While the kids have been 'camping' lots of times, this was the first time sleeping in a tent!
It was such a fun weekend with good friends and good weather. Sure it rained a bit while we were sleeping, but we were blessed with cool nights making our fire much appreciated.
Firefly hunting anyone?
I enjoyed my cuddle time with each child.
I also enjoyed Daddy's cooking!
My friends' children made great playmates for the kids.
More cuddles :)
Before leaving, I put my tripod to use to take this family photo and a group photo.
The day after we returned from camping, Charlie enjoyed a boy's sleepover at Grandma's house. I enjoyed some girl time outside, and I finally retrieved our water table from the shed.
They loved it.
Then Taylor suggested a picnic lunch.
These are just two silly shots I took while practicing backlighting.
On Monday, Mark suggested going somewhere for his four day weekend. Two days later we were packed and headed for the Sweetest Place on Earth. We decided to break up the 8 hour drive by stopping in Pittsburgh for the night. We started our vacation with an omnimax movie about the arctic.
Morgan loved the water feature in the lobby.
Then we took an incline up to overlook the city.
The view from the top was impressive.
Then we enjoyed dinner at the cheesecake factory.
Finally we checked into our first hotel and headed for the hotel swimming pool.
We headed out the next morning and drove to our sweet destination.
First stop: Hershey's chocolate world.
Then we ate at the hottest KFC ever. (Morgan took this photo with my phone.)
Since it was the fourth of July, we headed over the a spot we read about online that overlooked the city's fireworks.
We had to wait and wait for the sun to go down.
Charlie was the one who had requested fireworks a few weeks ago, and I made a mental note to make this happen for him. As they started, he turned to me and said "Thank you, Mommy." My heart swelled.
This was my first time shooting fireworks and I'd definitely like to do things a little differently next time. Too bad I have to wait an entire year :( Still, I was thrilled with what I got.
Once the fireworks concluded, Taylor turned to me and Mark and thanked us. These two little, heartfelt, sincere, unprompted 'thank yous' were my favorite moments of the entire trip. I told Taylor that later and she said "That's weird, we did a lot of other really fun things."
The next morning the kids slept in while Daddy set out to visit Gettysburg.
We waited at the hotel for his return.
More specifically, we waited at the hotel pool.
That night, we head for Hershey Park. We decided to do the sunset pass which meant we could arrive at 5pm. Little did we know that the One Direction concert held in a venue next to the park would slow our arrival down by an hour and a half!
Once we finally, made it to the park it was 7:30. We wanted to take advantage of as many rides as possible. We didn't want to waste time sitting down to eat so that night the kids dined on popcorn and cotton candy.
The grand finale was riding the ferris wheel.
We thought about returning the next day, but realized that the kids would enjoy the pool just as much.
Then we headed back to Pittsburgh for the night (and more swimming).
We concluded our 20+ hours in the car on Sunday afternoon. Just like our last road trip, the kids were so good during every leg of our trip. It really made for an enjoyable family vacation.
I feel so blessed to have shared so many family summer memories already this summer! Here's hoping the second half of summer is as fun as this!!
