Fun with Martin & Shelly, Emma & Audrey

My brother Martin and his family (Shelly, Emma, & Audrey) came to visit us this past week. Emma & Audrey are the same ages as Chloe & Gracie, so they have a great time together. It's so fun to see them get along so well with their cousins. They have very similar personalities too, so it's fun to watch them try to work out differences and just generally have great adventures together. In addition to playing around the house and walking around our neighboorhood and town, we also took some day-trips to places near us that Martin & Shelly wanted to visit.


No. 9 Coal Mine- The first day they were here, we went to a coal mine that's near us. We got to ride a coal train down into the mine and have a tour of the mine.


Here are Chloe & Emma on the loud, bumpy coal train, and then us down in the mine.

After we came out, the girls got to pick out a piece of coal to take home (this took a long time, especially for Chloe who was trying to find a "pretty" piece of coal). Here are Gracie & Audrey with their pieces of coal. One of our challenges of the week was trying to get these two to look at the camera and smile for pictures. We had a picnic lunch and the girls had fun chasing butterflies and picking dandelions before we went to the museum. One funny memory from the museum...Chloe and Emma banging away on an ANCIENT typewriter that was inches away from a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign.

Jim Thorpe - Then we came and walked around Jim Thorpe (the town where we live) a little bit.

The girls had fun watching a train engine switch tracks and go hook up to the train cars.

After walking around town a little, we found a path down to the Lehigh River and let the girls play some.

They found a stick and were pretending to be fishing (and barely missing impaling each other).

New York City - The next day, we woke up bright and early and headed to New York City. It was fun to take Martin & Shelly since Martin hadn't been there since we were kids and Shelly had never been. So, it was fun to get to take them and see them experience all the sights and sounds and smells (some good, some not so good) of the City.

We first went and caught the Staten Island Ferry to see some great views of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the area around.

We had fun seeing the views and watching the kids take everything in.

Here are Audrey & Gracie taking a goldfish break on the ferry. This was one of many we took throughout the day.

Here are some of the views from the return trip. There is an art display right now of these waterfalls from various places (there's one on the Brooklyn Bridge as well as several out in the harbor). They were really neat to see.

After the Ferry ride, we caught a subway train over to Brooklyn right near the Brooklyn Bridge. Emma had read a book before they came called "21 Elephants" by Phil Bildner (which we've since bought and it's a great book). It's about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge around 1883 and how people were scared to go across the bridge (it was the first suspension bridge) until PT Barnum marched 21 elephants from his circus across the bridge to prove it's strength. So, when Emma found out we were going to New York City where the bridge is, she thought it would be cool to walk across it too. We took the subway over to the Brooklyn side so we could walk back across the mile-long bridge.

Here we are at the beginning of the bridge.

Here are some of the amazing views of the City from the bridge.

Here's one of our many rest breaks on the bridge. We heard lots of "I'm so thirsty" "My feet hurt" etc complaints during our trek across the bridge.

Here are some views from the middle of the bridge. The girls are looking down at the cars driving underneath us on the bridge. The walk across the bridge was definitely worth it in spite of the whining and complaining (at least from our kids...I didn't hear as much from Emma & Audrey...although I don't know if that was because they weren't complaining or if it was just that I was too far away from them to hear it). The pedestrian walkway was also the bike path across the bridge and it was fairly narrow (especially because people would stop to take pictures and look at the views and you'd have to go around them). But Chloe (my rule-follower) was completely opposed to crossing over the line into the bike lane. It was fairly frustrating at the time because there were lots of times we HAD to cross into the bike lane and everytime she'd start wailing about this being the bike part, but looking back, it's fairly humorous that she was so into following that rule.

After the Bridge, we stopped at a nearby park to rest and have a snack.

There was a squirrel that was venturing bravely up to us looking for goldfish crumbs. There were also lots of pigeons (of course) and a rat family nearby. There was a mommy rat and two babies scurrying from one bush to another.

Next, we went up to Times Square. We had just come out of the subway station when Gracie started pulling my arm and screaming at me. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, so we just continued what we were doing. Next thing I know, there are a couple guys standing behind us laughing and I look down, and Gracie had gone to the bathroom right there in the middle of Times Square.

Here are a couple subway riding shots. We took lots of different trains (partly to give everyone a break from walking here and there). We rode very full trains where everyone had to stand up, and trains with plenty of space where we got to spread out. It was definitely an experience in itself, and you can see, the girls had fun with it even on the crowded trains.

After eating some New York pizza, we headed to Central Park for awhile. We went to a playground with this cool, huge slide. It's amazing that no matter how tired the kids were a minute ago, as soon as we hit that playground, they were all full of energy to run and play and climb and slide. You went pretty fast on the slide just by yourself, but they also had cardboard there that you could hop on to go even faster. Gracie was the one who enjoyed it the most. She went and slid over and over again and even used the cardboard a couple of times (and she really flew!!)

After the slide, we went and found some ice cream and had another nice break on some of the huge boulders in Central Park. The girls had fun watching the horse and carriage rides driving past us, and climbing up and down on the rocks.


We then headed back home (and got back a little after midnight). It was a very full day and the girls did great overall. We had to take lots of rest breaks and potty breaks, but it was a fun time to get to experience the craziness & busyness and some of the sights of the city (and to be glad we don’t have to drag children and strollers around NYC everyday).

The Crayola Factory - The next day we slept in a bit and had a laid-back morning, and then in the afternoon we went to the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA.

They have a neat little demonstration on how they make crayons and markers. At the end of the demonstration, they hand out a marker to each child. These markers are so fresh that the tip is still white. It takes about 15 minutes for the tip to change colors and about an hour before you can color with the marker. It was really cool to be able to open the marker again a little while later and see that the color is starting to spread and then to see that it was completely orange.

Then the kids got to do lots of different craft projects. We made clown hats and windsocks. Chloe & Emma got to do a craft with melted wax. They also had a sidewalk chalk area, and a place where you could write on the plexiglass walls with markers.

Here we are working on the clown hats and then Julia wearing hers.


Here are the girls writing on the graffiti wall. Emma drew a really neat picture of herself and Chloe, but it was hard to get a photo of it.

They had an area where you could make things out of Crayola Magic (which is their clay that air dries after a day or so). Here is everyone cutting out shapes and coloring with markers on the Crayola Magic.

And here is our circus of children... Emma the trapeze artist, Chloe the juggler, and Gracie the strongman.

Then, of course, we had to hit the Crayola Store to buy crayons, and could have bought any Crayola product that has ever been imagined. The store was amazingly big with a huge assortment of everything Crayola.

Flagstaff Mountain overlooking Jim Thorpe

On the way home we stopped by an overlook and got to show Martin & Shelly a different view of our town and let the kids get out and play together some. It was so fun to see these kids play together, and to see how excited they were to see each other again even after a brief time apart (like when we'd go from one place to another in our cars). Audrey kept emphasizing that "Gracie is MY cousin". We told her that Chloe was her cousin too, but she said, "No, Gracie is MY cousin". Too cute to see what great fun they had together.

Jim Thorpe, PA from above

Audrey poking a puddle with Gracie looking on.

Lancaster County, PA- On Monday, we had another very long day sightseeing. We set out pretty early to go see Amish Country in Lancaster County.

We went to a place called the Amish Village, where we could tour an old Amish farmhouse. After that, we could walk around the farm and see some other Amish farm buildings (a barn with lots of animals, a one-room schoolhouse, a smokehouse, a blacksmith shop, a water wheel, and lots of buggies to climb on). They also had a farm store (where we could sample and buy things like apple butter, and all sorts of Amish-made crafts and jams & jellies).

Here are the girls in the one-room schoolhouse. The seating arrangement is just asking for trouble though! I'm thinking Emma & Chloe would get into a lot of trouble in class if they were even in the same room, let alone at the same desk.

On some of the horse-drawn farm equipment, and next to the working water wheel (that was pumping water into the barn for the pigs and sheep).

Another view of the water wheel and covered bridge, and then all 5 girls by the flowers. Poor Julia spent a lot of time these few days either in her stroller, or in a high chair or car seat. She was pretty miserable by the end of Monday. She had only gotten mini-naps here and there and almost no time to get to be free and crawling around, so by Monday, she was trying to climb out of the high chairs and stroller, and was unhappy to be put back in. She's gotten to be a pro at squirming out of the seatbelts holding her in.

I love this picture because it's such a picture of how the week was. The big girls leading and Gracie & Audrey following along. Chloe and Emma are both very definitely oldest children. They had some battles over who got to direct things (since they're both used to having their own way), but they also had lots of fun working together to find the fun.

Our next adventure (and what the girls were looking forward to all day) was going on a buggy ride.

This was the highlight of the day for all the girls I think. Emma & Chloe got to ride up in the front with the driver, and they loved getting that privilege and asked lots of questions about horses as well as filling in with lots of details about themselves (Emma at one point was telling the driver about how these are her cousins and she had to drive for 2 days to get here and it was so far that they had to stop at her other little cousin’s house on the way, and her name is Clara and she’s just starting to walk, etc, etc). It was a fun and informative buggy ride, and we got to find out lots of interesting tidbits about Amish life, families, and farming (like the Amish shun electricity not because of electricity itself, but because of the connection of the power lines to “the world”, so they have lots of generator or gasoline powered gadgets (like refrigerators, washing machines, and mechanical milkers for their cows), and that the youngest son takes over the parent’s farm when he grows up and gets married and the parents stay on and live with him and his family). The girls all thought it was great when the horses were allowed to run some and we went really fast. Their faces lit up, and then when we’d have to slow to a walk again, they’d ask “when will you let the horses run again?” over and over. We wanted to find some authentic Amish bread and cheese to have for lunch or a snack, but never really had any luck with that. We did buy a “shoo-fly pie” and a couple whoopie pies to sample, and they were all very good. My favorite was a pumpkin whoopie pie and fresh squeezed lemonade that we bought on a real Amish farm (that the buggy ride took us to).

Hershey's Chocolate World - Lancaster County and Hershey are both about an hour and a half or so from us (they're fairly close to each other), so we decided to combine these into one day to cut out the extra driving.

We rode the tour ride that shows the process of chocolate making.

Here are the milk cows singing and telling us about the milk that goes into the chocolate.

We went to a 3D animated show complete with rain, wind, explosions, spiders, and rats. Here we are, waiting to go see the show.

That was a big hit, as was the chocolate store where we picked out enough candy to last us for awhile.

Hanging around the house - The next day, we just stayed around our house and let the kids play and relax some.

Audrey and Gracie had a great time flipping off the couch over and over again. They really had a great time no matter what they were doing. They're both fairly laid-back and used to going with the flow, so they were both pretty willing to just sit and play or hang out and have fun.

We did take a quick walk around our neighborhood and to the park in the afternoon. Chloe was excited to show Emma her school (which is about a block and a half away from our house). Then, we walked over to the park and the kids had fun running around and playing together some more.

We’d tried to let the 4 girls sleep together the first night that they were here, but we ended up having to separate them after hours of continual talking. So, they’d been begging us ever since to let them try it again, but it had never worked out. We finally were going to let them sleep together again, and Emma & Chloe spent most of the day getting the room prepared…setting up the air mattresses and sleeping bags, hanging up everyone’s nightgowns, laying out everyone’s blankies and stuffed animals, hanging up signs showing who was supposed to sleep where, and a sign on the door that said “on dads on moms” (which Martin took to mean that dad’s were supposed to sleep on top of the kid’s beds, but Chloe & Emma told him really were supposed to say “NO”) They did go to sleep all together, with only a few parental warnings and “lie still and quiet”s. The girls have had a great time together and have really gotten along supremely well, especially considering how sleep-deprived they all are.

Hiking in the "Spooky woods" - On Wednesday (their last full day here), we went for a hike. The kids had a great time exploring and being our trail guides. It was a great kid-friendly hike (at least the first half of it, but I'll get to that later) because they had a job of looking for the paint on the trees to guide us, and we were close to a stream a good part of the way. So, we went down to the stream a couple different times and threw rocks and sticks in.

Looking at the waterfall below us, and then a picture of the waterfall.

There was an old rock quarry along the hike that was full of water (and frogs). That was neat to see, and the rock formations were really spectacular all along there.

When we were about half-way done with the hike, we came to a really overgrown area of trail, and originally were trying to push through (thinking that surely, the trail would pick up on the other side of this bad spot). But the trail got even more thorny and hidden, so we decided to turn back. Poor Emma fell into the thorns (with her head going downhill) and couldn't get herself out (and the trail was so tight that nobody could get to her very quickly), so she was stuck there crying until Martin could get back to her. She had already been pretty freaked out by the thorns and the tightness of the path before, so falling into the thorns was not what she needed. But she was alright, and was ready to get back to the clear path. We ended up just walking back the way we had come...

Here are the cuties Gracie and Audrey together on the hike. They just love each other so much!

And here we are having ice cream and italian ice at Rita's after the hike. Emma had a slightly loose tooth this whole time, but we noticed at Rita's that it was REALLY loose. Once we got back home, Martin pulled it out the rest of the way. Emma put the tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy (but was fairly upset that the tooth fairy was going to take her tooth and not give it back...she wanted to keep it). We were excited to get to be a small part of that growing up milestone of losing teeth (and it made Chloe decide that she really needs to start losing teeth soon too).

We had a really fun time exploring with Martin & Shelly and were sad to see them go. (It's now 4 days later when I'm writing this and Chloe is still moping around the house saying "I wish Emma was still here"). It was so fun to see Chloe & Gracie having fun with their cousins, and get to have a lot of time to spend with Martin & Shelly as well.