Partay!

We had a combined graduation party for Adam and welcome to the family party for Kievah yesterday. Chris and Fiona were gracious enough to host the gathering at their house, while we brought the party goods/food/drinks/cake. It was a lovely afternoon. I took lots of pics and it's too much work to organize them in any sort of order, so what you see is what you get :)

Kievah in one of her new outfits (you may see her in multiple outfits in these pictures...Fiona kept putting the new ones on her...it was like a little fashion show...LOL!!)

Kieran taking a pic of me taking a pic of him :)

Just some of the goodies! Fiona cut up some fruit she got from Wegman's...strawberries, honeydew, pineapple, cherries...it was delish!

Adam's balloons

Kievah's balloons

(I had a method in my madness with my color scheme....blue and white for Adam for Penn State, black and orange for Adam for Northampton, and pink for Kievah!)

Pam holding Kievah as she opens some of her gifts. That's Mulan!

Nani and Nancy

(Nancy is Mom's high school friend from NYC who was visiting mom for the weekend)

Martha and Fernando

(aliases, but I can't tell you their real names, or I'd have to kill you...LOL!!)

Jim and Donnalee

(Donnalee is Kurt's sister...and no, Jim was not singing...hee, hee!)

Oh, and BTW, it was Donnalee's birthday!

Happy Birthday!!

Grandma with Halle

(What a lovely picture!)

Riley!

Kim and Alyssa with the girls :)

Brothers

(Kurt, Chris and Fernando)

Nancy used to teach in Chinatown, she amassed quite a collection of books over the years with Chinese characters/themes. She decided to share some of them with Chris and Fiona for Kievah :)

See how Kievah is laughing? She still doesn't understand most English, but ever since she arrived, every time someone yells at Colm, she breaks out in laughter! We couldn't get her to smile, so someone yelled out at Colm...she proceeded to start giggling :)

You try to take a nice picture and someone always ruins it :)

Adam opening his gift from Pam and Bethanie

Still working on the gift from Pam and Bethanie

Colm and Adam having a little pillow fight!

Yummy cake from Wegman's

It was their day!

So thirsty!

Kievah loves spicy food!! These are hot wings from Pizza Hut. Colm doesn't care for spicy so much, but if his sister is eating it, he wants it too :)

Weather

I no sooner got home from work on Wednesday night, when we lost our electricity most likely from the storm. Minutes later, while we were eating our dinner (fortunately, Alyssa had been home and could make dinner, which was done by the time the power went out), Alyssa let out a gasp! Here, out of the corner of her eye, she saw this huge branch fall to the ground:


Since we had no electricity, I made the suggestion we take a ride to Wegman's to order the cake for Adam's graduation party. I took the following pics in their parking lot:

Christmas Cookies?!?!?

What? Is it Christmas in July...or what?!?!? Well....actually it is! Alyssa made these last night for her office's Christmas in July luncheon on Monday :)

I Think He Liked It :)

I don't think Adam went into these past two weeks expecting to come out of it today wanting to be a camp counselor at Bear Creek Camp next summer....but that's exactly what happened!! It was so neat seeing him interact with the counselors, hearing all about the past two weeks, and watching him say good-bye to all the friends he made, including ones from New Zealand, England, Germany and Ireland.

A lot can happen in the next year, but as of now, he plans on applying to be a counselor and spending 10 weeks at BCC next summer!

Our Graduates :)

**note the hand in lower right hand corner of adam's pic....great job, guys...thanks!

LOL.

Kinda' tough to throw dirty tissues in

the wastebasket here :)

Crazy Cats

Introducing Kievah!

After we dropped Adam off at camp earlier today, we shot down the PA turnpike to visit Grandma....oh, ok....we really wanted to meet Kievah :) You can see how happy Colm is to have his new big sister home!!

Beautiful ornaments Chris and Fiona got me for taking them to the airport and editing her blog while she was unable to:

(not sure, but those animals sure could pass as penguins :)

BCC

Well, Adam managed to squeak out one more year at Bear Creek Camp. Generally the last year of camp for regular campers is the end of one's junior year in high school. The only way you can attend BCC after that is either to attend the Adirondack Adventure, which is a two week program in which you spend most of the time hiking in the Adirondacks in New York state or attend the Disciples In Training (DIT) program, which is also two weeks. This program is meant for those who think they might be interested in becoming a camp counselor. The first week is meant for training, the second week the camper spends right alongside another counselor working with the kids. Adam's doing the DIT program this year. It'll be interesting to see if he comes out of this wanting to be a counselor...or never be around another kid again.....LOL!!!

Long line for registration:

And this year, of course, we ended up at the end of the long line :)

Counselor that Adam will be working with this week. His name's Alex and he's from London:

And my poor brand new car! Arrrggghhh! Darn Bear Creek Camp and their red dust :)

Alyssa's New Friends :)

Alyssa is cat and house sitting for three weeks, while friends of ours from church are in Slovenia with a group of youth from our local Lutheran synod. It took a week, but they are best buds now :)

Hamish

Daphne

Gettin' some help with her on-line music class :)

New Car!

Kurt's been talking about looking at the Chevy Equinox for several months now. We periodically would drive into new car dealer lots on a Sunday (when they were closed and we didn't have to worry about being accosted by salesmen) to look through the windows and see what was inside! On Monday he suggested we take a drive to the GM dealer near Easton to look at the GMC Terrain, which is their equivalent to the Equinox. Two weeks ago when I drove by that place there were about 6 or 8 Terrains parked in the front row of their lot. On Monday they had none...they had all been sold...they had no idea when they'd get any more in. That then led us to the Chevy dealer in Nazareth which is where we got our Trailblazer. This was the first time we were there that they even had any in stock. There was really no intention in buying a new car that evening. Til it was all said and done, we learned that they have no expectations of getting any more Equinii (Equinoxes?) in til probably September or October and at that point they would be 2011's and probably cost more money! One thing led to another and before we knew it, we agreed to their offer (after Kurt worked 'em down several grand...LOL!).