Parents 31st Anniversary!

For my parents 31st anniversary, we went to the Sloppy Duck for dinner and then headed over to see the sunset on the lake.



I cannot begin to say how proud I am of my parents for their 31 years of marriage. Yeah they've had lots of ups and downs, what marriage doesn't?! But they prevailed and as their only daughter (and child), there is no greater gift they could give me.



This is one of my favorite pictures of them (taken on their 31st anniversary). It just shows how head over heels my mom still is for my dad. I'm sure my dad feels the same way, right dad!?

An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow.

Here's to another wonderful 31 years! I love you!

The Baby

Wanted to post a couple more pics of the little bugger . .


Bowen (nephew) & Big Sis, Bryce (niece)!


Little Brother Bowen


His teensie feet!

It's been a while since I've seen them both (and by a while . . I mean since Monday . . .but that's a long time to be away from two of the people you love most)! Luckily, I'm going to crash Grandma Rita's babysitting party tomorrow and play with them for a bit!

Mommy and Me Quad! 5 Mile Run!

Saturday, September 11, 2010, my mother and I competed in the third event in the quad! The 5 mile run! It started at 9am in North East, and after only being 44 degrees out when we woke up, it warmed up fast and ended up being beautiful weather for the run (through the amazing smelling grape vines).


Do you see us?! Although you might think your heart should be pounding most at the end of the race, mine was pumping the fastest at the beginning. The suspense. The anticipation. The rocky music. The "runners on your marks . . . . get set. . . GOOOOOOOOOO!!!"


Here's us on the home stretch!


We did it!! Here is where I started to cry because I was just so proud of my mommy for doing this with me. 5 miles is a long way, and for her to do that with me and be excited and not complaining at all was just so great! She was so motivated and ready!


5 mile run . . check! Next and last event is the 2 1/2 mile snowshoe walk!


p.s. - thank you so much to my awesome hubby and pup, Behren, for coming to the race with us, capturing all these moments, and cheering us on. It was so nice.

Sommer's 30th!

Also over labor day weekend (it was a crazy one), we celebrated Sommer's 30th Birthday!



This was also the first time seeing Bowen since the day he was born at the hospital (so this was pretty much the only picture I took of Sommer. . . but the party was great! Lots of yummy food and cookies and cream ice cream cake from ColdStone)!

Couple of my favorite pics of Bowen:




Bryce was super excited when she got to hold him. It was so cute!







My favorite to date:

Bowen with Grandma Rita

Austin's 7th Birthday!

Labor day weekend we celebrated my cousin, Austin's, 7th birthday!

He had already had the party with his friends before we got there, but he was still all sugared up from the cake and all the kids were running around like crazy!



My grandma caught him real quick to give him a hug though!



Can you tell this girl is growing up with two brothers?



Ava, playing on top of the playhouse instead of inside of it.

Here's Tyler (Austin & Ava's baby brother) with his dad.



Man I feel old. Just yesterday these kids were born. I swear.

Bird Banding @ Presque Isle!

For labor day, one of my bff's KC, and I decided to head to Presque Isle to get one last day of summer in.

We wanted to start the day out on a free pontoon boat ride, but even after KC arriving only minutes after 10am (you sign up at 10am for all rides that day), the 11am and 1pm rides were already booked!

Bummer!



So we decided to take a walk around Misery Bay instead.



KC saw a path, and said "should we go down here?"
And I said "it looks like drug dealing".

It was just a random path that didn't seem to lead to anywhere, with a bunch of cars parked all randomly. So as we stood there trying to decide if we wanted to take the chance, a park ranger pulled up to us and said "do you ladies know where you are going?" Nope. Not a clue. Us - "We are just walking around." Park ranger - "You might want to check this out. It might be bird banding."

Does anyone else know what bird banding is?



Yeah. We didn't either. So we had to check it out.



Thanks to Wikipedia:
Bird ringing or bird banding is a technique used in the study of wild birds, by attaching a small, individually numbered, metal or plastic tag to their legs or wings, so that various aspects of the bird's life can be studied by the ability to re-find the same individual later. This can include migration, longevity, mortality, population studies, territoriality, feeding behaviour, and other aspects that are studied by ornithologists

It was pretty cool! They actually let me release a bird they had caught in one of the nets (after they wrote down a ton of information on it). That little thing was so gosh darn cute! I was scared I was going to crush it. It was so fragile in my massive hands!



I definitely recommend checking it out if you are an animal/bird lover! Here is their website with more information. They catch some pretty awesome looking birdies!!

Thanks to KC for wanting to get involved in what looked like a drug deal (not that I really know what that looks like), because we wouldn't have discovered this awesome piece of what makes Presque Isle State Park one awesome place.

Crawford County Fair!

I know you don't care that I have been busy, and you probably don't care that I haven't posted in a while . . . but get ready for a post frenzy!!!



Shane and I actually made it to the Crawford County Fair this year! Last year it rained and rained, so we didn't make it out, but this year we got to sneak in a quick trip! (Next year I am determined to go to one of the country concerts)!



Most of our time was spent looking at all the cute animals!


I love when horses look like cows.


This guy ate his 1st place ribbon! And then smiled at us.


Poor sheep.


So comfortable.


I felt so bad for all the animals. They were just all stuck in teeny tiny pens all day long!


The three little pigs!


I could not believe the size of the utters on these animals!!Holy cow! Can you imagine carrying those things around with you?!


The cows at the petting zoo were NEVER this HUGE!


They were posing for me.


They had a mini home show going on, so we checked it out and wanted them to do this to our yard! It took them 3 days to do this, and then they had to tear it all down!


We got a huge lemonade shortly after we got there, and never really felt good once we drank it (blame it on the 90% sugar). So we got some cotton candy for the road and headed on home.

Craigslist

First let me say . . . HOLY MOLY I HAVE BEEN BUSY!!! So sorry if you were sooooooooo excited to read my updated blog and it wasn't updated (I know there are so many of you).

But ok . . back into things:

While I write this, the clothes dryer and treadmill we got from craigslist will go ka-blew-ee!, and the people who we got it from will be stalking us, but for now what I really want to say is this . . .

Craigslist is AWESOME!

Basically it has saved us $1,750 already.

Proof:

Treadmill I wanted to get: $1,500
Treadmill we got off of craigslist : $100

Dryer we would get new from store : $400
Dryer we got off of craigslist: $50

And they both work perfectly fine (knock on wood)!

But seriously. I'm really excited about them, because $1,750 is a lot of money that we saved. Hmm . . . . maybe I should show this to my husband and prove to him that he owes me a fun vacation now!

And I'm always so paranoid that the people selling all these things are axe murderers, but in both cases, they were so nice and so down to earth!

I love it.

Has anyone had any not-so-good cases with using craigslist?