Christmas Preparations

We're getting in the Christmas spirit and are getting ready for our big trip to Kentucky to visit family and friends. We just hope Santa can find us back in the hills of Kentucky.

The girls after decorating the tree.



Baking sugar cookies to give to teachers and friends.

Decorating the sugar cookies (I think more icing ended up in their bellies than on the cookies...oh well!)

A sugar cookie Masterpiece! The wine helped the whole process go much more smoothly (for Mom and Dad of course).

The Thanksgiving Cruise

We had quite an adventure over Thanksgiving. Grandma and Grandpa Stansberry treated our family and Brian's to an awesome 4 night Disney Cruise. We all had a great time. There were too many fun things to mention and provide pictures for all, but here are some:

Oh my gosh, this is a really big boat!


The whole crew waiting to board on Wed. afternoon.



Meeting captain mickey at the cruise terminal before boarding.



Having a blast at the going away party at the top of the ship.

Carrie successfully navigating the giant Mickey slide at the ship kids pool.

Grandparents and the grandkids all dressed up for formal night.

The desserts are really good on the Disney cruise.

Look, we found Mommy roaming the halls in a blue dress. No.... It's just Cinderella.

Leah won the golf chipping contest in the lobby of the ship. She beat 20 other golfers including Grandpa Stansberry and won a keychain flashlight which she was very proud of.

At the pirates in the caribbean night. The teeth make the outfit.

I don't care how much fun he is on a cruise, we are not having another!

My biggest princess doing the limbo at dinner.

With goofy on Castaway Cay (Disney's private island).

Building sandcastles on the beach with Cousin Katy.

Kimmy with Captain Jack Sparrow.

Chillin in our room before dinner after a big day of adventures on the high seas.

The only rough part of the trip was getting home because of big weather delays. This is the girls at the Philly airport at midnight. I think after staying up late every night to see the great shows, the fireworks, and dancing that the girls need a vacation to rest from their vacation. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for a great trip!

October was a busy month

OK. So I haven't posted in a month, but we've been busy. Early in October we took a long weekend and drove to Kentucky to visit Grandma and Grandpa Brooks. We had a great time playing around on the farm. We went up to the far hill for both a breakfast and a lunch which is always a favorite activity. Kimmy took a turn driving the ATV. We were all holding on too tight to take a picture! Grandma also decided to experiment with the orange hair spray. We also had the pleasure of celebrating Uncle Eric's Birthday with him and Aunt Twila.



Then we drove home and spent the night with Uncle Brian, Aunt Emily, Katy, and David. The girls always love seeing them. The visit was short, but we're all looking forward to our Disney cruise together in a few weeks.

Then we came home and Grandma Stansberry arrived the next weekend for a visit. She got to see all the girls' schools and went to Leah and Carrie's dance class with us. We also all went to the Freddy Hill Farm Fall Festival where we took a hayride, picked pumpkins, did a corn maze, a slide, watched pig races, and ate ice cream. Lots of fun. We also managed to squeeze some babysitting out of Grandma so Kelly and I could go out.





Our final big adventure was a Dad-Daughter camp that Kim and I went to. We went with Hannah and Andy Gotwals (friends from church). It was really a lot of fun. There were 40 couples there and the weekend was packed full of great activities. All of the girls (and the Dads) were completely exhausted by Sunday afternoon. Putting 16 girls age 7-11 in a one room cabin is apparently a ton of fun, but does not lend itself well to sleeping. 16 snoring dads in a room together also does not result in a restful nights sleep.


Kimmy was an ace on the rifelry range as shown below.


We also had a candlelight dinner date on Saturday night that was a lot of fun. Kimmy's counselor braided her hair special for the evening.



The big event Sunday afternoon was the "Giant Swing". They basically strap you into a rapelling harness and attach you to a cable that is hanging from an elaborate cable system 60 feet up in the forest. Then they use a rope and pully to left you up into the trees, you pull a release, and then go flying through the forest. It's quite a rush.

This is Kimmy haning upside down as she swings.



Andy did the swing so I of course could not be outdone so they hauled me up into the trees.

And I also flew through the forest upside down. Can't wait till next year when we can try the zip-line. Next up is Halloween tomorrow. I'm sure there will be lots of good tales from that.

birthday, braces, ballet, soccer, and school

A lot has been happening in the last few weeks around the Mowery household. Leah finished off her week-long birthday celebration with a round of presents and a trip to "build a bear workshop" in the middle of the remaments of one of the recent hurricanes

We also had Kimmy's soccer day tournament. It was an all day tournament on a Saturday in 90+ temperatures and full sun. We played three teams. Of course we easily beat each of these teams multiple times during the season and then proceeded to loose all three games in the tournament. Oh well. The girls had fun (except for the sun burn).

The next big event was that school finally started after about 3 weeks of teacher strike!! There is still no contract so we may have to deal with a strike again later in the year, but everyone was really excited about their first day (Kimmy in 3rd, Leah in Kind., and Carrie at Preschool).

The next big event was the start of Dance Season. Leah has decided to continue her dance career and Carrie is extremely excited to have started. She now does her dance moves all over the house. In addition, Kimmy got her first braces this past weekend. She only has 6 brackets right now, and she got to choose her colors so we are easing into it, but she is doing very well with it.

First Attempt - Adventure in NYC

This is my first attempt at creating a blog. I decided to try this mostly as a way to document some of our family activities in a way that our friends and family could easily see whenever they want. So, we'll see how it goes and how good I am about updating it. I expect I'll only update after bigger events, but who knows.

For my first entry, I'll post some pictures from our trip to New York City last weekend. The focal point of the day was to go to the American Girl Store. This store is apparently the center of the doll world. It is also second only to Disney in their ability to extract money from your wallet. We were going for Leah's birthday and had told her we would buy her a doll at the store for her birthday. Well, as it turns out, we took care of our neighbors dogs while they were on vacation and they gave each of our girls a gift certificate to the American Girl Store as a thank you. As a result, all the girls went to the store armed with money and ready to buy dolls.









Here is the outside of the store. Looks innocent enough, but inside is three stories of dolls with tons of little girls packed together in complete option overload.







In American Girl Doll Heaven
















At lunch with our "guest dolls"















SUCCESS!!!




















After the American Girl adventure we went to the "Top of the Rock" for a view of the city.















I forgot to mention that Leah, Kimmy and Kelly went to see an American Girl Doll musical at the store. Since Carrie didn't make the age cut-off, Carrie and I decided to do the super speedy see NYC in 1 hour tour so we took off down 5th avenue and went to The Disney Store, Trump Tower, FAO Schwartz, and Central Park where we rode the carousel. We got off the carousel and realized we had 15 minutes to get back to the store to meet the others which was roughly 12 blocks away. So Carrie rode on my shoulders and we took off through the streets of New York. I guess the day was a little tiring for Carrie. She collapsed on top of her doll after we got in the car before we even made it out of the city.

















It was really a fun trip and I look forward to going back to NYC to explore more of the city with the girls.













HELP!! I can feel the estrogen coursing through my veins!!