Over the last few months Karl's brothers and their wives have welcomed 1 nephew and 2 nieces into the family. (We have one more on the way in October!) So now I'm going to brag just a little about the new little sweeties. Eddie and Lynn had Sam in April, John and Valerie had Sage in May, and Mike and Jaime had Emma in June (Jim and Liz will be having a baby in October). The whole family (all seven siblings) were together for Emma's Christening in July. The pictures below are from that party. Karl is helping Tenley stay cool in the pool and Katy was teaching Lilly to swim.
Okay, how do you know when your kids are staring to get bored and ready to go back to school.....They start doing strange things. One day the kids were bored and getting rowdy, so I told them to get the camera and take some pictures of themselves. They went off happy that Mom was letting them play with the camera. They had a fun afternoon, but didn't show me the pictures they took. The next day I looked to see what they had been taking and this is what I found......
This summer we also had to cancel any plans that we had for going on vacation, because Karl works for the state of Pennsylvania and had been told that they were not expecting a budget to pass, but state employees still had to work and they would get paid once a budget passed. So we decided to stay close to home this year and do stuff around here. I have been calling this summer the "Summer of Movies" since so many movies were coming out and we wanted to see them all, that is what we have been doing. We have also made several trips to Knoebels Amusement Park this summer.
If you live in Pennsylvania and have never been to Knoebels you are missing out on a great time. Parking is free, there is no park admission fee, and you only pay for the rides you go on. Mom and Gunnar come last week for several days and we were able to finally take them to Knoebels and they LOVED IT!!! Here are pictures from our time there last week:
In the van on the way to the park
Mark and his Girlfriend Amber
Steven was finally old enough and big enough to ride some of the bigger rides with Katy. This is after he rode the Phoenix, one of the top wooden roller coaster in the nation. Karl was the lucky one to go on the rides with the kids. Becca even went on the flume for the first time. Later she told me that Daddy must have been scared because he was holding her so tight. For years Steven has wanted to go the Skloosh, but Karl and I didn't want to get wet, so he couldn't get on it. This trip Katy took him on it and boy did he get wet!!
Fun was had by all. Mark even bought a hermit crab while we were there.
In two weeks the kids go back to school and another school year will be here.
