Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

This morning we sent Natalee off to school for the firsts time.  She was very excited to say it lightly.  She could barely hold still while eating her breakfast.  She was ready to go very early and was very eager to walk up the street to the bus stop!  Of course her mom wasn't as eager as she was!! After I took some pictures of just Natalee (because she was ready so early), I went back inside to wake up Brady and Amie.  Wouldn't it figure that they all were awake at 6:30/7:00 all summer long, but in the last week they have started to sleep late!!!???! And, they were both really deeply sleeping yet. Excited Natalee I think it helped her that she had a friend to get on the bus with. Amie seemed very confused when the bus pulled away with her sister on it.  She was pointing at it and seemed to admonish it for leaving and taking her big sister. Brady said, "I get to go next year!"  Let's not think about that and enjoy this ...

All summer we had been talking about going to Niagara Falls for a long weekend trip.  Well, because of lack of preparing, it was suddenly the end of summer and we still had not gone.  At about 10 o'clock Friday evening, we decided to go to Niagara Falls the next day.  We thought we'd get up in the morning and pack a lunch to eat at Kinzua Bridge State Park. Yes, we are a bit crazy. But, that's okay! One thing we learned: We should have left before 9:30. Yes, this is when  it pays to be prepared beforehand! We almost didn't go to Kinzua Bridge because we weren't sure we should take the time to do that.  We ended up exploring the park and eating in the car.  I'm glad we stopped at Kinzua Bridge because it was neat and beautiful.  It was definitely a worthy stop off! I think we could have spent even more time in Elk County. Kinzua Bridge was the tallest bridge in the world when it was built.  In 2003 it was partially destroyed by a tornado. The...

 After kids camp, we decided to go to Greenwood Furnace State Park for a swim.  I tried to get a picture of the kids together. BRADY!!! Amie! BRADY!!!!!!!!!!!! AMIE!! Seriously?? I give up! In other news..... About 2 weeks ago the kids collected Queen Anne's Lace on our walk.  When we came home, we added food coloring to the vases to see what would happen.  One was yellow and one was red.  The yellow ones turned really quickly.  The others turned pink. A day later, these were a lot more colorful! They looked really neat. Yesterday, Brady drew me this lovely picture of a flower.  I love when he actually tries and is successful!  I think he will love getting back into his "preschool" work :)

Brady and I drove to southern Huntingdon County on Saturday to visit the Rockhill Trolley Museum. The weather was perfect for a trolley ride. Natalee was with her Gram on a shopping day.  Personally, I think the ride on a trolley was a more fun way to spend the afternoon :) We rode on a trolley that used to be run in York, PA. The story about it was that after it was decommissioned, it was sold to someone who used it as a hunting camp. During Hurricane Agnes 30 yrs ago, it was flooded more than halfway up the insides.  Eventually, it came to Rockhill to be restored. I loved the old advertisements At the end of the line, we all stood up, reversed the direction of our seatbacks, and continued our journey back to Rockhill Furnace.  We traveled by the remnants of an iron furnace.  There wasn't much left.  Just a wall. In it's heyday, the furnace employed 750 people! When we got off of the trolley, we took a short tour of the sheds where they hou...

We spent a day at Penn State's Ag Progress Days last Wednesday. It was a really nice day to be there, but it was so cold! I forgot to bring Brady's sweatshirt along, and it looked like his lips were turning blue.  Thankfully by mid afternoon the sun started shining a bit more.  Therefore, it felt a bit warmer! However, my sweatshirt remained on for the entire day. The tractor wheel was bigger than we were, so they wanted their picture there-- well, Amie didn't. Brady insisted there were rides at this place even though I told him there were not even before we left our house. Either he wasn't listening to me or he didn't believe me!  He did enjoy these pedal carts, though. Next is Amie's excitement over the 4H bunnies.  She gets really animated at the end! The bunnies were definitely the highlight of Amie's day!  Shortly after this video, she did touch them.  She sees bunnies every day when we walk, so it was a treat for her to get up close. ...

Tuesday evening we made a spontaneous decision to visit the Ruckers the next morning. The kids have been asking daily (hourly perhaps!) when we could go see Will. They were missing him and Kelly a lot. I figured that this was our best opportunity before school starts. Amie squealed with delight when she saw Napoleon and Josie!  The kids really enjoyed playing with each other.  They seemed to cherish their time with each other-- as did I! The weather was a bit rainy, but they didn't seem to mind.  We went to the park one afternoon.  We filled in some puddles on the playground and practiced on roller skates in the parking lot. On our drive home, Kelly and Will drove a little bit north with us and we stopped at Natural Bridge for a hike and a picnic lunch.  It was beautiful and really neat to see. Can you believe that it really is a bridge? When we were driving on Rt 11, I didn't realize we were driving on top of the Natural Bridge! We did manage ...