Family Fun!

We decided it would be fun to take our boys to Day Out With Thomas. We were too late for his visit to the Baltimore Railroad Museum this year, and I'd heard good things about the Strasburg, PA location, so we turned it into a little vacation. Thursday we saw Thomas and miniature horses. Friday we went to an amusement park. And Saturday we visited Hershey's Chocolate World and the Turkey Hill Experience. We were pretty sure our toddler would love everything, and he did. We all did!

THURSDAY

Our toddler got a bit shy when he first saw Thomas.  He still gets excited when I show him this picture.

We arrived at the train station a little over an hour before our ticket time and looked around and went on a little train. I'm pretty sure our toddler was wondering why we weren't riding Thomas like he'd been promised.


But the time finally came and it was so much fun!


That's right, Thomas' eyes and mouth moved.


After riding Thomas we checked out the Thomas Tent to have lunch, and of course to play! We all got tattoos and our toddler considered the train tables for a bit but they were crowded so decided to play with the floor trains.



Before we left we enjoyed browsing the gift shop. And the gift shop enjoyed us.

The Railroad Museum is in Amish Country and a couple miles down the road is a Li'l Country Store and Miniature Horse Farm. We wanted to check out the store and see if our toddler wanted to ride a miniature horse. He said he did but I asked him too soon cause it had rained a little earlier and since it was wet out they weren't doing rides. But a little girl that was there when we arrived was feeding the horses hay and before Hot Cup or I went to help our toddler do it he started to do it all on his own! He loved feeding them.



He didn't eat much of the lunch we got him at the Thomas event, but when we went to Taco Bell that evening he was a little champ, eating most of a soft taco and some of a Crunchwrap. We let the baby try the Crunchwrap too. (I didn't take my camera in but couldn't resist a couple cell phone pics.)


Before going to sleep we had to check out some of our new Thomas stuff. And eat mango. Hot Cup cut up a mango each night. Our family loves those.


FRIDAY

We spent the night near Hershey which was sort of central to all our plans, and on Friday we went to America's largest free admission amusement park - Knoebels. I've never been to a free admission amusement park before and it was really neat. (Hershey park would have cost our family $160 admission!! We spent $30 +food at Knoebels.) And there were so many fun rides for little kids. Our baby and I joined our toddler & Hot Cup for 4 rides: 2 trains, a boat, & a carousel, but mostly we just watched them have fun.


Hot Cup went with our toddler on his first few rides.



We didn't expect him to want to do the Hand Car since he declined the one they had at the train station the day before, but he wanted to!  And after that he asked to do the Red Baron which Hot Cup couldn't stay with him for at all, and he loved it!


Then he asked to ride the fire truck, which we discovered meant the fire truck on the Spanish Bambini.  He'd been on the jeep on that ride with Hot Cup, but this time he wanted to do it by himself.  He rode that ride a few more times and since it was his favorite he did it a few more times at the end of our visit - to use up our tickets.  (He had Hot Cup stay with him at the end of the day ... he was getting rather tired.)  The fire truck and tractor seemed to be his favorites.


We weren't sure he'd love the bumper cars, but he was determined (he'd watched the big kid bumper cars while we were in a line earlier) so we told him what to expect and let him. He kept his foot on the pedal but we don't think he ever pushed it with enough force, but he didn't seem to mind getting bumped into. He was probably the youngest there. I was glad that the few kids who knew what they were doing were good about how they bumped into everyone.


For dinner we went to a barbecue place Hot Cup had found online and it was delicious. Thankfully our toddler had eaten his pizza at Knoebels cause he was not interested in the food there.

After the boys were asleep Hot Cup and I talked about how fun it was to see our toddler enjoying our trip, how cute he was, and how he's getting so independent! It's exciting watching your kids grow up! We may have been a bit giddy about it.

SATURDAY

We started off Saturday at Hershey's Chocolate World. They have quite a bit of fun stuff and our toddler enjoyed the tour, eating chocolate, picking out some kisses, and holding his baby brother for a picture. And after a little lunch we went upstairs to Dessert Creations and had yummy fondue.


Then we went to Turkey Hill for ice cream. Hot Cup and I did the Create Your Own interactive thing so that was fun. And we mixed our own ice cream flavors in the Taste Lab. Hot Cup made mango, pineapple, raspberry and I helped our toddler make (and eat) a chocolate, cake, marshmallow one.



There's a recap of our trip! I love spending time with my family, I'm one happy mama!

Matching

He's been enjoying this game lately. Pretty impressive that he can decipher my drawings.

Bathtime & Haircut

I reluctantly decided it was time to give our baby's hair a little trim. The hair on top of his head and around his ears had grown more than the sides. I didn't want to cut too much off so the sides are still a little shorter.

This pic that I shared a couple weeks ago shows the before pretty well.


And these bathtime pics from last week are good for that too.  He loves bathtime play and splashing!


And here's the after!

Graduation

My baby sister has graduated from high school!

Isn't she the cutest? We love you!
We went down on Sunday to see her sing a duet in Sacrament Meeting and graduate from Seminary. And on Tuesday for her high school graduation.



It was well past bedtime when the ceremony ended. So their expressions in the second picture are pretty representative of how happy they were to still be out. Throughout most the ceremony our baby was pretty upset by the loud cheers and applause (I took him out for some of the speeches, and somewhere in the D's he made peace with the level of noise people made during the presentation of the diplomas), so he was even more worn out than he would have been.

Here she is with our aunt and uncle who came from Utah to see her! Our baby loved his great aunt! She held him for a good while during Sacrament Meeting and he was quite content. Wish I'd gotten a picture of them together!


In a couple months she will leave us to go to college in Utah. We're all going to miss having her so close! But she has two siblings, two sibling-in-laws, and a nephew out there, not to mention aunts, uncles, and cousins. So she'll have lots of family.

Great Strides

Our boys have a 4.5 year old cousin with Cystic Fibrosis.  He lives in Colorado and his family participates in their local Great Strides walk every year - an event to raise money for the development of CF treatments.  This year we participated too, with the walk that is right here in Maryland.  I loved it!  It was wonderful to learn more about Cystic Fibrosis, to share that information, and to raise money for research.  And such a personal cause too, I love my little nephew ♥

Here we all are!


The walk was at a nearby park, it's quite a nice event and we enjoyed ourselves before and after the walk too.


The park was wooded (as all parks in the region are ;) and the walk was on a 2.5 mile path that goes around a lake, the view was gorgeous the whole time.

May

The main event in the month of May was my sister having a baby!! I'm so excited for her and her little family and can't wait to see them!! They live far away so I'm hoping it's not too long.

My baby sister is graduating from High School in June and invited me to take her picture for her announcement. I'm so happy she did, I had so much fun! I'll share some of my favorites on here another time. I don't want to spoil it for people who will get her announcement :)

Our baby thought he was so funny the other day (and he was).  He kept moving the door back and forth in a way that was playing peek-a-boo with me.  He's so clever.  I love seeing him figure things out.  And boy does it happen all the time.

Tis the season for toddlers to find bugs everywhere.


Usually when he finds a caterpillar I'm like "yeah, you can pet it, be gentle". And he does. But we were at the park with some friends and one of them was picking them up. So, with a little assistance, my boy had fun with that too.


Where baby was during this.  Yes he's in his pajamas.  Don't judge me ;)


Baby demolished the train tracks while I was reading our toddler a book. He noticed but amazingly did not freak out and waited until we were done with our book and til after I ran upstairs and got the camera before doing anything about it. And even then he wasn't upset, he just went in for repairs.


Sometimes I have two babies.



We have lunch on the deck a lot. Here they're loving their chicken nuggets.


Matching pajamas, round 2, without daddy's help (he must've been at scouts).
(These ones are from my brother & his wife, thanks!)


I came downstairs yesterday morning to find my boys watching Thomas like this.


As Hot Cup kindly shared, he took our toddler to the Fathers and Sons campout. I'm so glad they did that together and had a fun time! Our toddler got a little worn out by it, so though he doesn't usually get a nap on Sundays, when we got home from church he climbed on daddy and crashed.  They slept like this for an hour.


We spent Memorial Day at Burke Lake Park with family. Our toddler had fun.


Our baby with his grandmas and youngest aunt.


My cousin and his family came too! They have four boys who seemed to be having lots of fun.