Summer Vacation!

I love summer vacations! This year we went to visit family in Pennsylvania and packed our trip full of things we love to do in PA.

We rode bikes on a trail near Mark's Dad's house. Our trip included playing in the creek, riding through pouring rain, having to turn back eventually because the creek was covering the trail, being devoured by mosquitos, and loving the beautiful scenery.

Our next stop was Hershey Park, "the sweetest place on earth". Cala had a great time splashing around in the water and after she went home we had a great time riding the roller coasters. Or at least I did. As Mark put it right as we were getting on an especially scary roller coaster, "I'm only doing this because I love you!" What a sweetie.

Then we celebrated Cala's birthday a month early so we could have all our family there. Here's Cala licking a beater full of frosting.

The cupcakes (I definitely had beach on the brain).

Then last but not least, we went to the beach. It was heavenly! The weather was perfect, we got there early and stayed late. Cala loved it just as much as we thought she would!

Dave, the mer-man, wondering where his mermaid went...

We had a wonderful time. It was great to see our families! We'll be back soon!

A Bat Story

About a week ago, I was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by Mark shouting, "There's a bat in here!" and pulling the sheet up over our heads. I was sure he had to be dreaming, how could a bat be flying around our bedroom?! But then I remembered how I had kept hearing something bumping into our paper lamp shade, and realized that Mark wasn't crazy. Well, we hid under the sheet for quite a while discussing all our possible options, Mark's first pick was to hide under the sheets until daylight and hope that the bat would go away. Since it felt like it was about 100 degrees under that sheet I wasn't all about that idea. We ended up making a run for the door, and closed the bat in the room. Then we got online and learned all about bats found in houses, we even watched the video below about how to catch them.



So Mark woke up his brother and they suited up in hoodies and football gloves and went in to catch the bat, only to find it was gone. They looked for it all day and couldn't find it, so we figured it had gotten out the way it had gotten in. Well, that night we were sitting in the living room watching TV when the bat swooped into the living room and started circling. We all dropped to the floor, and Dave army-crawled after it to see where it landed. EVENTUALLY, we got it trapped in our bedroom. Dave and Mark again suited up and went in to catch it. They had about 5 unsuccessful attempts, which involved a lot of yelling, "He's buzzing the tower" and "Just whack it with the manilla envelope" before finally catching it. Needless to say, catching a bat was NOTHING like the video portrayed! And the good news for us is that the bat tested negative for rabies, bad news for the bat is that he didn't get to live to tell the story.

Water fun!

Here's a video of Cala at the sprinkler park!

5 years!

Well, this is a little late being posted, but I have a good excuse since we have been busy moving the past couple weeks....

I can't believe it's been 5 years, needless to say this isn't quite where we envisioned ourselves at our 5th anniversary. We were picturing a long vacation to Hawaii, owning a house near a beach, and Mark working full-time (I guess we really didn't think things through). Five years later none of those things have happened but we are so happy together. Here are some pictures to reminisce over...

Won't you be my neighbor?

We came home from church and this is what was going on out on the sidewalk.

In case you can't make it out in the tiny picture, they are playing Xbox 360. They have everything plugged into an extension cord and they even have a subwoofer hooked up. You would think that after a year I would stop being surprised by things my neighbors do, but yet they continue to surprise me :)

Happy 4th!

We had a fun 4th of July. My sister, Amanda, came to visit for the weekend. We got to go to a birthday party for a friend's little girl who turned 2, she's just two months older than Cala. They had a cute party table set up for the kids, yum food, a sprinkler to play in, and cupcakes for dessert.

At one point Cala grabbed a whole entire sausage off Mark's plate and then tried to share some sausage joy with Amanda.

Later I discovered that Cala and I are perfect cupcake-eating partners... she eats all the frosting and then I get to eat the cake!

This is Cala on her second cupcake with her friend, Lucy (or See-See as Cala calls her).

Later that night we braved the crowds and went downtown to watch the fireworks. It was great and the fireworks were amazing!

Happy 4th of July!

I love food!

One of my favorite teachers in college would always give us life advice. One of the things she liked to tell us was that when we graduated and eventually got our first paycheck that we should first pay tithing but then we should go spend it however we wanted...so I did!

Mark and I took a day trip to the city and went on a food tour of Greenwich Village, and we LOVED it!

We sampled cheese from Murray's (they have about a million different kinds of cheese).

We ate a piece of pizza from Joe's and learned all about their oven, how hot it is, and the kind of tomato they use. This place might look familiar because it was in Spiderman 2.

We ate an olive twist from Amy's Bread and learned about the pastry chef that owns it and how she studied in Europe to learn how to make the crusty French breads.

We had charizo (cuban sausage) at Little Havana and got to meet the 76 year old woman that owns it and cooks all the food. We also got hear about how to get to the bathroom you have to go through the kitchen, so when the health department is there they pretend they don't have a bathroom!

We ate a rice ball (rice rolled with fresh mozzarella and herbs, then rolled in breadcrumbs and flash fried in olive oil) from Faicco's. I've never heard of rice balls but it was delicious!

We had a cinnamon-dusted pecan from a store called Aphrodisia where you can buy any spice you could possible imagine.

We had farroto from this modern Italian restaurant and learned about how their chef was on Top Chef. Farrotto is farro (a barley-like grain) cooked in vegetable stock then mixed with parmesean cheese, crimini mushrooms, and mint.

Then we walked around the historic part of Greenwich Village for a bit and gave our tummies a break. Does anyone recognize this building? (hint: Monica and Rachel lived there.)

Then it was back to the food with a cookie from Milk and Cookies. The owner of this place graduated from the Culinary Institute of America!

Then we saw a sign that our street could definitely use!

Our final stop was at Rocco's Pastries where we had a hand-piped cannoli. YUM!

All the food was amazing! I totally recommend this tour next time you're in the city!