Acadia Me Day 2

We got up bright and early and went to the bass harbor light house. Here you can see the intense rocks on the southern most part of Mount Dessert Island.

Here are Hannah and Caleb in front of the light house.

Here's a pretty lake we saw while we were driving

After our own little self guided driving tour of the island, we went on a bike ride. Acadia has tons of carriage roads that they allow bike riders on. So Caleb and I picked an 8 mile loop that went by 2 ponds. Here we are in front of one of the lakes.

Here we are biking through the greenery

This is one of the really cool stone bridges that carriage roads use.

It was a pretty neat bike ride with several ups and downs. Caleb even stopped at one point to pick wild blueberries. It was a really pretty ride, but I was glad to get back to the car and sit down on something that wasn't a bike seat. Hannah had a OK time on the bike ride. Her favorite is to make loud noises to warn people we are going to pass. She like it so much that she even made noise when no one was around. However if someone waved to her, she would all of a sudden stop making noise, smile, and wave back. What a people person.

Here we are at the top of Cadillac mountain. This is the tallest mountain on the eastern coast line. It's a whoppen 1500ft tall, and you can drive your car to the top!

Here's Hannah enjoying chillin on a rock that is just the right size.

This is a view from the top

This is where we stopped to get lunch on the way home. We found it using the iPhone. Our food was really good...and it also happens to be where Laura Bush ate, so I thought it was worth a picture. :-D

Here's Hannah snoozing on the way back. We definitely wore her out.

All in all, I would rate this vacation a 5 out of 5

Acadia Me Day 1

So the other weekend Caleb, Hannah and I went up to Acadia National Park up in Maine. We had a really fun time! We stayed in a little cabin at a campground right near the bass harbor light house. Our cabin had one room with beds, and then a smaller room with a refrig and microwave. This worked out great because we put Hannah in the little kitchen and then we could stay up later. Here's a picture of our place:

When we first arrived Hannah had alot of fun carrying around the watering can from our place. She was really cute

The next day we decided to take the free shuttles to the main part of the island. We realized shortly into the ride that Hannah is not a huge fan of shuttles, where you are not buckled in, but you still can't move around as you please. Here we are trying to entertain her (and ourselves)

We got off the shuttles and did a beautiful 2 mile cliff walk along the ocean. Here are some highlights

Here's a self portrait:

Here's Hannah enjoying being off the shuttle...finally!

We ended at the beach and went swimming...or at least that was the intent. The water was pretty cold, but Hannah did get to try on her new swimsuit. This suit is really nice because it has good coverage and it has a zipper and thus fits over her head

That evening it dumped buckets of rain, so it was really nice that we had the little cabin!

iPhone excitement

Who would believe that the person most excited about getting an iPhone would be Hannah! Caleb comes in at a close second (I'm way behind at third), but Hannah has been entertained for many hours with our old cell phone. Sometimes I think she is even trying to talk on it...what a smart baby. :-p

Berry Fun

So today after church we went raspberry picking. As always, Caleb picked alot, I ate alot, and Hannah had fun playing in the dirt. Hannah was also picking some berries, but she soon realized that it was much easier just to grab them out of the container (so Caleb and I had to keep passing the full cartons back and forth to keep Hannah from eating berries by the handful). We definitely had a berry fun time! :-D

Here are some pictures...most of which "we" took from our iPhone

Yum, tasty berries!

Hannah, our little helper

The car ride home. Note all the beautifully "clean" face. :-D

15 months

So today Hannah is 15 months old. Here are some of her new "tricks."

1. She can now climb up on the couch all by herself. As you can imagine, this creates a whole new level of things she can get into. The challenges begin...

2. Her favorite toy is the laundry basket. She loves putting thing in it and she also wears it as a hat. And my favorite, she loves to bring it out into the living room with dirty laundry in it while company is over. Thanks Hannah...

3. She has learned how to walk backwards in order to sit in my lap. First she will bring over her shoes, and then she will sit in my lap so I can put them on for her. Sometimes she is so excited to go out that she will miss my lap and do a somersault instead. It's pretty cute!

4. She loves to eat on her back with her feet in the air (see below)

5. Just today Hannah has upgraded to a booster seat at the table. I'll get back to you and let you know how it goes.

6. Now she can walk all the way to the garden and back without getting too distracted. We always stop at the flamingos for a while (see Visiting Parents post), but besides that she moves along pretty well.

6a. Her latest thing is to pick up every stick she sees. She's gotten pretty good at holding multiple sticks in each hand. However, all those will be given up for bigs sticks.

7. She can now drink out of a big person waterbottle. (Granted she does spill alot of the water on herself, but don't we all do that every once and a while)

iPost

Yes, today is the day that the iPhone was released, and today is the day that we spent 3+ hours in line waiting for one. You are probably wanting to ask, "was it worth the wait?" Well...it depends which half you ask. I'll let you try and figure out which half (Caleb or myself) was more excited about the iPhone.

To get our iPhone we went to the CambridgeSide Galleria. They have a pretty large apple store, but they still had a line going out the door for iPhone customers. Hannah and I shopped (window shopped, that is) for the first two hours. Hannah was having alot of fun riding the escalators. And everytime we came back to Caleb he had some sort of new goody that they (Apple) were passing out to people as they waited in line (water, starbucks coffee, etc...). After 2 hours Caleb and I did a swap. He took Hannah home for dinner, while I did the remainder of the wait.

When I finally got to the front, I had my own personal sales person who got me all set up. Of course his main task was to try and convince I needed to buy all the extras (I didn't fall for that), but he also registered me and set me up with a plan. The process took about 10 min. And walla, I had a working iPhone.

So yeah, that was our iEvening.

Oh What a Night

On Saturday we had the pleasure of going to the Thwing's Wedding. Our really good friends, Matt and Jeanette got married here in Boston. It was a beautiful wedding! Jeanette looked absolutely amazing. I know you are suppose to say that about a bride, but seriously, it was soooo true. Jeanette looked gorgeous!!!

Here's the back of the dress

Oh Matt, you look good too, but I"m sure you would agree with me that Jeanette looked amazing. :-D

The wedding ceremony was held outside at the commander's mansion. Luckily it wasn't raining, and it wasn't super hot either. The reception was held inside the mansion. We started down stairs for dinner, and then moved upstairs for dancing and cake. Lucky for us, Josh and Celeste were in town, so they watched Hannah for the evening so Caleb and I could have a more carefree time...and we did. We had a great time. Thanks Matt and Jeanette for planning such a lovely ceremony and a great celebration afterwards!

When we were being escorted into the ceremony, the groomsman asked where I wanted to sit. Obviously I said "the front." Consequently, I got some really good pictures, but I won't show you them all. Here are some highlights:

Here they are exchanging rings:

Kids close your eyes, this next picture is rated PG-13 (their first kiss as a married couple)

Here's Matt and Caleb

Here's Ruby, Jeanette, and myself. I like this picture for 2 reasons: the first is I took it, the second is the fact that you can see Jeanette's ring. And the third is that we all have great smiles. (I know that's more than two, but a good picture is a good picture)

Here's their first dance:

And here's the flower girls and the ring bearer watching (they were really cute!)

And a side bonus, since Jeanette is in my small group at church, we've been praying as a group for the past couple of months that God would take care of some of the big and not so big details of the wedding. It has been awesome to see how He has come through. Every month (if not every couple of weeks) Jeanette would come in with a new unresolved detail that seemed impossible, and then shortly there after she would have an amazing story about some huge "coincidence" that worked in her favor. We prayed for everything: the place, date, caterer, a nice apartment, wedding dress...the list goes on. And it was so neat to be there on Saturday and see how everything worked out just perfect for their special day. God truly blessed them with more than they could have ever imagined...and in ways they couldn't have imagined.

The Fourth

This year for the 4th of July Josh & Celeste decided to come and visit. They flew in on a red eye on the morning of the 4th. After everyone (but Hannah & myself) took a short nap we went out to the Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall area. We ate lunch at Durgin Park, where Josh and Caleb split a 32oz prime rib. It was HUGE. I didn't get a picture, but Celeste did, and when I get it, I"ll post it!

After lunch we walked some more of the freedom trail, but then came home in order to get ready for the fireworks. For those that don't know, in Boston the fourth of July fireworks are a BIG deal. They have the Boston Pops performing live at the Hatchshell on the Esplanade (Rascal Flatts also performed). The whole performance (music and fireworks) is televised on CBS. Not only that, people arrived at the Esplanade at 10pm the night before just to get good seats! It's pretty crazy. We, on the other hand, sat on the Memorial Drive side of the river. Thus we were able to get there at 5:30 (day of) and have amazing seats. Check it out:

The barge is set up in the middle of the river. You can see it if you look closely right above the railing. This picture is great of everyone but Hannah, because we are keeping her from engaging in her favorite activity. (see below)



Yup, Hannah spent alot of our time playing in the dirt. She loves picking up rocks and dirt and then putting them into the frisbee. There was also a group near us that had a soccer ball, which Hannah was pretty excited about. We played with that for a while too.

Hannah was also enjoying laying in the dirt. I'm not really sure why. I think she just wanted to gross out some of the other parents in the area that were disgusted by the fact that we were letting our child get dirty. (personally, I didn't notice them, but Caleb said we were getting some weird looks) Whatever


Here's our group chillin' on our little spot. I really like this picture of Caleb. :-D


By far, the best part of the evening was watching Hannah do her little dance. When the music began she started doing this jig that looked like something you would learn from a drunk guy in an Irish bar or something. Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to get it on video, but I did catch a shorter version of it the next day when were listening to some more patriotic music.






Ain't that super cute! All heads around us were turning to look at this baby move her feet at hyperspeed in her little jig. It was funny!

Here's a shot of the crowds. Keep in mind, I took this picture while it was still light, so even more people came!



Now on to the fireworks: They were amazing!! I think it's by far the best show I"ve seen! They had so many new ones that I've never seen before...and they do such a good job choreographing the fireworks to the music. The coolest fireworks were these ones that started low and went up slowly and kinda swerved around alittle. They looked like little ghosts rising up. It was amazing.

I didn't take any pictures this year, but here are some from a previous year.