Poconos Vacation

We decided to head up to the Poconos Mountains for a week during Labor Day. We were lucky enough to use my Grandma's timeshare, so we had a condo for a week. It was an all-inclusive resort so there was a swimming pool, game room, mini golf, and more. We used all of those things, and were very grateful for the indoor pool when we got rained on for the first 4 days of our vacation!


A tropical storm rolled through midweek, but we decided that we had been rained out enough. We ventured up to an orchard in New York and bought some cider donuts, fresh peaches, and apple pie. We stopped at a cute little town and had lunch at the Waterwheel Cafe. On the way up we drove through some major flooding from the Delaware. I wish we had taken a picture while we were driving through, but it was about 2 feet of water. Alex canoe'd down this part of the Delaware with the scouts, and ate lunch in this cabin that is now halfway under water.


The last couple of days we had beautiful weather so we went to Bushkill Falls. Its' slogan is that it is the Niagara of Pennsylvania. They were impressive waterfalls, especially because of all of the flooding in the area. Nicole loved hiking around and getting soaked from the spray, and Joel was a trooper. He was napping when he woke up in the middle of the waterfalls. You could tell he had no idea what to think, but he took it in stride and thought all of the water was pretty fun.



Our last night there, we went to the playground and had a bubble party (a few other kids joined in), and then went into Stroudsburg to get some dinner and ice cream. It was such a nice, relaxing vacation. And now it's back to real life!

Joel is 9 months!

This kid cracks me up! Joel is such a big boy in so many ways. Crawling around getting into everything, cruising around on furniture, eating everything that he's not supposed to (his current favorite is magazines), saying "da-da," "ba-ba," and most recently "ma-ma," and he just had his 7th tooth pop through yesterday. Whenever we turn on Mickey Mouse, we know we have a good half an hour until we hear from him again. He LOVES Mickey. It's like he's completely mesmerized by him. He crawls up to the tv and stands up and dances during the songs. So cute!

At the same time, he's such a baby! He is completely dependent on me, still wakes up at least twice a night to eat, and cries when I leave him with anyone outside of the family. Our favorite way to tease him is to say, "stop being such a baby." At least we think it's funny!

Joel's model pose

End of Summer

Here are just a few pictures from the end of our summer.

You'll never guess who took a bite out of this zucchini...

Joel in his awesome motorcycle overalls.

Nicole and her robots. Each one was a person in our family. They were pretty awesome. The Nikki robot is far left. She is always the biggest one when she builds/draws. Is she trying to tell us something?


We got some dirt and compost delivered for our yard, and Nicole loved playing on the dirt.


My big boy Joel