Visiting Philadelphia

My husband was honored to attend a conference for educators in Philadelphia. We were honored as a family to be able to tag along for a great family vacation and to teach our children some history. Whether it's about some fun log cabin "play houses", a "broken bell", some really cool steps to run and play on, or eating in a place with some really neat guitars, they learned a lot and we all had a very special and wonderful time as a family!!

Enjoy some of our photos.

Visiting Valley Forge.

Cabins the soldiers stayed in at Valley Forge during their rough winter.

Victory after running up the flight of steps.

The Museum of Art where Rocky ran up the steps for training in the movie. These are those killer steps.

Our family in front of the Rocky Balboa stature. We loved it!! It was so neat.

Hard Rock Cafe, Downtown Philly

Peaking through the front door of Independance Hall. The front doors do not opne. All visitor's enter from the back, but a peek won't hurt.

A plaque by the front door of Independance Hall

The Liberty Bell ~ AWESOME to see!!

Independance hall was being renovated, but had a shear curtain covering the construction to show us the structure of the building. It was amazing to be standing there amidst history!

My Valentine Suprises!

Roses, lobster, a small vacation without kids in 2 weeks, and my 3 favorite guys equals a SUPER Valentines Day!!

Week 8 of 52 ~ Penns Cave

At Penn's Cave, a boat ride through a cave near State College (Penn State). After the 40 minute boat ride, we walked through the grounds. They had hundreds of painted and decorated pumpkins. I took some cute pics that I will share later.

Friday Flashback!

Since I was looking at photos fom ou D.C. trip this past weekend, I thought I would go back to a trip we took a few yeas ago. Enjoy!!

Visit moe flashbacks @ http://minyards7.blogspot.com/

Heading Out Again!

I am leaving in a few minutes to go to the beach for 5 days with my best girl friend. Just the 2 of us in a condo with the beach and the ability to do what we want whenever we feel the need. It's a much needed vacation from life and I want to thank my incredible, super, awesome, loving husband for encouraging me to go! He's the best and I know him and the boys will have a blast!!

I'm off to relax and enjoy some girl time! The sand is calling...

July 2010 Family trip to the Beach

Ahhh...Back to reality! I just came back from a fantastic trip to the beach. I took over a hundred pictures but these are some of my favorites that I wanted to share. I am sure many of the others ones will turn up during future posts, so don't worry..hehe.

I am amazed at how relaxing and tranquil the ocean and beaches are. I had such a wonderful time with the family, though we did have our interesting moments, but I will share that on True Story Tuesday ~ Stay tuned!!

I have had a great time catching up on the blogs I missed reading, though I didn't have much time to leave comments.

Enjoy my pictures and thanks for stopping by.

Ray getting in a little surf fishing.

My boys are excited and ready to go exploring.


Oh this was not a fun experience...Ray would build Nick a sand castle to play with and Adam would come along and step on it. Adam thought it was a fun game. Nick - not so much!!
In this picture, Nick is begging his brother to not step on his sand castle. Needless to say, Adam was banished to the other side of the blanket and only permitted to play with his own sand creations.



Digging for sand crabs was a big hit!

The same picture we took last year, just bigger boys! See post below before we left.

Those boys were hard to keep safe when the hard waves came crashing in.

Gearing up, lathering up, and heading out!

Nick and I before seashell hunting.

Looking for the perfect shell.

Just Beautiful!!!

A good picture of both boys!! (such a hard task)

The carnival and the pier - I have lots of fun pics of that to share later too!

Tune into tomorrow, on True STory Tuesday, to find out why Adam is in a stroller.

You can't have a trip with out an injury!! I just wished we could.

Ready for the mornings adventure.

Swimming at one fo the 4 pools our condo had. They met a great little guy that shared his toys and played so nice with them.

Smiling on the boardwalk.

So excited!!

It was awesome, hard to come home, and I want to go back.

I'd go back now if I could!!!

On Vacation...

We are on vacation and, like this picture taken from last year's trip, we are enjoying the

Atlantic Ocean and beaches of Ocean City, Md.

See you in a week, with lots of pictures I'm sure...Bye!

Friday Flashbacks

This weekend is our annual family vacation weekend to Lancaster Pa to visit Thomas the Tank Engine and Dutch Wonderland. In honor of this weekend, I decided to flashback to our first trip there. Nick was 3, Adam was 5 months. We had a great time!

Visit more flashbacks @ http://minyards7.blogspot.com/

Suprise Vacation!

Last Thursday I worked a half day and got off at 12 and off on Friday. I received a cell phone call at 12:10 and was told to come straight home for a surprise. I could hear the kids giggling and being excited in the background. When I got home Ray told me I had 1/2 hour to pack for a trip and to pack swiming stuff, the kids were already packed. We got in the car and I was kidnapped to an unknown destination. Little did I know, we were going to one of the most wonderful vacation I ever had. We went to Raytown Lake. It's a lake resort full of activities, boats, gorgeous scenary, and a peacefulness of the outdoors, without any commercialism. He had this planned for weeks and I was so proud of him for doing something like this. In 15 years of knowing him he has never planned a real vacation, I am always to vacation planner/coordinator!

Below are the highlights of our trip. I will warn you, it's a long post, but I just couldn't narrow down the pictures any more than I did to capture our 2 wonderful days - away from it all!

We just got out of the car and the kids were patiently waiting to go to the pool and waterpark!

Nick, my little fish, loved the pool and doing cannonballs !!

Adam was more cautious in the pool, but had fun playing on the steps and hanging on to the side.


This water park or, "sprinkler park" as Adam called it, was more his speed and everyone had fun playing between here and teh pool. In this pic they are getting wet from the big water bucket that fills up and then dumps the water out.

The awesome sprinklers and sprayers!!

Running throuhg the spraying frog - all 3 of my boys!

The outside of our room. It was nestled in the mountains and overlooked the lake. The view was breathtaking.

Pure Beauty!

My men at the boat marina.

This is the view from the balcony of our room. It was Ray and I's favorite place to be at night after the boys went to sleep. We just talked, had a few drinks, enjoyed the view, got some bugs bites, and loved each others company.

Me and Nick

What?! I'm ready, let's go to the beach.

The beautiful walk to the beach area.

Enjoying the beach water.

Huddling around the portable DVD player to watch a movie before bedtime. They were 2 very tired little boys and fell asleep very fast.


We had a great time. We still have a few more trips to enjoy before the summer fly's by! Next weekend we head out to Lancaster and Dutch Wonderland to stay adn play for a few days. I promise to share all of our summer fun with my blogs friends - it's looking to be a great summer!