Universal Studios

In January we got to go to Florida for a week and spend 2 days at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.  Aunt Jill, Uncle Brian, and Dylan also came.  This was the kids Christmas gift from Grammy and G-Pap, and they had a blast.  The Harry Potter attractions were definitely everyone's favorite, I personally loved the new Diagon Alley.  It really felt like you stepped into a book.  Here are some pictures from our trip.

Notice the sweatshirts, it was chilly!

Butter beer was soooo good.  You could get it frozen or regular.  How many times did we buy it??

Gringott's bank with a fire breathing dragon on the top.  Real fire.

A place to buy butterbeer

Diagon Alley.  We also visited the wand store and a wizard guy showed us how to pick the right wand.

Nanna and Pap Pap bought the kids gift cards and Amelia used hers to buy some love potion!  

Curious George land was awesome!  

My Christmas gift was a Neil Diamond shirt!

Dylan in the pool - our house had a pool and even though it was chilly, the kids swam in it every day

The train conductor was very friendly and fun.

A picture of the excitement before we went to the Islands of Adventure!

G-Pap and Dylan - Dylan really wanted whatever G-Pap was drinking.

More Miscellaneous

We got to stop by and visit Natalie for about an hour on our way home from seeing Neil!  She looks adorable in her Minnie dress.  We had a hard time getting to her house because a motorcycle accident occurred right at the end of her dead-end street.  We had to park and walk in the deep snow to get to Rebecca who picked us up.  That was definitely an adventure!

This is my awesome outfit that I wore to the concert.  Emily's mom was so kind to let us borrow some of her old clothes.  Neil always wears sequins so we wanted to match.  We don't know why some people were looking at us weirdly, they were the ones dressed way too plain.

And here's Mia, my little baker.

Another picture of Luke dressing up like a girl.

Girls at Luke's basketball game

Miscellaneous - haircuts, Emma, Neil

Miscellaneous Pictures

I've been bad at updating the blog so here is a collection of random pictures I took recently.

Luke's haircut!

He wanted spikey hair.

Emma and I had some "girl time" in Roanoke a few weeks ago.  We went shopping, ate at restaurants, and talked.  It was so fun!  When we were shopping in the mall a lady offered to curl Emma's hair with a straightener.  Her hair looks awesome!  I can't help but notice how grown-up she looks in these pictures.

Emma also competed in the Spelling Bee in Roanoke this year, and she won 3rd place!

This is a picture of me and Emily , sporting our Neil shirts we bought at his concert in Allentown.  Yes, we drove 6 hours each way to see Neil and it was so worth it!  

Luke's 8th Birthday

Happy 8th Birthday Luke!  

Today is Luke's birthday.  Eight.  My baby!  It's hard to believe that 8 years ago today we had to cancel Emma's 3rd birthday party because Luke arrived two weeks early (which was awesome).  I had spent hours the night before decorating the Dora cake  We postponed the party to the following weekend.  WHAT?!  Why didn't anyone stop me from hosting a party with a one week old baby plus two more kids?  

Joel always gets creative and prints fun posters.  We always decorate a "birthday chair".  The highlight of the birthday was his gift  - a Kindlefire.  We have been hearing about the Kindle for months; he likes to tell us in detail exactly which games he's going to download.  Minecraft seems to be the favorite.  He requested my chocolate cupcakes for school, and toffee latte ones at home.  We also had a soda buffet (hence the orange soda in the picture with Superman) and a tea party.  I'm not sure why he wanted a tea party, but he kept saying he wanted one with Sprite.  We had Sprite, but he drank so many other sodas that he couldn't manage drinking Sprite!  I guess we all are going to be going on a camping trip this summer for 2 nights?  Camping is usually part of his gift.  Time will tell whether this will be a full family camping trip, or if one of us will stay at home :)