Ve Vant to Suck Your Candy

It rained buckets tonight! But ve still had tons of fun. Ve dressed up as the "Counts" since Emma loves to count everything in sight, and Charlotte only had her inscisors vhen ve got our costumes. Ve made it around to a fev of our friends, but loaded up on victims/candy Friday at the vard Trunk or Treat party. Levi and Emma dressed as Vampires, Charlotte vas the Countess in bat form, and Torrie vas the victim of 3 serious sugar highs.

Sissies discussing the plans for the evening.

The sugar junkies ready for some after dark prey

Charlotte practicing her blood sucking on this inocent piece of chocolate

Interview vith the Vampires

The 4th of .... WHAT?!

I'll start off by saying that I love the 4th of July. I consider myself to be a patriotic person, I'm very grateful for this country I live in and the inspiration behind it. So needless to say, I was very excited to spend this holiday in our quaint upstate NY town of Saratoga Springs. Its what you think of when you think of quaint small town complete with a main street:) I was overjoyed to hear that there would be a parade among other festivities. So we got the girls ready and headed for downtown. Yes, I know TECHNICALLY I live five miles south but there REALLY isn't a whole lot here so we spend a lot of time up in Saratoga, anyways, back to the story. We parked and walk to Broadway to see the parade. It started with police cruisers clearing the way......
I WAS WAY DISAPPOINTED. This parade consisted of some old cars for the car show later that day, a fire truck or two that was throwing sticks of gum "LAME" (handfuls of candy are customary!) , one group of student athletes, and a huge group of random residents and their dogs! I felt ripped off! The coolest thing was a group that dressed up like Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers. Where was the floats, the groups of veterans, The police doing tricks on their motorcycles, the high school band? I don't think Miss Saratoga Springs even had a court... and it lasted like 20 min!

I will say that at that moment I missed the blowout parade in Provo, sigh, oh well.

There were some high lights, afterwards several of the local restaurants participated in a BBQ and dessert tasting. so we walked around and got samples. We also hit up the carousel, and played near the pond in the park. All in all it was more fun AFTER the parade and I was grateful that we made the effort to go LAST YEAR, when we were still in Provo.

Here are some cute pics anyways and we hope your 4th was good, better...

The girls trying to keep their hats as we waited for the parade. Charlotte is already a poser :)

Yes this was the parade still, like I said a random group of people and their dogs!

This is when Charlotte realized it was not "her father" who was holding her.....

Summer Fun

For those of you that may be wondering the months of hibernation have been totally worth it. The summer time in upstate NY it lots of fun!

Since our complex pool has opened on Memorial Day weekend we have gone swimming almost 3 times a week. Both Emma and Charlotte love the pool. Emma has gotten really good at swimming on her own. Who knows, by the end of the summer she may be able to swim without the floaties.

Charlotte on the other hand is fearless when it comes to the water. She will lean back in her float and put her face in the water, or try to climb out of the float when we are not looking. She loves splashing and moving in the water whether in her float or when we hold her. It is a really fun family activity either way to take our girls swimming.

The girls are becoming the best of friends! It is so fun to watch. Whatever one does the other wants to do. Charlotte loves to lay on her back and look around from upside down. Of course Emma had to try it. With Charlotte now crawling she spends all of her time trying to get to where Emma is just to have Emma move to get another toy. Also, Emma loves getting her hair done and now that Charlotte's is growing out Emma loves to include her in the post-bath/pre-bedtime ritual.

Emma's most recent obsession however is the Congress Park Carousel. Some how she can sense that track season is coming and she wants to ride a horsey! Yesterday on my day off we had to drive by 3 times to check to see if it was open. Unfortunately it rained all day and they never opened. Today however, we were able to go between rain storms.

Emma had a blast! It took her a few tries to settle on which of the wooden horses to ride, but it was so fun to see Emma have fun like she does on Papa Word's trusty bouncing horse Ginger. Emma had brought enough monies for 2 rides, although this was not even close to enough. We ended up staying to watch the Carousel go around 2 more times.

This is definitely going to be one of our summer traditions as long as we are in New York...

1st family vacay

I cannot say enough how much we love Levi's schedule. We did this last long weekend up right! Levi's wonderful co-worker was gracious and let us have the weekend in his time-share at the White Face Lodge, in Lake Placid. We left Friday at noon and by about 2:30 we were checking into our fabulous hotel room! At this resort there was an indoor-outdoor pool, game room, fitness center, free movie theater and popcorn, ice-cream parlor, spa, restaurant, tennis courts, and seasonal ice-skating rink.... I could have easily spent a month getting everything done just there at the resort.

This is the view of the pool complex and grounds from our room.

However we had the girlies with us so we spent our precious time in the fabulous pool and at the NIGHTLY s'more campfire. I don't think I've had s'mores since girls camp. It was fun to teach Emma, all she wanted to do was roast the "mallo" She would have one bite of the whole thing and be ready for another roast. With Emma constantly saying "You want one?...ok" we ate way too many but, we were having so much fun!
This resort has thought of everything, there was an underground tunnel between the pool complex and the main hotel so that guests could still enjoy the pool in the winter months. There were also huge robes to use on this little jaunt across the grounds so you wouldn't be cold after the pool.

With Emma's floaties she had a lot of freedom. This is just a taste of the fun she had. This is her enjoying the over powering effects of the "warm" jacuzzi. Its a good thing that the pool at our complex has opened, knowing that she can go all summer long is the only leverage we have to get her out of her "suit suit."

We also made the short drive through the adorable town to the Olympic Ski Jump facility. Lake Placid hosted the Olympics in 1932 and 1980, but some still practice there. We watched as young teens would go off the ski jump ramp and do flips into a bubbling pool. Levi and Emma also rode the ski lift up to the top of the long ski jump.

After this experience Emma wanted nothing more than to "jump in the pool" like the big kids . She must be Levi's child , their equilibrium and sense of balance is fantastic.

On the other hand, poor Charlotte is all mine. While in the pool, Daddy spun her around in her intertube a little too much. When I took her back over she was head down and moaning the all -too-familiar "moan of the dizzy" She may not have "Olympic figure skater" in her future, but we'll still love her!

awwwww....man!

So I thought that I was done with ghoulish posts with the passing of October... However I woke up this morning and my backyard looked eerily like something out of M. Night Shyamalan's " The Village." the fog was so thick I couldn't see the building next door. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the trees up here in New York, they make for the perfect autumn, and its SO green in summer, and I am sure spring is spectacular ....
But when the leaves fall and the trees look like skeletal hands and its so dense you know a person could easily get lost, its a little creepy! Now I know that I have an OVER-ACTIVE imagination, to say the least, I do try to control it. It doesn't help matters that my usually supportive husband has been trying to get me to watch, "The Village" for the past month and that he also delights in the history channel show, "Monster Quest", where we learned that we are on the edge of the national parks where Bigfoot has been sighted...and that I can't even cuddle with him for comfort because the moment the man falls asleep he twitches so much I might as well be a Bond martini, very very shaken.
The worst part is that it is so unnaturally quite in our complex that the forest comes alive at night. There is a race track behind the complex and it took a couple of nights of listening to this whooping sound to figure out it was the cars on the track and not Bigfoot and his friends. Plus the dense trees everywhere make it so pitch black on the roads I pray extra hard every time I go out on my own that our car will work so I won't be stranded somewhere. I think my imagination would get the best of me before anything could come and get me. I know you all think I am nuts that's probably true, oh well its what I have to work with. Does anyone know if there have been cases reported of people "keeling over" from overactive imagination, besides Anne Shirley, if not I just might be the first case....