that if we really did want to vacation as much as we said, it would save us money in the long run.

So at the end of each year, Dave has to put in for his vacation for the next year. In a way, this is a pain, but it also helps us plan what we want to do and start saving for it. (i.e. this Cali vacation was booked and paid for in February). We also put our tax return into a higher interest savings account and that is our vacation money. Now, for this year, which people have been giving us a hard time about:

Hilton Head, SC: This cost us the place for the week (we stay for a whole week for less than what most people spend on a hotel for one night) and half of gas to get down there since we rode together. We invited my family and they offered to buy the food for the week since we were letting them join us. We did go out to lunch one day, but that's it.
Ohio: This was just a long weekend using Dave's days off so he didn't use much vacation time. We stayed with family so no lodging or food costs. This only cost us gas and activities that we did.
King's Fest: We camp to save money and cook all of our meals.
TLC: Dave used vacation time for this, yes, but this was a chance we had to take some teens to a really good conference. One teen got saved, so I'd say this trip was worth it, but it wasn't a "vacation."
Upstate New York/PA: Again we stayed with family so had no lodging or food costs.
California: This trip was probably a bit more expensive only because we decided to do more exploring. Our lodging again was less than one night in a hotel for the week and we bought groceries and cooked most of our meals. The only reason this was a bit more was because California is really big so we spent more in gas to explore different places, but who knows if and when we'd get out there again. We also flew, but Dave found super cheap rates to fly out there.

So hopefully people will understand and stop their "Again???" when we are leaving for another vacation. And if they don't, well, I've decided they can think what they want, we wouldn't trade the family time we have together exploring more of the country for anything and I'm going to enjoy it and cherish it regardless of peoples' reactions.

I need a break!!!!!!

So, I love our family and all that we do together. I love every activity that is on my calendar. However, I think I need a break. I have only been getting about 4 hours of sleep at night because my brain just can't shut off from thinking about all that I didn't get done that day, all that needs to get done the next day, the next week, etc. We are leaving Karissa again tonight. :( We're off to another game....hopefully they play and its not postponed, but I also hope we aren't freezing because we're soaked. Tomorrow is our niece's first birthday and a teen event. Sunday is church and we have a teen Bible study and we leave Monday for our vacation to Cali. I'm not sure when in there I am going to pack. I started a little last night, but it's hard because when Karissa is awake she wants to get into everything, but when she's asleep I can't get into her room to get things that I'm thinking of.

I'm also very nervous about flying with her. At first, I was worried about her ears because mine are very sensitive to the pressure changes and usually hurt so I'm worried hers will be too. Now I've moved past that and am just worried about keeping her entertained for the flight. We couldn't really afford to book her a seat so we figured she'd be on our laps, but we booked the flights several months ago so I wasn't thinking about how old she'd be. She's mobile now and doesn't like to sit still. If she'd be in her car seat, she might be okay, but on our laps she's going to want down or to grab our drinks or just move around more than we'll have room for. I guess we'll see.

So needless to say, I haven't weighed in. I don't even want to see the scale. I haven't had time to do any sort of exercise and forget eating healthy. I've totally fallen off the wagon. I need to get back on, but I'm so overwhelmed by everything else that I have to do, I don't know where to squeeze in a 30 min. run. That really stinks because I was really enjoying it. I'll have to figure something out, but it won't be until after next week (although I'm hoping maybe to get a few beach side runs in next week!).

So hopefully my rambling makes sense. If not, remember I'm working on 4 hours of sleep a night for the past couple of weeks!

Yankees Playoff Game

As Megan said, we have been very busy lately. One of the most fun things we've done was go to the Yankees playoff game 2 of the division series against the Twins. I won't go into all the details of the game but it was a great game. On the way up to the game we missed an exit and what is normally a 3 hr trip turned into an almost 6 hr trip. That made us late for the game. We really didn't miss anything though because we saw the pitches on tv's while we were walking to our seats. The Yankees gave up a run in the 6th inning and then the Yankees scored in the bottom of the 6th to tie. The Twins took the lead back with 2 runs in the 8th inning. Then in the bottom of the 9th inning Mark Teixeira got his first hit of the series and A-Rod followed that up with a monster home run to tie the game. The stadium was going nuts. It was so awesome. Then after Yankees' pitcher David Robertson got out of a bases loaded and nobody out jam in the 11th inning, Mark Teixeira hit a walk off HR near where we were sitting in the bottom of the 11th to win the game. The place really went nuts then. It took us forever to get out of the parking garage and we didn't get home until 3:30am. It was worth it though. We are going to the ALCS game 1 also against the Angels this Friday and then leave on vacation to California Monday and plan on seeing the Yanks play the Angels in Anaheim also if it works out. Here are some pictures of the game. The last 3 pictures are the big screen after Teixeira's walk off HR, the Yankees celebrating the win, and Teixeira getting a pie in the face from AJ Burnett.

Long time!!!

Sorry everybody! We've been busy, busy, busy. So busy, this past week Karissa and I even missed our library time because I forgot with everything else that was going on. We have so much to update you on.

Karissa's birthday party is in the process of being planned. I think I decided a "theme" even though I wasn't originally going to do a theme. I found one that fits perfectly. Keep your eyes open for invitations and more info.

Friday Dave and I went to a Yankees playoff game. We knew it would be too loud and too late for Karissa so we were going to have someone watch her. It turns out my sister and her son were coming to visit. I knew if she didn't watch Karissa, she might not see her much. So Karissa spent her first night away from home and away from us. :( We would like to go away for our 5 year anniversary, so we need to start somewhere. Thankfully, Dylan (our nephew), kept her entertained since she has seemed to be going through some separation anxiety lately. And I did okay too....until Saturday morning. I was ready to get her then and couldn't get to my parents' fast enough. She did really well, but has been a little clingy. Can't blame her there. :)

So, I'll let Dave blog about the game because he probably remembers more details that I do, but it was GREAT!!!!! It was even more exciting and thrilling than being at the Home Run Derby (pics are separate for that post)and the last game we went to at the old Yankee Stadium.

Karissa Update

So as promised, here is the update on Karissa. She has been so close to crawling so we knew it would be any day. That little stinker waited until Sunday evening when we were at a wedding and she was home with her Grammy to do it. We missed it!!! Dave's mom was watching her and thought we didn't tell her she was crawling so we had to tell her she wasn't and that if she did, it was her first time. There's a video below of that. She also started "cruising." She walks around the coffee table while holding on to it. She's definitely keeping us busy. We're hopefully going to get to the beach this afternoon since we are running out of days that are warm enough. We've also figured out where we're having her party. We swore we would not be those parents that dropped a ton of money on a party she won't remember. However, if we had it at our house, it would be crowded and lot of preparation/clean up afterwards would be involved so we thought it would be nice to have it somewhere else so that we can just enjoy the day with her. It seems extravagant where we are having it, but it is actually one of the cheapest places around! You'll have to wait and see. ;) Anyway, there's also her 10 month picture below and a video of her reaction to bubbles. We had some bubbles left over from our friends' wedding Sunday and discovered that she loves them. She also loves to dance. I love the little head bob she does. lol As Dave and I say, it's just proof that dancing comes naturally (for those that believe dancing is a sin). We will also be leaving her for the longest amount of time on Saturday. We're taking some teens to a concert festival outside of DC. We will be leaving before 6am and not getting home until well after midnight. That means we'll go from Friday night to Sunday morning without seeing her. I'm very nervous about how she'll be since she doesn't eat well with other people and how I'll be for such a long day. However, we'd really like to go away for our 5 year anniversary next summer so I have to work up to leaving her for a few days and I guess this is a start. :( We'll see how it goes. Have a great end to the week and thanks for reading as I brag about my daughter! lol

It's Wednesday!!!!

So it's Wednesday, which means weigh-in day. I know that I keep saying I'm going to get back to posting more regularly and don't. I really am going to try this week. For my weigh-in, I'm up .8lbs. Not happy, but not too upset. I started back running on Monday and plan to go again today. Since it was so long since my last run and I'm not in very good shape, I decided just to start the program at the beginning again. Dave even went with me. I feel so much better now that I am back into getting active again. P.S. Look for another post later this evening or tomorrow about Karissa - she's now crawling.

Weigh in Wednesday

Just a quick post. We had a great vacation as you can see from the pics below. Karissa and I were ready to get back home and back into our routine though. Things are getting back to normal and I'm hoping by the end of today I'll have my housework caught up. We also got to go back to our library program. We both missed it so much. It's a lot of fun. Anyway, I didn't weigh in last week because of being gone, but regardless, I am VERY happy with what I saw today. Somehow, while on vacation, I managed to lose 3 pounds in the last 2 weeks! :) I think I needed to see that to get back on track with watching my portions and getting active again. We got so busy and then on vacation we were staying on a fairly busy street that didn't have much of a shoulder that I haven't gone for a run in a long time. I'm eager to get back into it though. Now, I need to make sure I buy and set aside 3 lbs. of canned goods for the Shrink for Good challenge!

Lancaster

Our last stop was at Megan's sister's for a few days. Here are some pictures from there.

More

Our next stop was Yankees Stadium. We just happened to be at the game where Derek Jeter tied Lou Gehrig for most hits in a career as a Yankee. Here are pictures from that game including Jeter getting the tying hit.

Pictures

While we were up there, we went and walked the gorge in Watkins Glen and saw Taughannock Falls about an hour away. Here are some pictures of those places along with pictures of us at Seneca Lake near Geneva.

Upstate NY

Hello everyone, I just thought I would update you on our vacation. First we went to upstate NY to see my family. All my family lives in upstate NY. Only my immediate family and grandfather live in DE. Now that you are updated on that...We left last Thursday and went to Dundee to stay with my cousin, Benji and his wife and 3 daughters (4, 2, 2). He and I have always been real close and try to see each other a couple times a year. I'm also very close with his brother Fred. They are big Yankees fans so we had a great time visiting them and watching Yankees games. While we were there, we went to Toronto to see the Yanks play the Blue Jays. They only got 1 hit so it wasn't a great game to go see but it was cool to go to Canada to see them. Here are a few pictures of the trip to NY and Canada. We stopped and saw Niagara Falls on the way up.

New Challenge

Hey everyone! Just checking in...I'm back with the Shrinking Jeans now. I missed the start of their last challenge and didn't join. :( Then their next challenge needs a Wii, which I don't have...so I was getting a little bummed. Now, they have another challenge that I CAN do. It's Shrink For Good. Every pound I lose, I buy a perishable food item to donate. So I'm helping our community while losing weight. I had some time off from running. I really like the Couch to 5K, but with everything going on, I missed so much. So I decided to start over again. Dave even went with me once. Oh, and the best part is, I scored a jogging stroller off Craigslist for $20!!!! Can't beat that! Dave and I also went to play tennis one evening. We're hoping to go again soon. So, hopefully, I can keep running in NY. We leave tomorrow for another trip. We're going to upstate New York to see some of Dave's family. The main thing that I think might stop me, will be that I won't know the neighborhood to run. We have a lot planned for the trip too. Friday we are going to go to Niagra Falls because I've never been there and then Karissa is going to leave the country for the first time and we're going to see the Yankees in Toronto. We'll be visiting family the rest of the weekend through next Wednesday. Next Wednesday, we leave and head to the city for another Yankees game. We'll stay in Jersey for the night and then head to PA on Thursday to visit my sister and her family for a few days. Busy, busy, busy. I'll hopefully check in while we're away, but I'm not sure exactly when...Have a great weekend!

August pictures

Here are pictures for this month....I wasn't too good at keeping pics up to date on here so I did a slide of most of them. There are some from beach days, Melinda's visit (Dave's sister), Traci and Dylan's visit (my sister and our nephew), our NYC trip and maybe a few others. Have a great week and I'll try to post in the next couple of days.

It's been so long...do we have any readers left?

What a horrible blogger I am....it's been more than 2 weeks since our last post....horrible I know. I'll be shocked if anyone is still reading since it's been so long. Because it's been so long, I can't even remember what we need to fill everyone in on. Back on Aug. 6-7th we went to NYC. We saw the Yankees beat Boston on the 6th. That was good because the last time I saw a Yanks/Sox game, it didn't go so well lol. (I don't have a blog about it and don't really want to relive it, but if you don't know us too closely, let's just say we got stuck in Jersey City for a weekend with no place to stay...) This game went much better. Yanks had such a lead we left a little early because Karissa was tired and wouldn't sleep in that noise. The energy at the game was great as always, but there are definitely no open seats when the Red Sox are playing the Yankees so it was packed and loud...and little miss nosey won't sleep if there is something going on. So we left the game and headed to our hotel. Took a little under an hour to go like 10 miles to our hotel. Everyone else decided to leave early too I guess. We drove through the city (my first time in a car in the city), right through Times Square, to our hotel. Our hotel was very nice. However, I had forgotten our Pack n Play. Can you believe it??? As many times as we have traveled with Karissa and I forget one of the main things and we weren't spending the money to buy one (if it were formula or something, we could just buy more). So we asked about cribs (I swore she would never sleep in a hotel crib, but thought we'd ask for one and I could see how bad it looked..it was a very nice hotel after all lol). Waited about 15 minutes and finally get a call back that they don't have any left. We asked for some extra blankets thinking we'd lay Karissa on the floor, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally I put a towel on the floor because it was going on 1am and Karissa needed to sleep. Of course, then they came with the blankets. So, their night staff wasn't the best, but I'd still stay at that hotel again. It was very nice, two blocks to Times Square, yet out of the way enough where you don't have to worry about stopping on a super busy street to unload your stuff. The next day we went to Union Square, Times Square, and Central Park. Karissa loved Central Park, including the fast carousel. She also loved all of the tall buildings. She was looking up and talking the whole time. She loved NYC, which is great, because we do too! So after NYC, we were busy with family because Dave's sister was in town, then my sister and our nephew were in town, then we had teen things going on...whew! So here we are almost 20 days since our last post. And this post probably doesn't make much sense since I'm not fully awake yet. Hope we still have a few reading our blog. Karissa and I are off to return DVD's and books to the library, get new ones, and then probably spending some time at the park since it's right next to the library. I'm also hopefully going to work on pictures today and put some on here. Have a great day everyone.

Catching Up

I'm sorry it's been so long since we blogged but I will attempt to catch you up. This could take you an hour or so to read so grab a bag of popcorn or something. Just kidding. Sorry, I hope I didn't cause any of you weight losers to gain weight from that. OK, let's see, softball season is over. I always enjoy it but this year was challenging for me as a coach to not get too frustrated and not to lose my testimony because of bad umpiring. Well, we ended up next to last in our division and lost the first two games in the tournament. Not very impressive. I did get to play in the all star game and that was fun. I entered the home run derby and hit none. (I didn't feel bad because nobody hit any except one person and he hit one and was the winner. lol) Last Monday, July 27th we left for Baptist Bible College in PA and took 3 of our teens from church to Teen Leadership Conference. This is a conference I went to as a teenager and loved it and wanted to take our teens to it. At first we were disappointed we only had 3 go but it was well worth it. My mom was going to go and help with Karissa but she wasn't able to go so we just took Karissa to the sessions (we didn't want to use the daycare when it was people we didn't know). She did very well except the late session each night was too much for her so Megan usually had to take her back to our room so she could go to bed. We had a good time and learned a lot that we hope to implement into our youth group. One of our guys accepted Christ as his personal savior!! It was so awesome and we are very excited to see what God does in his life. Please remember him in your prayers. His name is Zach. Tonight we are going to our second Yankees game of the season at Yankee Stadium as a family. (I went to a game back on July 25th with a friend from work.) We are seeing them play the Red Sox. Hopefully they can get a win and break out of the funk they are in against the Sox so far this year. We are staying in New York after the game and spending the next day doing some fun things in the city. This is our anniversary present to ourselves. Oh yeah, we celebrated our 4th anniversary back on July 23rd. We celebrated by going to an awesome restaurant in Ocean City, MD called Horizon's that has a great buffet with snow crab legs, steamed shrimp, prime rib, fried clams, and tons of other stuff. We realized all of our anniversarys including our wedding have been overlooking the water except 1 but that was very close so we decided from now on, we will always eat at a restaurant everlooking the water (by water we don't mean a pond or lake) no matter if we are celebrating at home or away. Karissa has been growing like a weed. She is now 8 months, 2 weeks old. We aren't able to get a good length check on her ourselves but we keep track of her weight with our baby scale. At last check a few days ago she was at 16lbs 11 ounces. She started saying dada while we were in PA. That has been so cool. I love it! She talks all the time now. She still isn't crawling but she is getting close we think. She would much prefer to stand up and try to walk with mommy holding her hands. Well, I think that mostly catches you up. I'll have Megan blog on her couch to 5K fun she is doing!! Ha ha.

Quick weigh in

Just a quick weigh in post. It's our last week for this challenge at The Sisterhood. I'm down just under 1 lb...not much, but not bad considering for the past few weeks I've had no motivation. Thankfully, I got my motivation back - I started the Couch 2 5K program on Monday. I was too out of shape to really do it completely, but today I did it because I just jogged instead of worrying about my pace. I feel great! Hopefully, this is something I can stick with. Talk to you later!

100 Posts!!!!

Wow! I was just checking out my blogger to see what's new on the blogs I follow(gotta great diaper deal if you are in need of diapers...more later) when I see that Dave's post made it our 100th post! Can you believe it?! In a way that sounds like so many, but in another way it sounds like we've hardly done any. So I have a lot of miscellaneous things to say, so if you are looking for a special post because we made it to 100, look elsewhere (just kidding - I hope you don't!). Seeing 100 posts reminded me of why we started this blog...to share our exciting news of being pregnant. I can't believe she is going to be 8 months old in a couple of days. She is growing so fast! She's 16 lbs. now...never thought we'd see the day. Of course, formula will make any baby grow, not my choice, but oh well. She scoots around and rolls back and forth. She tries to crawl, but only moves a little tiny bit. She actually prefers to stand and hold hands and walk...she might be the kind of baby that skips crawling. Thankfully, my mom had a baby gate that we can use for when she does start moving so I can keep her out in the living room area without having to chase her down the hall. Anyway, I was getting on here to post a video of her signing "more"..it's so cute. She signs "milk" and "more" now. She knows "eat" and "all done". We're going to start working on "sleep" next. Also, we're in for another busy week: getting a family picture done today, Dave has a softball game tonight, we have people coming for dinner tomorrow and possibly another softball game, Wednesday is our last time at the library program for the summer (Karissa has read enough to get 2 free books!!! She could have gotten more had I signed her up at the beginning of the summer reading program instead of halfway through it), Thursday is our 4th anniversary, Friday is scrapbooking. Hopefully we'll be getting to the beach somewhere in there too. And next week we leave to take the teens to TLC. Back to our anniversary though - I can't believe we've been married for 4 years!!! Time goes too fast. Dave asked me what I wanted to do and I decided we are too overdue for a NYC trip...it's been almost a year! So he started checking out the hotels, but then we decided since we are going for a game in August, we'd just make that an overnight. So for our actual anniversary we will probably be hanging out at the beach and going to dinner...relaxing and enjoyable. Then we'll go to NYC to celebrate later...and we splurged and are staying IN the city this time! :) (Not that I don't love going to our Hyatt in Jersey with the view of the city, but it will be cool to actually stay in the city for once.) Back to the deal I mentioned earlier - My sister showed me some money saving blogs a few months ago and Dave and I are always checking them. We've gotten printer paper and photo paper and many other things practically for free and some other things real cheap, but last Friday I scored the ultimate deal thanks to those blogs. I usually buy diapers at BJ's because they have the best prices and I can use a BJ's Luvs coupon and a manufacturer's Luvs coupon, but this month BJ's only had Pampers coupons and they are way too expensive. So, Rite Aid is having a thing when you buy $50 worth of participating products, you get a $25 gift card (Rite Aid is where we buy a lot of our toiletries because of their Single Check Rebates...our July check is up to $21 already). Huggies were listed as participating products. There is also a rebate for a free package of Huggies when you buy 5 and a $2 rebate on a mega package. SOOOO...I learned to do certain coupons and two separate transactions. I spent $37.24 out of pocket. I will get back a $25 gift card, a coupon for free diapers up to $11.49 and a $2.00 rebate. I basically got paid $1.25 to buy 2 mega packs of diapers, 3 packs of Little Swimmers, a gallon of milk, a box of Qtips...and I can't remember if there was anything else. I was SOOO excited, but I wanted to wait until my rebates got approved to get too excited. I was worried I did something wrong, but all the rebates were approved yesterday! :) Anyway, most of you are yawning now so sorry I rambled and bored you. Have a great week!

Sorry for lack of posting.

**UPDATE: Pics are in a slideshow below. Scroll over the pic to see the caption.** I have been so busy with softball that I never get on here to post anymore. Megan mentioned yesterday posting about King's Fest so I figured I would go ahead. So we were thankful to have the Pilot to take to King's Fest. There is absolutely no way we would have packed everything into the Accord. Not to mention having a beautiful girl sitting in a car seat and all her stuff packed in. Anyway, we had a pretty good drive there and Karissa was a very good girl. She didn't enjoy the traffic backed up around DC but none of us did. It took us close to 4 hours to get there. We immediately got unpacked and Megan and I put up both tents and got all of our stuff unpacked in record time. We went to the store and got groceries and enjoyed the rest of our first evening. Thursday, we went to King's Dominion and had a great time riding rides and watching Karissa ride the rides she could ride. Her favorite was the Scooby Doo ride. She was so wide eyed looking at everything as we rode through. (I will have Megan post all the pictures in another post because I am at work and don't have access to the pictures here.) We all took turns babysitting so others could ride rides and it worked out great. (Megan's mom, Cathy, went to help out with Karissa and it was great having her there.) Karissa was such a good girl and seemed to enjoy KD just like she did Cedar Point. On Friday Megan and I went into the park alone and rode rides and were disappointed because many were shut down and others didn't run all the time and we didn't get to ride much. Overall we had a great time and enjoyed all the concerts we went to and Karissa slept awesome even though we had some loud neighbors and she was very good with her mom-mom watching her. I would say our first camping trip with a baby was a big time success and we look forward to many more to come. We didn't come home saying we definitely will be back next year because the music just wasn't up to the level it usually is. They had two borderline Christian groups this year (Switchfoot and Relient K) and they brought a different type of people that weren't enjoyable to be around a lot of the time. That said, Switchfoot did a really good show and we enjoyed all the other concerts. We didn't really care for Relient K and I wouldn't go out of my way to see them again. I'm sure we will go back next year though, because of groups like David Crowder Band, Skillet, and Jeremy Camp. Our next trip will begin Monday, July 27 when we take 3 of our teens to Teen Leadership Conference in PA for a week. We are nervous about it because we aren't sure how Karissa will be and we aren't sure we want to leave her in daycare with people we don't know. Please pray everything will work out and we will get an awesome blessing out of this week. Please leave comments!! We haven't heard from many of you lately. I know it's our fault since we haven't posted much but still....

Anyone there?

Sorry it has been so long. We have been SUPER busy. We got back from Ohio and Dave's sister, Melinda, was visiting so we were busy with getting unpacked and cleaned up from our mini-vacation and then visiting with her and then went to PA for a couple of days. Then had a couple really busy days here (Sunday was church and a friend's party, Monday was laundry, packing, and a softball game, and yesterday was a couple of meetings and more packing). Whew! There are just a few pics below of the time we spent with family. This morning Karissa and I are going to our library program, then to pick up my mom, home, and then leave for King's Dominion. Even though we are thoroughly exhausted and I'm a little worried about Karissa camping, we're looking forward to this year's King's Fest. Switchfoot will be there this year so I'm looking forward to seeing them again (they've never been to King's Fest that I know of). Of course there's the usual Jeremy Camp and David Crowder Band that we always look forward to also. So...it is Wednesday...last week I didn't even post it because we were so busy and I had gained a couple pounds (gulp). I know why I did though and I won't get into that...besides Cheryl's good cooking and the ice cream. I'm down 1 lb this week, but the challenge ends in 2 weeks so there's no way I'm meeting my original goal and had to adjust. I'm going to try for 4 more lbs. before the end. We'll see. Next week, hopefully I'll be back into posting more regularly. Have a great weekend everyone!