Good Old Moon

I made my annual summer pilgrimage home to Moon Township with the kids the end of June. Once of the reasons we went when we did was so we could go to my niece Carol's graduation party. I can't believe I have another niece in college! I also can't believe EZ has such creepy eyes in this picture. HaHa

Of course that meant my grandpa and Aunt Nancy and Uncle Tom were in town and we had so much fun visiting with them. Getting a group picture is never easy and this time King made it extra hard because he was either cover my Aunt Nancy's face or playing dead.

The cousins always have so much fun together and I love this pic of my brother-in-law Robert being such a great uncle.

Of course we had to go to Kennywood while I was home. We picked a day that my dad had off work and we brought Ellie and Grace along for the ride. We actually sat down and ate lunch at Johnny Rocket's. That might not seem like a big deal, but in my 34 years of going to Kennywood we never once went to one of the sit down restaurants. We are big time now ;)

We all had a blast, but for some reason King did everything in his power to ruin every pic he was in.

Another splurge this year, was getting digital prints of some of the roller coaster pics. It was just $30 for all the pictures you took that day. I wish I had realized and bought the deal earlier in the day, but we still got some good ones. 

I love Katie trying to help Noah stay in his seat and the terrified look on my dad's face. I swear he likes roller coasters, but he always looks like this in the pics. 

Conrad was on this ride with me, but he is hidden in the pic. He was so brave to go on such a big coaster.

I love this one of Ellie and Netta on the Phantom, because Netta has this "It's no big deal" look on her face.

It was great having Ellie and Grace there to run around with EZ and Netta. I was a little nervous to let them run around without an actual adult, but they did great and Ellie is definitely old enough and responsible enough. 

Netta and Grace have a ton of fun together. There is a 5 year age difference, but you can't tell looking at them. HaHa

Aunt Meghan had a bunch of water balloons, so we set up an epic boys vs. girls water balloon fight. It ended up not quite as epic as we thought and it took 5 times as long fill the balloons as it did to have the fight.

We took Ellie for her traditional birthday trip to the Drive In. I am glad she still likes doing this, because we love it. We saw Inside Out and it was awesome.

The people who live across from my parents have a pool and they said that we were welcome to come us it. So one day, while my niece Sarah was there babysitting so the mom couldwork from home, we went over to swim. We were all have a great time, but then the daughter swam too close to the slide while King was going down it and she ended up getting hit in the face and started bleeding. Of course it was a total accident. It was a tiny pool and it was really easy for something like this to happen, but when the mom heard the crying she came running out and went crazy. She was yelling at Sarah and never even bothered to ask me what happened or acknowledge that I was there. It was really weird and traumatic for Sarah and I think it's safe to say we won't be swimming there anymore.

On a lighter note, King was in baby heaven this trip. He spent a lot of time following Kaelyn around.

Then Sarah and Casey arrived and King was even more excited! We loved Austin, but unfortunately, things did not work out as well for Sarah and Casey there and it got to the point where they just couldn't afford to live there anymore, so they moved up to live with my parents while Casey job hunts and they happened to arrive a couple days before we left. King was SO excited to see Casey again. King kept petting Casey's leg while he was talking to him. It was pretty hilarious and then insisted they had to have a picture together.

The arrival of Sarah and Casey, meant the arrival of baby Hazel and you know King was all over that.

Netta got in on the baby action as well. Thank heaven my sisters are still having kids!

Grandpa gave everyone rides on the motorcycle. All my kids were in except for King, which is exactly what happened last year! Conrad was killing me, because he insisted on holding on to the handle bars, even though he couldn't really reach them. I love that we used to ride on this motorcycle as kids when we would go visit my Grandpa E. and now my kids are getting do the same thing.

It was fun to be able to have the 4 boys all born the same year together, but there was A LOT of fighting. It is just a few too many toddlers. Luckily, we got one nice shot of Noah and Conrad not trying to kill each other.

We also managed to get a pic of the 4 of them together, but it was not easy and it was not a great picture.

Having all those kids in the house also meant that disease spread like wild fire. When we got there Meghan and her kids had pink eye and then at some point someone started barfing and there was a fever going around and when it was time to leave King and I both had diarrhea and Conrad had pink eye. We almost didn't leave when we planned, but luckily we survived the journey and no one pooped their pants. Within days of getting home, I got a nasty case of pink eye, which was way worse then what Conrad had had. That just doesn't seem fair, especially since I was supposed to be training for a triathalon, but no swimming for me! Despite all the disease the trip was still totally worth it. I love my family!