Philadelphia Temple

I am so excited for the Philadelphia Temple to be built and to be able to go feel the Spirit of the Lord much more often!   The ground breaking was this weekend, Dan was able to go help out with chairs and clean up.  It was great.  Here is a link and a full story.  Watch the video and those of you who know, Marcus, Chelsea, Mike, and Brie, you'll see them in the video around 2:15!

http://newsroom.lds.org/article/church-breaks-ground-philadelphia-pennsylvania-trujillo-peru-temples

Weighty issue

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am obsessed even addicted to any and all things sugar.  I eat it non stop. Now I am also spotty with working out.  Last summer I was in great shape thanks to my friend Kym and P90x and Insanity.  This summer I gained a whopping 12 twelve pounds in 2 months!  So I am down 9 pounds and am hoping to continue this trend until I've lost another 8 pounds.  So wish me luck and strength to not eat every sugary thing in sight!  And that darned ice cream at 10 o'clock at night!

Bye Bye Summer! I'll miss you terribly!

Okay, I think I've spread around enough negativity for the day.  I am a little apologetic to the 17 people who read my blog and didn't comment, so I'm thinking I may have offended a few people and made myself look like an a** because I was complaining so much.  But, I warned you!


So lets move on, shall we?


This is what our summer was like:

A blur. NO stopping or standing.  Just lots of fun.


Two weeks ago, we decided to go on a family vacation before Ashton went back to school.  We had a fun time at Hershey Park and then Ocean City, NJ.





We spent a lot of time in the car, so there are a bunch of car pictures.  

I love the chocolate theme of everything in Hershey, PA.  Including the restaurants. We ate here before going to the park.

Dan with Tabasco sauce.

Dan trying to feed Ashton the Tabasco sauce (which just reminded me that this is Deja vu from when Ashton was little and the same scenario happened, but she ate it and handled it like a champ)  but this time she knew better and there's no way she was going to eat that again!


Dan's try #3 with ketchup and as you can tell by Ashton's expression, she was all over that!  j/k she was just joking and did not eat straight ketchup.  She knows Dan's teasing ;) 

Ashton and Adrienne getting ready to go to Hershey Park in the parking lot.






The park was really really fun and exciting!  We bought preview passes where you go the night before for 3 hours and then the next day all day.  It was perfect. The girls were tall enough this year to ride so many of the rides.  Adrienne could go on the old wooden roller coasters that were thrilling!  Ashton, being the daredevil she is could go on most of the adult rides!  I took her on one that pulls you up and you sit suspended in the air until they drop you straight down and then do a series of corkscrews and loops, the rides stops in the middle of the ride and then you do the whole thing backwards!  It was crazy, I was so scared.  I was thinking, why in the world did I take my daughter on this ride?!!!!  She liked it and even went on it again with Dan later in the day!!!  What a brave girl!  Dan took Adrienne on this water ride where you get totally soaked.  I got suckered in to going with her again and I got soooo wet, it took ALL day to dry!  The thing we loved most about Hershey is that there is a good mix of kids rides and big rides right next to each other scattered throughout the park.  It was a nice balance and we didn't have to keep walking from one end of the park to the other to go to the kids rides.

Afterwards we drove out to Atlantic City and Ocean City, NJ.  We took a long detour for Dan, but it deserves its own post so I'll blog that later.
Dan wrestling with Adrienne.  I wish I had this on video cause I love Adrienne's giggle!

Just relaxing..

I loved this couch behind Adrienne. I wanted to bring it home!

Book store  near the beach.

We went to a park that was right on the beach.  We were really happy to see that there wasn't much damage to the beaches and houses in this area of the coast.




You can do it girl!!!!!

I really like this picture.  I think she looks like a ballerina!





We often find Adrienne pondering...




We went to the library to use the internet to book a hotel room that night and this statue was outside.  It looks so dirty to be outside a library!  For the record, from the front the important parts are all covered up!  Thank goodness!


Next we stayed the night in Philly.

I took this of Ash and Adrienne in the pool and Dan relaxing on the pool chair.

This is our view from the hotel room:  Its where the Phillies play!




The next morning we went to the Philly Zoo.  Thanks Mom for the passes!



I love the Cheetahs







I loved this wall at the Zoo.  I really want to do a photoshoot here of some little children.  Anyone want to take me up on that?

Have you seen Planet of the Apes (it was surprisingly good) But now these things freak me out so bad!  They are so huge and really really creepy!



Ah, home sweet home!

Adrienne all dressed up.  hahaha!

She also wanted to help with the editing of her pictures.  So the following are at her direction!

First Day of First Grade!

Ashton started First grade today! Doesn't she look so cute!? I am her mom so of course I think so.

I love her boots, they are my favorite impulse buy ever.

I've been trying to get Ashton to be excited for school. When she has been asked if she is excited she says, "no, I don't like school, it is boring, you just have to sit there and learn." I can't help but laugh because that is so straight to the point and the basics of school, you sit, the teacher talks, you are supposed to learn. Ash is such a mover, shaker, runner, she loves moving and she's always been that way since the first time she rolled over at 3 months (no joke), crawled at 6 months, and started climbing on everything! So school last year was torture for her: 30 minutes on the bus each way, 6 hours of school, 1 hour of homework, neither Ash nor I were ready for summer to be over and the above schedule to commence again. I'm sure she'd rather be doing this:

Despite the fact that Kindergarten was rough for me too (I'm sure everyone has heard me complain about this more than once!) I am starting this year with a positive attitude. Good thoughts about the school, the staff, and the schedule so I hope it will rub off on Ashton too.

So if you talk to Ashton, tell her how fun school is and how awesome it is to learn and maybe she'll start to believe it! *wink wink*