Brace Yourself, here comes Irene!

Well, we must be bad luck.. Since we got back to Philly, there's been an earthquake, a hurricane, and a tornado.  Yikes.  But through all of those, we were hardly even affected.

We didn't even feel the earthquake, although many others in our neighborhood felt it.  I guess either we're oblivious, or being on the 5th floor made it very mild for us.

We braced ourselves for the worst with the hurricane.  We had all of our emergency supplies, and I was quite confident we could survive here without electricity or water for a good while.  I had everything out in piles, ready for use.  Candles, flashlights, food, batteries, water.  I even froze gallons of liquid to help keep our fridge and freezer colder for longer if the power went out.  I had the bathtub and washer filled for extra water.  I was most worried about our car being hit by a tree, and something happening to the roof, like a serious leak or something. Well, we stayed up late watching the winds pick up, and the trees starting to sway and blow like crazy.  The worst was supposed to come from midnight to 6 am.  But to be honest, I'm pretty sure the worst happened before we even went to bed.  At around 10:30pm we were put on close tornado watch. I stayed up til that ended then went to bed.  JD got up in the middle of the night when the storm was supposedly at its worst, but it was actually more mild that when we had gone to bed.  We were very blessed to have somehow come out completely untouched from all of these natural disasters.

It is still very rainy and very windy here, but apparently the worst is over.  The city is flooded all over the place, the worst closer to rivers and creeks.  Church was cancelled today due to the bad road and weather conditions, and hopefully all will return to normal, soon.

Thanks for all the thoughts and concerns and prayers for our family by all those who reached out to us the last few days. We appreciate your love and support, and miss you all already!

"You gotta get out more..."

After having a jam-packed, action-filled summer with things to do and places to go every single minute, I really have been having a hard time being back out here in Philly.  Days are long, and people are sparse compared to having family around all the time.  So, I decided to find some fun things for us to do out here.

Generally,  I avoid going places here, because JD driving us around in the bad traffic and the crazy streets nearly gives me a heart-attack, especially when it is down in town.  Also, when I find cool things to do in town, I forget that it costs you your first child to park down there, and that is if you are lucky enough to even FIND a parking spot.  Anyway, enough about my complaints.

This time, I found things to do that were OUT of the city.  And you know what?  I found TONS of fun things to do! I am so glad we did some things together as a family before school started.  They were even things that Jax really enjoyed, which helped a lot considering we are on attention-detox now from being around family for so long.

 Okay so this wasn't so much out of the city, more out our back door.  Jax LOVES ice cream lately. Good thing his mom loves it, too!

 We headed out west of town to a place called Thornbury Park.  They had a children's music group come and sing kid songs and had parents and kids alike dancing in the park.  It was really fun, even though Jax wasn't really too interested in dancing until after they finished singing.

 There was a huge huge playground right by where the singing was taking place.  Jax explored all the new toys, and really liked climbing around things on his own.

 The jungle gym was by far his favorite part of the playground. He goes all the way to the top and over without any help!

 After it got dark, they showed "Toy Story 3" on a giant blow-up screen.  Jax was in Toy-Story heaven. (Just is case you wondered, I was in bug-heaven.  I got 8 bug bites that night.)  Neither of the boys got any.

 Also, ya can't beat free popcorn, warm pretzels, hot dogs, and drinks on top of a free movie night and concert!

 The next morning we headed North to the Schuylkill Valley Park for a celebration of the release of the butterflies they had been raising (even though they decided to actually NOT release the butterflies til next week due to the hurricane).

 We got there and found out the park is actually like a little mini zoo of sorts.  They had turkeys, deer, foxes,

 hawks, falcons, eagles, owls, crows,

 fish,

 and Butterflies!  We got to hold some butterflies and feed them.  Jax was more concerned about dipping the q-tip into the food.  It sortof made him upset when the butterflies actually landed on the q-tip feeder. He'd immediately try to shake it off.

 We saw caterpillars,

 snapping turtles, box turtles, snakes, a skunk, and bugs.

And, did I mention goats?  That is by far Jax's favorite part of the park.  He could stand here all day looking at these things. I thought this was kindof funny.  It looked like the 3 billy goats gruff guarding their bridge.  Sorry the picture is off-center.  I was holding up my camera trying to cut out some of the fence.  Call me a tourist. :)

The had all sorts of butterfly crafts, art projects, and even face painting as part of the fun.  Love it!

Hopefully I can keep finding this fun, FREE activities to do around where we live!  We had so much fun!

Behind (picture overload)

I decided that rather than blogging, I would soak up every ounce of my summer vacation.  So here is a short version of some of the things we did this summer:

We did a little swimming,

 A little goodbye-ing,

 a little duck-feeding,

 a little lot of jumping

 a little fourth-of-july-jumping,

 a little scootering,

 a little grammy-lovin',

 a little BBQin'

 a little ballooning,

 a little parading,

 a little sleeping, (and I mean little!)

 a little cousin-playing,

 a little water-parking,

 a little "smore"ing,

 a little farming,

 a little gaming,

 a little sun-bathing,

 a little eating (okay, a lot of that) and partying,

 a little carnival-ing,

 a little ski-lifting,

 a little sliding,

 alright, more eating, and some cabin-ing,

 some bug-watching,

 some concert-going,

 some friend-time,

 some goat-feeding,

and a lot more, believe it or not!  Wish I had pictures of all we did!  We loved every minute of being with our families, and wish we could stay there forever!  Utah weather was such a relief from the humidity out here, and was just beautiful and nice every day.  

Thank you to family, and everyone else who made our summer so great!