Let's Backtrack A Bit

In between my postings about our trip up to New England, I will attempt to backtrack a bit and share some of our fun and exciting events back in June. For some reason, June was a very hectic month and I never really got around to blogging as much as I should because there were lots of different things going on.
I already blogged about our oldest daughter Taylor graduating from high school but I never blogged about all the fun we had at her graduation party that weekend. We had lots of family members come and visit to be here for her special day. Dan's mom and dad (Mary and Jim) flew in with on of his sisters, Marghee. His sister Linda drove down from New Hampshire My mom (also Linda) flew all the way from San Fran to join us too. We would have loved for more of our family to join us but unfortunately, we live miles and miles and states away from everyone so it makes it very difficult. We know they were here in spirit.
My mom came first and helped so much with all the preparations. I had found this couch sitting on the side of the road back in May sometime. After driving past it for about 3 days I started thinking...hmmm...I could do things with that couch. It is really nice wood and very sturdy. So I took the seats out of our old van and drove over and put it into the back. It sat on our back deck then while I tried to think about what exactly I should do with it. I figured it was about the size of a futon so I picked up a futon cushion for $5 on Craigslist. After that I was kind of stuck. When my mom came, she was great at the "less thinking and more doing" way of things. We went over to JoAnn's fabric store and bought some sturdy "outdoorsy" looking fabric and went to work. Well, really she went to work with a small amount of help from me and lots of help from Taylor. She fixed the futon cushion so it was the right size and then covered it with the fabric. Then she made two throw pillows with the extra stuffing not needed from the cushion. She is so creative! I finally have it so that it can stay out all the time with a waterproof cover over it so the kids use it a lot more. (it was such a pain to bring in and out each time you wanted to use it!)
























































Here I am with Dan's mom Mary and Rebecca is with Dan's dad Jim














I looked everywhere for a good picture of Linda but apparently she decided to be a bit camera shy this time...very unlike her!










Here are Taylor and Marghee out front trying to plant the beautiful flowers Taylor got from my mom...unfortunately they did not survive our two week vacation (sorry mom!) but neither did any of our other plants. (Taylor's poor upside down tomatoes)












Here is Taylor with her best friend Micayla. We have known Micayla and her mother Pam for close to 10 years now. They are practically family!! They are always sooooo helpful. Such great friends are hard to find!! Thanks Pam!



















Taylor's culinary teacher even stopped by with a little something for her. A frame with a whole bunch of pictures from the past year in the kitchen at school! So neat!

Canobie Lake Park

On Tuesday, we hit the drive in and saw Toy Story 3 & The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was lots of fun but I didn't take any pictures....so moving on.
Wednesday was a trip to Canobie Lake Park. The girls and I had never been so it was a new experience for us....pretty much your average amusement park. A ton of fun and plenty of rides to suit all different ages.
This was Rebecca's first trip to an amusement park and we found that she is quite the daredevil. She was interested in rides that were way, way, WAY over her height limit. Pretty much no fear! Very unlike her sisters at that age. Even though the older two love roller coasters now...they had to be dragged on kicking and screaming that first time...and much older than Becca
We went with my sis-in-law Linda and her two boys and my bro-in-law Jay(who was visiting from California, we always try to plan our visit to coincide with his). I think that everyone had a good time and were even bummed to realize how quickly closing time came around.
It was rather frustrating to download my pictures and realize just how many were waaaaaay too blurry. So even though there are lots of pics here, it is only a small fraction of the ones I actually took that did NOT turn out. :-(

A Day At The Beach

So now I will get around to blogging about all the fun stuff we did last week while we were visiting the in-laws up in Massachusetts. On Monday, we hit a beach up in New Hampshire called Wallis Sands. The kids really had a blast. There really weren't many waves but they still had fun with the boogie boards and just goofing off. We were there with my sister-in-law Linda and three of her kids. Her younger two are close enough to my girls ages (Ryan, 13 & Robbie, 9) for them all to have fun together.

Wordless Wednesday

Knee Boarding

I'm sure you are all starting to wonder how many pictures did I take while we were in Wisconsin. A LOT!!! I actually had to go it and erase some of them that didn't turn out while we were there because I ran out of room on my memory chip. Well don't worry, this is the last post I have from our La Crosse vacation.
Teresa is the only one who really prefers knee boarding. She will always choose this over skiing.
















This was Jaquelyn's first year trying out the knee board. She did super well for her first try and lasted for quite a while!