Thankful Thursday

A plate is probably appropriate for this post :)

I love the fresh fruit that comes with summertime. My refrigerator is loaded with yummy strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. I'm eating them all the time, and savoring every yummy minute of it!

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side note: Kacey is better, the fever went away leaving us with the stomach bug. Kylie then got the fever, but she responds much better to the fever reducer. It seems the stomach bug has missed her, I'm very thankful for that!

Matthew's Vacation Post

He felt I deliberately left out a very important picture, on purpose of course.

So let me right my wrong and post the picture. I added the second two pictures for him also!

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Busch Gardens

He's on this ride, in the very front.

Wildwood

Loads of Vacation Pictures

Vacation highlights (in chronological order): Got a beautiful rental car~ which we deemed to be "our next vehicle" within our first hour of driving it, we went to Wildwood beach, went to NJ to visit with my cousins, went to Hershey Park, had a traditional big family dinner with Matthew's grandparents, drove to Southern VA to see my Oma, went to Busch Gardens, went to Dutch Wonderland, and hit the outlets and did big time shopping... because you all know we are clothing deprived.

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Saturn Outlook, which we ended up not enjoying. Story at the end.

Our family photo on the beach,

Matthew's brother, Bryan, is waving in the back :) Hi Bryan, we love you too!

Playing at night on the pier...

On the Tram Car

I'm childless on the Tram Car :) .... ahhh....

Uncle Bryan took Kylie on this, it was a window fun house/maze.
And a slide at the end..
Kylie only went on it because she knew Uncle Bryan would have so much fun :) Then we left the beach and drove to my cousins in NJ. These are her boys, G and Frankie.

My Aunt Chiarina

Kadyn and FrankieAll of Us Our trip to Hershey Park

Kylie's height was a Reese's... my fave!

The girls with their cousin, Addy, on a ride. Kylie and Kacey just loved playing all week with Addy!

More...

The Chocolate World tour with Grandma and Grandpa... you get free chocolate at the end :) Kacey and Grandpa watering the flowers. This is one of the only pictures I had from Sunday! The morning went by so fast we didn't have time to take any Sunday Pictures :(
Kacey's doing my hair.

Monday morning we drove down to visit my grandmother. The Washington DC Temple, where Matthew and I were married, overlooks the 495 Beltway.
My Oma :) and her 3 great-granddaughters.

Busch Gardens here we come!!!!

Don't you just want to kiss those cheeks!

Kacey getting her face painted.

Kylie getting her face painted.

On the log flume. Kacey and Oma at Das FestHaus. The best place to eat at Busch Gardens!

The girls were very entertained by everything.

In the grape buckets in Italy.

Kacey screamed her head off each time this ride went down. Poor Kacey.

Back up in PA, Kylie beat Matthew at Wii bowling. It was awesome, he's not the type of person to let someone else win. Ever. Not even he's 5 year old daughter. So this was great :) Kylie really was freakishly good.

Now at Dutch Wonderland...

Group shot, for the matching ladybug outfits of course!

Look at Kacey's mouth. SO FUNNY! Again poor Kacey. And she goes so willingly ON the ride. She knows what's going to happen :) Sweet little thing, we hardly ever heard a word out of her.

Matthew's pretending he's Emmett.

The kiddie waterpark in Dutch Wonderland.

Kylie was pretending to be Ariel, from Little Mermaid. She seriously, would NOT get up.
We had to bring Kacey to her for a photo.

Before we left for the airport, we went over to see Matthew's Grandparents one more time... we got a nice photo.

*** It was a fun trip. We packed the days with family and adventures, we definitely made the most of our trip! We had lots of fun seeing family and friends that we don't see on a regular basis. It was fun catching up. And big hug to Kaylan (my college roommate who married Matthew's brother, Brad's friend). I didn't get any photos of you :( but I love you and miss you.

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If you still care to read...Here are the lowlights, well 1 lowlight. Our fancy shmancy, "this is going to be our next car" died on us. Not just battery died type of deal, but steering wheel won't turn, car won't go in reverse, now it's dead and let's sit in the 90 degree, 100% humidity for 90 minutes waiting for Budget to replace our vehicle and we're 5 feet away from hitting another car... real bad. Ugh. Did I mention we'd just spend the day in an amusement park, we were tired and dirty and hot and just wanted to shower, but again... had to wait 90 minutes and the quickest thing they could get to us was a Nissan Murano, which was smaller than our rented vehicle. We only had 1 day left on our vacation, so we took what we could get. I did however get a 10% discount and an additional $30 credit to my already great rental deal... and we got a free gas tank out of it. But still, it was ridiculous!

Back from Vacation

So many pictures to choose from (500+), I'm not sure where to start.

But we are home- Kacey spiked a fever. For the past 24 hours, she hasn't gone below 100... mostly around 102-103, but as high as 104.8. :( She's cranky and tired. So let me just post one picture for now from our trip, and I'll do more later when I can sort through...

Going across left to right: Rosie and Bryan, Brad and Amanda, Addy, Grandpa, Kacey, Kadyn, Grandma, Kylie, Aaron and _______ (insert girlfriend/wife here, we're waiting Aaron!!!), me and Matthew