The Life and Times of an "Em"

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Happy 30th PA-Style

Well, it's happened...I turned 30 this weekend and the world kept on turning. Honestly, I wasn't freaking out too much over the whole turning 30 thing, due largely to the fact that half the time I feel like I'm still playing at being an adult. Also, we planned a long weekend trip up to Lancaster, PA in celebration of my birthday!

For those of you who don't know, I would say about 70% of our friends and a decent chunk of our family lives in the Lancaster area. It is our home away from home and we hope to make it our actual full-time home within the next few years. We hadn't been able to make a trip since I was just barely pregnant with Baby Knives (who is now 15 months old), so we were missing a lot of fantastic people.

We were able to shift some work scheduling around and spend Fri-Mon with friends and family. It was an amazing trip. Honestly, the perfect blend of relaxation and scheduled stuff to do. My husband got to play a gig with his brother's band (The Pig Merchants, check them out!), we had a laid back lunchtime celebration with a bunch of our friends and everyone's kids on Saturday and got to spend Sunday evening with one of my favorite families on the planet, my former youth pastor and his family, who are basically an extension of my own family. It was a great balance of time spent with friends and our family.

Baby Knives got to spend a lot of time with 3 of her cousins (ages 4 1/2, 3 and 15 months) and had a blast running around, chewing on everything and trying to learn how to climb up the stairs. She was a champ traveling, did really well in the car and even took a snooze on the way there (this is unheard of for her!). Buying that travel DVD player for the car was by far the best purchase we've ever made! She napped pretty well and slept all night in a pack n' play, so most of my travel concerns with her were proved to be moot. Love that :).

It was so hard saying goodbye and heading home yesterday. Hopefully we can make another similar trip in the spring!

Friday, August 16, 2013

Dance, Dance, YEAH!

For all of my fellow moms of toddlers out here, just had to post this...

Baby Knives loves her some Sesame Street and since she took her first steps about 2 weeks ago, she's a little ways off from dancing on her own, but she tries so hard!

I especially love her raspberry at the end - that's my girl!

Friday, August 2, 2013

Vacation Days

We were missing my husband's brother and his family, but hopefully they can make it next year!

Last week we went on our first family vacation since Baby Knives was born. To be honest, we haven't done a lot of vacationing ourselves due to my husband's crazy work schedule in the medical field, so this was a rare treat.

Every summer my in-laws rent a house on the beach for a week and invite their kids and respective families to come for however many days they can. We were able to make it from Thurs-Sun this year and hopefully can stay longer next year. This year the house was in Southern Shores, NC and it was absolutely beautiful. We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather while we we were there. We got to enjoy each others company, the beach and a few local restaurants. Next year we hope we can do more sightseeing and introduce Baby Knives to some of our favorite spots in the Kittyhawk area. Pretty sure she'll be a big kite fan!

Baby Knives had never seen the ocean before and she greeted it with her usual calm demeanor and would have happily sat on her Mimi's lap letting the waves splash their legs all day long. I credit her sleeping well the entire trip to her cousins and the beach wearing her out each day! I can't wait to take her next year when she'll be running all over the sand, it'll be insane but a ton of fun.

Below are a few of our favorite snapshots of our mini-vacation (so thankful we bought a portable DVD player for Baby Knives before we left, it made the 4 hour drive bearable!)