A trip for the history books

I was lucky enough to have my grandparents, my aunt, and 2 cousins come to visit last week. None of them had been to Philly before, so I gave them a city tour and here are some of the highlights.

My cousin, Mallory, and myself in front of Genos steaks

Here we are at Valley forge near the house George and Martha Washington stayed in.

This is the only picture with either of my grandparents, so I posted it to show they were in fact here.

We also went to New York. Here we are in Times Square. We ate ate a lot! Katz Deli, the Doughnut Plant, Lombardi's pizza (first pizzeria in America). It was all delicious!

We stopped at "Rice to Riches" too b/c we saw it in Soho and recognized it from the movie "Hitch"

Here we are at the Philly Art Museum on the "Rocky steps" and below with the Rocky statue. We also saw the Liberty Bell, toured Independence Hall, the Betsy Ross House, and saw Ben Franklin's grave.

We all had a great time! A big thank you to all of them for coming and to Tiffany who had to drive up

My kid is a monster!

Easton has been a monster for much of the past year. He has had several problems with his shunt and all the pressure in his head causes him to be very irritable and sometimes intolerable. As one of his doctors put it, "shunt problems make a good boy turn into the devil." He has had a tough year full of surgeries, plenty of CAT scans and way too many doctor appointments. The good news is that that the shunt is now working and is on the right setting for him, so we are hoping for a healthy year!

Easton turned two last week and the theme for his birthday party was "Terrible Twos," so everything was decorated with monsters. We had the party with one of Easton's friends who is just a few days younger then him.

We had several games for the kids at the party to do. Above is "Color in the Monsters"

This one is pin the eye on the monster. The other kids were blindfolded, but Easton didn't like the blindfold.

Monster Bowling

Monster Cupcakes

Here are Easton and Jax. The Birthday boys about to eat their cupcakes.

Monster sandwiches

Apples with a cream cheese & brown sugar filling with slivered almonds as the teeth.

Delicious punch! We also had monster cheese balls (so good)!

Some of our party guests.

Here we are, the hosts after the successful party! By the way Charise, we didn't take pictures of the food, so I copied a few pictures from your blog. Thanks!

We also did a small party at our house when Easton opened presents. Here is the Super Why cake I made him. It didn't turn out great, but he didn't seem to mind. All in all, our little monster had a great 2nd birthday!

Timeline

Many of you know Justin graduates from his program in mid-December and we keep getting asked when we are moving and where we are moving. We don't know the answer to either question yet, but we hope to know by Thanksgiving. Justin is applying to several states (mainly Colorado, Texas, Florida, Washington, and some jobs around here). We will definitely update this when we know something!