Happy Wednesday

Happy Wednesday!  I am back to work or my version of work these days and while the babies are napping I thought I would update my blog.  I am going to try and make a valid effort to update it more often and include pictures.........like once a week.   Anyway :)

Kurt & I had a very nice Easter Break though it did involve a lot of running around.  I had the pleasure of having off Thursday thru Tuesday which was extremely nice.  Kurt was not so lucky because he only had off work on Friday.  The time off gave me plenty of time to clean my house, catch up on some school work, catch up on some girl scout events, and work on some decorations for an upcoming event.  I also spent a lot of time on Friday & Saturday running all over town (oxford, exton, douglassville, & reading to name a few) collecting artificial Christmas trees for an upcoming Girl Scout event but that is a secret so more on the trees and decorations later :)

We spent Easter day celebrating our lords resurrection at church followed by dinner with Kurt's family.  Easter dinner was at his grandmother's house and we enjoyed a nice lunch, family time, and I even got to hide the Easter eggs for the kids hunt (when your a big kid who is no longer allowed to hunt hiding the eggs is the next best thing).  It was a great day!  How was your Easter?  Did you do anything special?

It seems that these next few months of spring are going to be filled with fun.  We have the father/daughter dance coming up next weekend followed by a trip to Tennessee for my Granny's birthday (she is turning 80) then the next weekend is Camporee.  After camporee I get a little break before my troop heads to D.C. to Rock the mall in celebration of 100 years of girl scouting.  Not to mention the fact that Kurt thinks that we are going to find time in the next two months to go on our long awaited honeymoon (IRELAND) while I am secretly planning more towards June or even July.  Hey maybe we could go in August and spend our 1 year anniversary in Ireland wouldn't that be cool!!! 

Well I guess that is everything.  What do you have planned for spring?

Update an a little bragging

Well it has been a while since I had time to write a blog post.  Christmas came and went along with Valentines day and now Easter is almost here. 

 Kurt and I spent our first Christmas together as a married couple the same way that we have spent the last 9 years as an unmarried couple.  I asked for a sewing machine and Kurt was pretty skeptical but I still got the sewing machine :)  I finally opened the box and started playing with it the first of March.  I got Kurt a nice cover for his motorcycle because he just had it repainted in September.  He loved it!  We spent the morning with his parents watching the kids open gifts and then headed over to his grandmother's house for the afternoon.  This year I think that we have decided to go to Tennessee for Christmas :)

Our first Valentines day as a married couple we went out to our favorite restaurant Longhorn and enjoyed a nice dinner.  Kurt also bought me a dozen roses and spread them out all over the house in small vases and he cleaned the house.

During January & February my time was completely consumed by Girl Scout cookies.  My troop really outdid themselves and sold 9636 boxes of cookies (almost 10000 boxes) and over 75 cookie booths (luckily I did not have to run most of them).  This is the largest number of cookies sold in our service unit and as far as I know it is also the largest in the surrounding area.  I was so proud of them!!  We had 17 our of 24 girls in the troop earn a trophy for selling over 300 boxes and we had 2 girls sell over 1000 boxes of cookies.  And the twins also sold 1000 boxes together!!  Our troop also sold 730 boxes of cookies to send to the soldiers (our goal was 500).   We sold so many boxes of cookies that our troop is able to afford a trip to Washington D. C. for the 100 year anniversary of Girl Scouting in June. 

 Some of the girls standing around the soldier cookies before loading them into my van for delivery to the Girl Scout Council.

Now that cookies are completed my schedule is filled with other events.  I am on the decorating committee for the upcoming Father/Daughter Dance the theme is a surprise but it involves making lots of decorative candies like gumdrops and lollipops.  More to come on this soon :).  We also have a troop sleepover scheduled and I am planning the Girl Scout Camporee in the beginning of May another secretive theme this one based off of a reality T.V. show (hint a Girl Scout won on the show last year).  Then I am co-leading VBS for my church this summer.  These activities and at least two trips (one to visit my granny for her 80th b-day and one to Ireland) will keep my weeks full for the next few months. 

School is still going good I am still making strait A's :)  I just started a new class on Tuesday and it is a math class so we will see how the next 5 weeks of math goes for me. 

I think that covers everything over the last few months. 

Crock Pot Drive

As one of our many community service projects this year my Girl Scout troop adopted Jar's of Hope a food pantry and thrift store in the Gap area.  This food pantry is located in the Pequea Valley School District.  I chose to go outside of our school district so that there would not be any awkward moments when a girl realized that she recognized someone in the food line from school.  When we asked Jars of Hope how we could help they recommended a Crock Pot drive for the people in the area who did not have working ovens to cook larger meals.  Our troop set out on a mission to collect as many crock pots as we could.  we rummaged through thrift stores and good will to find cheap crock pots to purchase with our troop money and each girl also asked friends and family to donate.  We ended up with about 50 crock pots.  On Thursday November 17th we relocated our troop meeting to the food pantry to help distribute the crock pots and gently used hats, gloves, scarves, and jackets.  The girls really enjoyed helping out.  I am so proud of these girls for their hard work and good behavior while helping at the food pantry. 

Kurt's Birthday Celebration in Atlantic City

My husband is officially 29!!! Happy Birthday Kurt! For his birthday I planned a nice little getaway to Atlantic City one of his favorite destinations. We had lots of fun on our little trip. It is always nice to get away.

We have arrived :) 

A beautiful day at the beach!!

My idea of a great day at the beach :)

Birthday dinner at our favorite restaurant Longhorn!





A day at the beach.

I even went barefoot. 

Isn't he handsome

A special surprise Bally's version of The Price is Right

Host Todd Newton

We didn't make it on stage but I was surprised that they had such great prizes including multiple cars and trips even one to Disney. 

We had such a great trip and it was a great way to celebrate 29. 

F.A.L.L. Leaders weekend

Last weekend 4 of my new Girl Scout co-leaders and I traveled to Camp Laughing Waters for some Girl Scout Trainings. They had to take a bunch of required courses while I got to enjoy some fun and some not so fun courses. Overall it was a great weekend and I believe that we all had a great time. We even have a few pictures :)

Group Photo :)

One of our classes was a Flash Mob class where we learned the Flash Mob dance that will be presented at Rock the Mall in Washington D.C. in June.  This is our attempt at a flash mob during the flag ceremony on the last day.  I am of course in the purple long sleeve shirt & Dawn is in the grey hoody to my right. 

Clearly we needed more practice LOL

Twist Me Turn Me Show me the Elf :)

Last night my Girl Scout troop officially moved into Brownies.  We have our Sash's with all the basic patches, we have our pins, and we have our new brownie handbooks.  We started our meeting with a rededication ceremony.  The ceremony is one that Girl Scouts have used for years.  It was simple to recreate.

We started with the The Brownie Story found in the girls new book.  Then we went into our imaginary forest and took the path to the pond(which consisted of brown construction paper for stepping stones, my leftover fake flowers & greenery from the wedding, & the floorlength mirror that hangs in my bathroom).  Each girl then chanted Twist Me, Turn Me, Show Me the Elf, I looked into the pond and saw myself (also found in the brownie book).  Once she looked into the mirror they followed the assembly line of leaders they did the girl scout handshake, recited the promise from memory, & received their new brownie pin.  We then sung the Brownie Smile Song.  The girls had a great time.  I just wish I would have remembered my camera :/  After our ceremony we sat down and discussed the differences in Daisies & Brownies and talked about all the fun things we wanted to do this year.  I think we are going to have a great Brownie year. 

We will hopefully be going apple picking this Sunday.

Our Mini-Moon

Since we have such a big honeymoon planned in a few months we decided that we would not take a long vacation after the wedding.  Instead we decided to explore an area of Virginia that we have been admiring from a distance for the last 9 years.  Everytime we drive to and from Tennessee we pass through Natural Bridge Virginia on route 81.  This area is one of the most beautiful areas along route 81 and also the halfway point between our house in Pennsylvania and my grandmothers house in Tennessee.  It is such a nice area that we have often joked about moving to this area so that we would be halfway between both locations. 

These first few photos are the view that we see along the road on route 81 everytime we travel to and from Tennessee.  The pictures do not do it justice it is a beautiful area.

One of the first places we visited during our stay in Natural Bridge were the caverns near the natural bridge.  The pictures below are just a few of the pictures we took while underground.

 

 

Kurt pretending to fish in the undergound pond in the cavern. :)

Some of these rocks were so cool looking.....

Others looked..........well what do you think this looks like??

And these??  Kurt had some fun with this one LOL

Overall we really enjoyed the caverns.  Even with the bats.

Our next stop in our journey was an antique toy museum but we didn't take many picture.

Afterwards we went to visit their butterfly habitat.  Lots of pictures from this one.  Kurt really liked the butterflies.

 

 

 Finally we made our way down to the Natural Bridge to explore this beautiful area that God Created.  It was a long hike down and then once you walk under the bridge there is a long trail that you can follow one way leads to a beautiful waterfall and the other way leads to a display from the indian tribes that were local to that area.

 

The Natural Bridge area is a beautiful area that everyone should visit.

 

 

 Finally we stopped at this great little mexican resturant on our way out of town I loved their decorations.  Especially the tables!!