The ho hum days of summer

Now that we have settled in Pittsburgh and life has moved on, well..... Things are kind of boring. No more Jamestown to visit, no more beach to visit, whether it be Va Beach, or the James or York river, no more Williamsburg to wander through, no more Yorktown to visit. It's just plain BORING in Pittsburgh. So there aren't many exciting pictures anymore, well, cause it's boring here. I can't wait to go camping in a few weeks!! Then it won't be boring! Have I mentioned that life here is boring?! :) Not to say that I'm not busy. I watch Abby 6 days of the week and we have a great time. We go to the park for lunch, I've taught her how to sew/cross stitch on plastic canvas, we read, try to learn money (oooo, frustration), all kinds of other stuff. And Sabrina comes over for 2 days out of the week. But, you guessed it, it's boring. I have class 2 days a week, that is a trip. If anyone is planning on taking any class anytime soon, I'd suggest that you not take a 5 hour a night class, it drains my brain!! I do not know how I am learning anything. The class is from 5-10 and by 8:30 my brain has done shut off. But I get to move onto Calc in the fall, and that is during the day. Hoorah. If anyone knows anything fun to do in Pittsburgh, that is free, let me know. Cause it's boring!

A day at the pool

Believe it or not Monday was a beautiful day in Pittsburgh. The sun was shining and it was warm!! YEAH! So we took advantage of it and went to the pool. A very expensive trip to cool off, let me tell ya! I miss Jamestown were I could go 5 miles down the road and stop at the beach. bummer. Anyway. We got there a little early and had to wait around. Abby and Sabrina had to try there goggles on in the car to make sure they fit:) Gotta love what the goggles do for the hair.
Sean and I are the favorite hang out for the girls, any chance they get, they cling. Can get tiresome. Sean started throwing Sabrina, and of course, she thought that was fun and kept coming back for more. And all this with Abby hanging on his back. The good part is, the girls didn't get sun burned. The bad part is, Sean and I did. Are we the adults here?!:)

Vacation Bible School

Sabrina and Abby spent last week at vacation bible school at Northway Christian Community Church. They had a blast. It ws really fun for them, and I think they learned something about God and Christ. The best was when Abby came home wet. She was mad cause the advisors didn't tell them to bring towels or their bathing suits. She was cold and very unhappy on the way home. On Sunday night the girls did a dance they learned during the week at an end of the week program. Sean and I went to watch the girls and thought there would be a lot more of them in the program. They were on stage for abotu 15 minutes and then the rest of the hour was a play and a big push for their family program thing that they have on Saturday nights. Sean and I were a little disappointed in the lack of time the kids were able to present what they learned. We'll probably send them back next year cause they had so much fun.

All the boxes are HERE!!

What a fun weekend I had. I should have taken pictures but I didn't feel the need to bother. We finally have all our stuff out of Williamsburg. The small pile of leftover, for lack of a better word, crap, is now safely ensconced in the garage of the house. I left here at 9am Friday morning, took a lovely, though bouncy ride, to Williamsburg. If anyone has ever driven a pickup truck with an empty trailer behind it you know exactly what I mean when I say BOUNCY! Anyway. So I got there at 5, luckily there was no major traffic delays, although I think everyone in the northern United States was headed to Va Beach this Friday and getting off I95 to 295 was kinda slow, as was 295 to I 64. I was not a happy camper, but I have to say, we were moving which is an improvement from our first trip north when we were standing outside the cars. After arriving in Williamsburg I proceded to the Jones house, where Mike, his brother Josh, and their dad loaded up the trailer for me. Folks, the trailer wasn't even half full, does this day something about the need for downsizing??!!! Which, by the way, I have been doing with a vengence. Everything would probably fit in the original truck now, should have thought of that before I guess. Anyway. After loading up the trailer I went to stay at Harriett Sarendarian's house for the night. I was very grateful for the oppurtunity not to have to sit any longer. I was up at 7 am on Saturday, it took 20 minutes to back the trailer out of the drive, not fun, and I was on my way. I was only slowed down once for an accident on the sid eof the road, so I made really good time. And since the trailer was loaded it wasn't nearly as bouncy as the trip down. Everytime we have gone north it seems that traffic is nowhere near as bad as if you are going south. Hmmm, I wonder why?! I arrived at the house at 3 pm, Sean was still at work, so I unloaded the trailer by myself. no big deal, as I said, it wasn't even full. We then took the trailer back ( Sean was home by this time) and didn't have to pay as much for the trailer, because I didn't have it for 2 full days. There are some bonuses to being crazy and being on the road 14 hours out of 30! I'm so glad we are not going to be going anywhere for at least 2 years. I'm sooooo sick of moving. And I think I'm going to be downsizing even more in the future. I can't believe I have accumulated so much STUFF!!!!

Akron Rib cook off

Sean, Abby and I went to visit my sister Candy, in Akron on Friday. My mom had flown in from California and we were going to the rib cook off in downtown Akron for dinner. If anyone knows anything about downtown Akron, well, we were in for a treat:) From what my brother-in-law Gregg says, the rib cook off used to be big time, huge, lots of people cooking, lots of other stuff to do, and cheap food. Things have changed. It's shrunk considerably from what it used to be and there were only 6 rib places that where there. While we didn't have a lot to chose from the choices we did have were kinda scary. There were a couple places from Texas, some from South Carolina, and one from Ohio that said they made South Carolina bbq, go figure. Sean and I picked 2 places and shared ours, and the place I got mine from was better:) Oh, yeah, and it was by no means cheap!!

This picture is of Sean, Abby, and my nephew Robert AKA Bobby. It was the only picture I managed to take while we there cause I forgot the camera in the car. typical. We usually get a picture of Mom, Candy and I, but we didn't manage this time. Maybe next trip.

Random pictures

This is from Jamestown when we took the dog to the beach. I had him enthralled with the little orange floaty toy. While laying out at Virginia Beach a bunch of jets flew over. Really cool. This one got a little closer, but the camera is kinda slow on the shutter. So I missed the better picture. O well, thought this was cool anyway.
Sabrina riding the waves at Va Beach. She was really good by the time we had to go home.

Life in Pittsburgh has begun

Classes have begun. Ugh. Nothing like taking Precalc for 5 hours 2 nights a week. i guess the blessing in that, is that there are only 10 classes left. It's a short accelerated summer session. They aren't kidding when they say accelerated. We have only had 2 classes, more homework that I care to admit and a test coming up on tuesday. fun stuff. They cancelled my trigonometry that I had to take, so now I have to attempt to test out of it and into Calc. I'm hoping I make it, I really don't have time to take an entire semester to take a prerequisite class.
As for the house, I'm so glad we moved into the in-laws house and don't have to unpack too much stuff. We are unpacked for the most part. I think most of our cloths are in the closet or the dressers. Some of my shoes are in a box still, but it's the summer, who needs shoes. I've been going through boxes to see what I can get rid of cause I am sooo serious about down sizing. I am not having the same problem we had on this move, ever again. For those of you that don't know, we had to leave some stuff in Williamsburg and I have to return this weekend to get the rest of it. All we needed was about another foot of space in the truck. Or less stuff. I'm opting for less stuff next time.

Sunday relaxation

Here are the girls Sunday night at the beach. We told them they couldn't swim but they could play in the sand. We needed to take the dog out and wear him out, and the best place for that was the beach. Abby took the "you can go in the water but not get wet" to mean that she could deliberately splash herself and not get into trouble. Oy. Needless to say, we went home with a wet dog, one wet kid and one damp kid. Sabrina almost made it back dry, but not quite.

Sad news abotu the dog. he was more border collie than lab, so he was really protective of the girls and would try to herd them whenever they were out anywhere or even in the house. He tried to go after this poor kid at the beach and then he nipped one too many times at the back of the girls heels. So we had to take him back to the pound. We hope he found a nice family without any kids that had room for him to run and play. He was so cute and smart and it killed me to have to leave him there.

Jamestown: take 2

Abby and Sabrina went with us to Jamestown again this summer. This trip was a lot different than when we went in December. There were LOTS of people there this time and man it was HOT!!!! The girls were done pretty quick.
Here they are again, helping out the reenactment people by crushing the corn. I think this may be their favorite part of the place, besides being able to go in the Indian houses and lay on the fur beds. Ooo lala! Cute, ain't they? This is the same boat that they helped scrape out in December when we were here. They actually got to sit in it and pretend to go somewhere. They had another boat there and the girls helped scrape out some of that one as well. Too bad we won't be back to be able to ride in it:(
And of course, what trip to Jamestown is complete without a stop to say "Hi" to Pocahontas?! The girls thought this was great. Sabrina wants to be an archaeologist when she grows up, she was extremely excited that there were archaeologists at Historic Jamestowne that she could talk to. She even brought back a rock that was supposed to be part of a hearth or something. I have a hard time believing that but who knows, that is what the guy told her. Sean took them to this one the next day, as I said, the heat killed them and they didn't want to leave the house after we got back from the Living History Museum. The only thing that got them out of the house was a trip to the beach later in the evening when it had cooled down. What a great time.

Trip to Pittsburgh

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we have made it!!! What a horrible trip. It was the worst move I have ever been a part of. Many thanks for the great guys from both wards that helped us load and unload the truck. Daren Janis is an amazing packer!!! He crammed stuff in our truck that I did not think would fit!!! Despite our best efforts we had to leave some of our stuff with our friend Mike. Don't know what we would have done without that offer. Now I just have to go get it next week. yuck. but it will be a quick easy trip, the trailer won't even be completely full. Anyway. The trip itself took 12 hours by the time we got home. We left at 10 am after the inspector got to the townhouse late.We could only go 55 mph due to the lack of power and the large load Sean was driving. Anytime he went to fast the truck shimmied and shook and once he even thought he was about to tip over. Angels were holding it up. . We got stuck outside of Breezewood, PA for about 2 hours. Parking lot, we were standing outside the truck. Not fun. So much for being in Pittsburgh by 7pm. Nothing like eating dinner at some rest stop on the road, we could have had a 8 course meal for the price we paid at that rest stop. Someone is running a racket!! But we made to Pittsburgh by 10:30, or something close to that. We were all beat. Luckily there was one bed Sean and I could sleep in. The girls slept on a mattress we threw on the floor. They were asleep on 5 minutes, and we left them in their clothes, and they didn't have a bath. What an experience. I'm so glad it over, I'm hoping we don't have to do that again for at least 2 years. Pray I can get into Pitt and then we can stay were we are. I'll have more updates later. The girls and I had a blast our last week in Williamsburg and I have great pictures that I have to show you all.