Summer Vacation 2012 (part 1)

I'll admit one of the reasons I haven't been blogging was the seemingly insurmountable job of going through 500+ pictures from our summer vacation.  Not that I don't want to share them...it's just an arduous and time consuming task.  I say that and then I start looking through the pictures to see how I'm going to break it up in to different posts and I'm reminded of the GREAT pictures that we took on our vacation.

We spent nearly 3 weeks between Ohio and DC back in May of this year.  The whole reason for the trip was Lisa's brother Keith getting married.  The girls had a very important role as the flower girls...a day we will never forget!  I'll get to those pictures next post.  Today I share the first few days we spent in Ohio getting to see old friends and visiting some favorite hang-out spots from our youth (pun intended).

First day we met with one of our favorite blasts from the past and Alyssa's middle namesake (is that a thing?); Renee!!  She suggested a park that we hadn't been to in 20 years.  The best part was this massive slide!  The locals know that if you bring some wax paper, it will make you go so much faster.  Obviously, the girls LOVED this slide!!

 Before you ask; no, I didn't try it.  I saw a few bigger kids go down way too fast.  They were catching air on that little bump you see in the picture above.  No way I was going to attempt that and go airborne...and end up somewhere near Cleveland.

 That night, we met up with Renee and her fam for dinner, ice cream, and feeding farm animals!  Young's Dairy if you don't know...it's a GREAT place.  It brought back lots of memories...very cool getting to watch the girls run around making memories when it seems like I was doing that as a kid just a few short years ago.

 As always, a little tentative at first and then we couldn't stop them from trying to feed or pet them.  Yes...lots of hand sanitizer that day.

"hey cow"

"HEY COWWW!!!!"

"COW!!  LOOK OVER HERE!!!"

"AAAAHHH!!!  IT LOOKED AT ME!!!"

I call the next few pictures "close-ups with farm animals".  It's a deep intellectual piece of art that puts you so close, you can actually smell them.

 There are no words for this next picture.  I knew it was going to be funny but when I saw the picture, I just about threw up dinner I was laughing so hard.  Instant classic.

 Alyssa saw everyone laughing so she wanted to try it too...so this is her attempt at licking the ice cream.

 Speaking of ice cream, time to get some!!

 I think Alyssa was happy.

 More extreme close-ups with farm animals....

 Alyssa took a 2 second break from stuffing her face to share with her sister.  It was very sweet for those 2 seconds.... 

 ...then it was back to this.

 After dessert, it seemed like a good idea to let the kids run off their sugar high.  We were taking bets on who was going to puke first but thankfully that never happened!

 I had to include this one...

"MMMOooooOOOOOO!!!

 This poor girl (no idea who she was or who she belonged to) was running around so the girls thought that meant she wanted to be chased.  At one point, she started yelling "I don't know why they're chasing me!!!  Please make them stooooooopppp!!!!!  Help me!!!!"      .....I think she was kidding.

 Final farm animal close-up.  I love this picture.

So that brings us up to the wedding rehearsal.  Get ready, there are some GREAT pictures coming up!

Countdown to Move-Cation!

I really do miss blogging.  That may seem like an odd statement because I haven't posted anything since June!!  But I really do.  Facebook certainly makes things easy to share with family and friends, but the blog has always seemed more personal.  I think the family and friends that check the blog are more than one of our 200+ acqaintences that we have on fb...it's the people that really care about us and want to see what's really up with the Brown family.  On that note, we're back!

I put up the little survey on fb out of curiosity; to see who's interested in our blog.  But honestly I don't care if we get 2 likes.  I'm starting this up no matter how many likes I get.  It's time to bring the blog back!!

I've been going through our pictures ...because even though we've stopped blogging, we never stopped taking pictures!...and it looks like we need to pick up our Alaskan adventure a few months before we moved.  Lisa noticed that we never shared the pictures from the girls last day of pre-school.  So let's go back to May 15th.

The girls (and Lisa) made some great friends at pre-school.  When we shopped around for the right school way back when, it was the teachers that we met at New Horizons and the approach in the classroom that we fell in love with.  Little did we know the girls would thrive as much as they did.  What a great experience!!

Arriving one final time. Lots of emotion.

Ms. Nancy was Katy's teacher.  She is the PERFECT pre-school teacher...absolutely loves the kids and what she's doing.

And I think Katy reciprocated that feeling.

I showed this picture to Katy just now and she started crying.  She really does miss Ms. Nancy!

Equally FANTASTIC teacher is Ms. Stephanie.  

The class took care of some butterflies and released them on this last day.  The symbolism is too obvious to point out.  Made for an emotional few minutes.

 So the girls had a couple of little boys they really liked.  I didn't get a chance to volunteer during the year so this was my first chance to see the girls interacting with the boys that I had heard so much about.  I think this face says a lot.

 They lined up for a class picture.  I love how our girls got as close to their teachers as possible.  I think that speaks volumes about their character.  LOVE it!!

 I caught Katy sneaking in a hug with Ms. Nancy...

 and Ms. Nancy always the loving teacher

 Ms. Stephanie and her family decided to move to Oregon so the school was also saying goodbye to her.  There was talk about Lisa actually applying for a job...she loved volunteering there so much!  That would have been crazy to see how that would have played out if we stayed.

 Sneaking in more hugs.

 I love how fast the kids came in to look at the photos....

 SWARM SWARM SWARM!!!

 One more GREAT teacher, Ms. Wendi.

 And then there's Blake.....   that's all I have to say about that.

 BFFs. 

Blake working his magic.  I can only imagine what he's saying.

Exciting times.  Thanks for stopping by and not giving up on the blog.  I hope to keep catching up so check back soon.