Once Upon A Dream

We went to the Howe Caverns today. It was a great little day trip. The caverns are only about 40 minutes from our house...and very close to the baseball hall of fame. The tour was so cool. The caves were about 52 degrees...and very beautiful. The girls had an adventure learning about stalagmites and stalagtites....limestone and geodes. At the end of the tour, we had a little lunch in the Cavern Cafe. The view was gorgeous...rolling green hils...etc. We chose a geode, and the nice girls working at the caverns introduced us to the diamond saw. It sliced our geode in half...and the middle was mostly white/clear quartz. Then we got to sift through dirt to find gems....and we found a ton. The workers at the cavern gave us identification cards to determine what we found. It was a great trip...we can't wait to go again someday.

Lunch

The Geode

Finding/sifting for gems

We took a trip to our favorite orchard today....Bowman's. We met a bunch of friends there. The kids all picked a ton of strawberries. It was super hot...it is a good thing that we went very early. We had enough strawberries for pie....and more.

We spent some time at a few more playgrounds this week. We have been having lots of fun with friends.

Gillian played games on the computer while Gabby helped to paint a birdhouse that she picked out for Dave on Father's day. Gillian's leg is completely back to normal.

We were in a mall yesterday and saw a large area filled with bouncy play areas for kids. We paid for a half hour of playtime and ran in ready to have fun. About 20 minutes later we left with one lame child and one emotional scarred child. Gillian twisted her leg while jumping, and she couldn't walk. She tried a couple steps, but she kept collapsing. We drove to the ER to have everything checked out. They looked her over, gave her motrin, and took some xrays. When everything was done...they gave her a clean bill of health...told her to take it easy and let her muscles heal. Gillian and Gabby were both very happy.

We started celebrating father's day on Saturday. We let Dave sleep in and cooked him a big huge breakfast. The girls gave him gifts, and Gabby painted a picture of a Robin for Dave. He requested to go out to eat at Red Robin, and we went on Saturday to avoid any crowds. It was all fun and games until someone had to take a trip to the ER! (More on that in the next entry)

I think that we have two monkeys in our family, and I don't mean Dave or me. Take a look at some of their latest antics.....

Gillian has been carrying around her little Star Wars figurines for the last few weeks. She is deeply immersed in all things "Jedi". Luke's little helmet kept falling off, so Gillian found a perfect place to keep it. It was really cute.

We had a big end of the school year playdate/graduation party for the kids in Gabby's class. It turned out to be a great day despite the forecast of rain. We played tons of games outside ...and had a lot of snacks.

Face paint and Musical Squares

Water balloon on a spoon relay

Ladder version of duck duck goose

Water balloon toss and Bonzai slide/bouncy house

Aunt Mandy likes to take these pictures with the girls. They are pretty funny!