Lancaster, PA

A few weeks ago we took a very last minute mini-vacation to Pennsylvania. We started off at Hershey Park for two days and then headed to Lancaster for the next three days.

Just outside Hershey, is Indian Echo Caverns. Before going into the caverns the boys panned for gold!

There was this lake, I guess you would call it, inside the caverns, where the water was this beautiful green/blue color. The tour guide said it used to be just clear water but for years, tourists threw pennies in the water to make wishes and the copper turned the water this beautiful color.

The rest of my pictures are from around beautiful Lancaster County where it is just a peaceful and serene as it looks!

...and, they're off...

My three boys started school yesterday and it went very smoothly! This will be the first and only year that the three of them will be in the same school together. Since it was they're first day back I wanted to make a special "back to school" dinner along with some a carrot cake.See that smudge on the top of the cake? Bet you didn't know that cats like carrot cake too!

The Brooklyn Bridge

Every time we go into Manhattan, we like to take the boys to either a different attraction, museum or neighborhood. This summer I wanted to take them for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. When we woke up Sunday morning and saw what a beautiful day it was going to be, we knew what we were going to do. My boys love going into the city but Brandon, my youngest, doesn't go anywhere without his pad and markers!!!

We got really lucky and found a parking spot right at the foot of the bridge on the Brooklyn side. The plan was to walk across into Manhattan, walk over to Chinatown for some Chinese food, walk back over the bridge and back into Brooklyn for some ice cream.

The white line divides the walkers and bike riders. Be sure NOT to cross that line...those bike riders are on a mission!!!!

If you walk across without stopping it's about 20 minutes. But of course you will stop to take a bunch of picture and to just look at the amazing scenery. So plan on it being an hour walk.

Chinatown!

After dinner in Chinatown our plan changed a bit. We walked over to South Street Seaport, instead, for ice cream.






This man was doing some very unusual things with his body....interesting and very entertaining though!

This man thought he was a statue!

The boys got some very cool tattoos and then went on this bungee jumping thing-a-ma-jig.

Needless to say, we didn't walk back over the bridge....the kids asked if we could take a taxi. Which to them, was one of the best parts of the day!

she sells seashells...

The other night we headed down to the beach to see the huge waves that Hurricane Bill was causing. The tide was super high and as the boys were playing near the edge of the water, I noticed that all of these perfect little seashells had washed up on shore.

They were everywhere! And every one that we picked up was just perfect!


But what I really couldn't believe was just how tiny some of them were...

...so tiny!!!

I want to play!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you seen these at Michaels? They are called Vintage Findings from Making Memories. I started picking them up before school was out and I remember thinking to myself, "these will be fun to play with this summer!" Hmmmm....what was I thinking!!!???? Even while taking these pictures I must have heard "mommy" only about 3,458,983 times! But really, aren't they so neat!!??

This one is called, "mini travel kit". What I also love is that on the back they show a picture of what you can do with it."mini kit girl"And then there are these little packages of glassine envelopes, artisan labels, plain labels, stamps, tickets and much, much more!

Every morning when I wake up I say to myself, "no matter WHAT....today I am going to make something!!!!!!" Today I actually managed to take these out of the packages.

So in the meantime, I'll just keep looking at pretty millinery....

...and great old papers!

There's always tomorrow!