Niagara Falls and the Flower Girl

Here's some pictures of our visit to Niagara Falls and our grandaughter Taytum as the Flower Girl at Matt and Beth's wedding. For pictures of the Bride and Groom go to http://www.mattandbeth.org/.

Knoebels With the Grandchildren

Yesterday we took Jul's kids to Knoebels Amusement Park. We loved the park and had a great time. Both parking and entrance to the park are free. For the rides you can either buy an all day pass or tickets. There is a large picnic area and lots of good reasonably priced food choices. Alot of trees provide shade on a hot day. Check out http://www.knoebels.com/ for more info.

Freedom of the Seas

Here's a picture of Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas. This is the ship we are cruising on in September. As we were tendering ashore and watching the "pirate ship" we were able to get this interesting shot. The Freedom of the Seas and it's sister ship Liberty of the Seas are currently the largest cruise ships ever (154k ton). Next year Royal Caribbean is launching another ship in this class called Independence of the Seas. The following year they launch a Genesis class ship that will be 41% larger (220K ton).

Shower and Pizza

Yesterday we hosted a baby shower for Brett and Jenn's baby with Brett's side of the family. We had a lot of fun and Jenn got some great gifts. Julianne came up with a fun game where everyone was given a common baby name and we had to refer to each other by that name. If you messed up and used the person's real name you had to put some change in a bank for the baby. Needless to say, the baby has a nice little bank started for her. For more pictures visit Brett and Jenn's blog at http://www.brettandjenn.blogspot.com/. This picture of Jenn and I is from a previous shower that we attended together.

The shower was also the occasion for my first and last foray into creativity - a diaper cake. While it was fun to put together, for me, being creative is more stressful than relaxing. My desire for order and preciseness gets in the way of the freedom of creativity. Here is a picture to commemorate this occasion.

The second thing we did Saturday was get pizza. Not just any pizza, but a Vince's Pizza. For the past few weeks Brett, Ted and I have been craving pizza from a pizzeria we used to go to when we lived in Philadelphia. So on Saturday, after we took Ted's mom home, we went and picked up pizza from Vince's on Grant Avenue in Philadelphia. Since we moved to Morgantown 6 years ago we've tried many different pizza's and have yet to find one that matches our favorite. Vince's Pizzeria is owned by a cousin of the family that ran Charlie's Pizza. Charlie's Pizza was a family treat on Sunday nights after church when we were growing up. We passed on the tradition and raised our kids on Vince's pizza. Saturday night Brett and Jenn joined us for pizza from Vince's and a few rounds of Sequence. Mmmm!

Cruising

We just returned from a cruise on the Carnival Liberty. It was a 6 night cruise to Bahama, Grand Cayman and Costa Maya. At Freeport, Bahama we took a taxi to a beach and practiced using our snorkel gear. At Grand Cayman we tendered ashore and did some shopping. The picture of the boat above is as the tender was leaving (we did not have to dive in and swim to shore as it seems in the picture!!). The scenic picture is of Grand Cayman as we arrived. It was so windy when we got to Costa Maya that they weren't able to dock the boat so we had an extra day at sea. We had a really smooth sailing except for the day and a half getting to and from Costa Maya.

At dinner we were assigned a table with 3 other "fifty-something" couples. All had been married a long time and had grown kids and grandkids, which gave us alot in common. We enjoyed the company each night. The pictures above are of our table mates. Our table was at the back of the dining room against the window with a great view of the ocean and sky. Our server, Adriana, was great and we had alot of fun with her. The food was very good and our previous experiences gave me the confidence to order 2 lobsters on formal night!! And for dessert...Warm Chocolate Melting Cake...need I say more?

Overall, we relaxed, had a good time and met some nice people.

Ted's new eyelids!

It's not the best but here's a picture of Ted's eyes post surgery. His lids do not fold over and press down on and into the eye like they did before. He also has a nice looking roundness to the lid shape that opens up the eye better. An interesting benefit to the surgery is that Ted's vision has changed now that the lid is not pressing on the eyeball. In another month he will be getting new lenses.

I couldn't find a good (bad) photo from pre-surgery to show the comparison. Of course, I don't save the bad ones!!

We finally did it...we bought a new car. We've been wanting a bigger vehicle for a while. We needed a car that had seating for 7 so that we could take any of our kid's families for an excursion in one vehicle. Our requirements were: an suv, not a van; but not a gas guzzler; room for luggage behind the third row; dual temperature control (one of us likes it warm, the other cold, you figure it out!);reverse sensing system; 6 cd player and of course, a reasonable price. We found what we were looking for in a Ford Freestyle. Here's a picture!