Grover Cleveland Birthplace

We are working on our state parks book (They have a book here in New Jersey that every state park you go to you get a sticker and then prizes for every 10 stickers). One of the state parks was Grover Cleveland's Birthplace (click the link to find out more about him). Just in case you don't know Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He is also buried here in Princeton (more on that later). So the history buff in me thought this would be fun to go and see and we could get our sticker for our book. We went up there had a picnic lunch on the lawn and a private tour of the house. Lots of fun. Here are some pictures from our adventure.

 

Anya chillin' during the picnic

 Aspyn and Anya having fun on the blanket

 Here is Aspyn inside the house. They had some period clothing that you could dress up in. It took some coaxing (she was being shy) but I thought she looked pretty cute!

The outside of the house. Most of it is still in its original condition because it belongs to a church (his father was a pastor and that's where the pastor and his family lives) and so since the people living there didn't change anything because it wasn't theirs to change.

 There was a little shed in the back that I wanted to take some pictures of Aspyn in front of. I couple a few before the batteries in my camera died.

Big Sister

Aspyn is such a great big sister. She is always wanting to hold Anya and play with her. It makes it nice for me when I need to get stuff done. Here are a few pictures that I found on our camera in the last little bit.

Aspyn sharing her sunglasses. Sometimes we wonder how much Anya likes what Aspyn does to her until we see this...

the biggest smiles ever on Anya. She loves all the attention that Aspyn gives her, even if you think she shouldn't like what is happening to her sometimes!

I put Anya down on the floor one Sunday while Josh and I were getting dinner put together and Aspyn decided to share her pillow and blanket (and for those of you who know how much Aspyn loves her blanket you know that is a big deal)! Aspyn even moved her all by herself (luckily Anya was still in one piece)!

Anya's firsts

I took some of these pictures awhile ago and am just now getting around to blogging about them. The first is Anya's first solids. We started her at 4 months and she really didn't like it so much as you can tell from the pictures. She has since changed her mind about them but only some of them. We thought she would love peaches but not so much, she is a pretty picky eater. Here are her pictures of her first rice cereal.

Then we gave her carrots for the first time and that didn't go over well at all. I had to take pictures of the funny faces that she was making and then we stopped torturing her (you can clink on the image to enlarge and see the great faces she was making).

In other first for Anya we pulled out her bouncer toy that she can stand in a play with her toys and she (and Aspyn) love it. It's fun when for her because it makes her feel like she can be a part of things now.

Beach Time!

We went to the beach last month and I am finally getting around to blogging about it. We had a lot of fun, Aspyn especially, but decided we probably won't go again this year. Too much work when you have a baby with you. But since we will be here for another 4 years and the beach is only about 45 minutes away I am sure we will have plenty of other times to go. Here are a few pictures that we took that day.

4 Months!!

Anya is 4 1/2 months and is growing so much. It's amazing how they change so much so fast. She has started on solids and is slowing starting to enjoy them. Here are the pictures I took of her at 4 months.

Anya's Stats at 4 (and a half) months are:

Height - 23 1/4 (10%)

Weight - 13 lbs 4 oz (50%)

She is a lot shorter than Aspyn ever was and she is our little chunk!

Things she does at 4 months:

She can roll both directions

She loves to scoot around every where and now we found her just about anywhere (especially in her crib)

She has finally started smiling for the camera. I have gotten some really good pictures of her.

She eats solids twice a day

She sleeps forever, she is now sleeping from 10 at night until usually 8 or 9 in the morning. She also takes two really long naps in the morning.

She loves to play with Aspyn. It's great to just be able to leave her on the floor and go and do things and they just play together.

She is a really really good baby, we love her so much!!

4th of July Weekend

I'm back, I was going to post these sooner but I got my wisdom teeth out last week and spent most of my time on the couch watch movies. I am starting to feel better so I thought I would get these on here now.

On the 3rd we went over to Pennsylvania to go to Washington's Crossing and get some fireworks (consisting of sparklers and snaps which are illegal in New Jersey). Washington's Crossing is still closed (I went there back in March with my parents and it wasn't open either) but this cool tower thing was so we went there are walked around, but we didn't think it was worth paying the money to go up it. So we ended up just getting our sparklers and snaps and then we went into Trenton to the capitol. It is the 2nd oldest capitol building that is still in use in the United States today, pretty cool. It was a Saturday and the place was crowded with reporters. We were so close to getting to see the governor give a press conference about a tax thing it got passed before the holiday weekend but they bumped it back an hour and so we ended up not seeing him. Here are our pictures from that adventure.

Then on the 4th after church we drove down to my sisters in Delaware to spend the holiday with them. Aspyn had fun playing with her cousins and we went and saw some fireworks and did our sparklers (which are also illegal in Delaware, we thought it was bad in Utah). We stayed on Monday and just hung out and the kids got the slip-n-slide out which Aspyn was not a fan of but she loved getting wet. We also took some pictures of Anya and her other new cousin Brayden. She is two months older than him. Here are the pictures from that adventure.

On the way home that night we ended up taking the turnpike on accident and ran into the traffic of everyone going back into New York City after the holiday. But it ended up being a good thing because we ran into another firework show close to our house that we wouldn't have gotten to see if we had gone the other way. Here are some of the pictures that I took of the fireworks, we were so close and they were really good.

Then I just had to add these last pictures. We had made homemade Oreos to take with us to my sisters and had made them patriotic with red, white, and blue frosting. Well, we had leftover blue frosting and decided we couldn't waste it. So this is what you do with leftover blue frosting, it doesn't look that appetizing but they were still good.

3 Months

I am about a month behind in posting these but at least I am posting them (and I am almost caught up in blogging though so that a good thing). Here are the pictures I took of Anya at 3 months.

Cousins, cousins...

Anya is the oldest in a long line of cousins that were just born in both families. She is three weeks older than my sister's little girl Zoe and three weeks older than Josh's cousins little girl Lily. We got them all together one day while in Utah and decided to get some pictures of all of them together.

This is Anya and Zoe, they are 1st cousins

This is Anya and Lily, they are 2nd cousins

Here is all three of them (Zoe and Lily aren't related, just friends)

As you can tell, Anya was the happiest of the three (she had just finished eating though)

Here is a pretty good shot of the three of them. It looks like they are all looking at the same thing, I'm just not sure what it was.

And here are all the parents calming the babies down after our little photo shot. Of course Anya didn't need calming down so Josh is just having her practice her balancing.

(More pictures coming of Anya with another cousin)

Cascade Springs

On July 6th 2004 Josh took me up to Cascade Springs and that is where he proposed to me. While we were in Utah I really wanted to go up there so that we could get a picture of our family now in the spot where he proposed. Here are some of the good shots we got.

While we were up in the mountains we wanted to get some shots of Aspyn standing in some Aspen trees. She wasn't really in the mood and so we didn't get great ones but that's okay, we still got some cute ones.

This last picture is one that I took so that we could blow it up and put in our room. We have been looking for something like this for a long time but could never find one that we like that wasn't way expensive. So we finally decided to do it ourselves and we love it.

We got in a 20x30 size and it looks great.

Anya's first time swimming and other pictures

My parents have a pool in the community where they live that we wanted to take the girls swimming while we were there. Unfortunately the whole time we were staying at my parents it was too cold to go (Aspyn went once with her cousins and froze). So after we got done taking family pictures we went up there with Cecilee and Brandon (they were living there at the time). So here are some pictures of Anya's first time in the pool.

All ready to go! She was not a fan of the hat!

In the water with Daddy, she wasn't quite sure what to think of it.

Again, not too sure of the water but at least it was warm. We just toke her to our pool here in Jersey and she didn't want to get in because it was too cold.

Our little fish with Abi. Aspyn loves to go swimming.

Here are some random pictures of Daddy torturing Anya. Anya was actually asleep at the time and had no idea what was going on so it really wasn't torture.

Building a tower on Anya's head

And all done, it actually fell when he tried to put anymore on it.

Family Pictures

Brandon (my brother-in-law) was very nice and took our family pictures for us while we were in Utah. I think that we ended up with a lot of good ones for what we had to work with. Aspyn is doing this thing lately that she will have her head turned towards the camera but not her eyes and so when you tell her to look at the camera she will yell at you that she is! She's so funny. And then with a two month old that was not happy that day, you just roll with the punches. Here are a few of them for you to see.

A Trip to Logan and Boise

While in Utah (I know I have been saying that a lot) we decided that we wanted to take a quick trip up to Logan and then we decided to go up to Boise to see Josh's brothers new house and see my sister while we were there. Anyway, we had so much fun going up to Logan (we miss it a lot, it seems more like home to us than Provo does). Here are some pictures of both trips!

Cute Aspyn in front of the new fountain at the Temple

In front of the Temple (I have a similar picture of her from a year ago and it's amazing how much she's changed)

A great shot of the Logan Temple that is now hanging in the girl's room.

The "gang". The twins and Maria came up with us and were good sports as we dragged them around Logan.

Our family at the Temple

Aspyn on the bus. Her favorite thing to do when we lived in Logan.

Maria, Anya (although you can't see either one of them), and me on the bus

The Twins riding the bus.

Aspyn at the fountain on USU campus. We had to go there too while we were there. (I also have a similar picture of Aspyn in the same place from a couple of years ago.)

Maria and the twins on campus.

Anya and I on campus hanging out in the shade

Other things we did while in Logan:

Ate lunch at Old Grist Mill (So good)

Went to a park and played

Took care of some business at our bank

Went at saw everyone at Josh's old work (iWorQ Systems)

Went and got some things at Gossner's Cheese Outlet

Had dinner with friends Chris and Susie at Firehouse Pizzeria (really miss that place)

Went and saw our friends Allison and John

Had lots and lots of fun!

Then we headed up to Boise to have some fun with our siblings and Aspyn had lots of fun with her cousins. Unfortunately my camera's batteries died and the extra batteries that I thought I had in my case were actually dead batteries that someone had put in the bag instead of the garbage (not naming any names here)! So I only have a couple of pictures from that adventure.

One the way up Travis fell asleep with Aspyn and we had to take a picture of how cute they were together!

The first picture that we got of Anya smiling, finally.

And then she saw the camera and stopped, every time!!

And then, the batteries die!