Arriving in North Bergen, New Jersey

We arrived in North Bergen, New Jersey around dinner time so we stopped at the Coach House Diner before heading to our rental house. The food was good and the portions were huge just like you would expect from a diner! After dinner, we went to our rental house and met the owner who gave us the "nickel tour". The house is fabulous and is nicer than ours! There's a master bedroom with a master bath! The girls each have their own bedroom and share a bathroom with a jacuzzi tub. There is also a half bath on the main floor and one in the laundry room in the basement. It's awesome to have so many bathrooms (4 if you lost count!) and is going to be an adjustment going back to our one bathroom house! :) The kitchen is all new and beautiful and there is a private patio in the back. Overall, an awesome vacation house!!

Great Wolf Lodge

We had so much fun at this hotel! We arrived late Friday evening, but spent the following morning into the afternoon at the water park. The water park was awesome! Sammie had a blast riding on the water slides with George and me and Erin took her time warming up the the little kid slides, bit loved them at the end. I think we're going to look at going to the one in Sandusky later this year and hopefully have more time to explore all that this hotel chain has to offer!

The Car Ride

Our 6 hour car ride to the Great Wolf Lodge was made interesting by our stowaway. We were just outside of Alliance when George jumped a little and exclaimed, "What was that!?" He then looked at me and told me there was a mouse in the car and it just nibbled his toe. We pulled off onto a side road to look for it, but couldn't find it. During our trip, it nibbled George 2 more times and got me once. I also saw it in between Erin's car seat and the seat before it went under our luggage. We then pulled off the side of 80 to dig through the luggage, but still no mouse! Once we got settled into the hotel, George went to a nearby grocery store for mouse traps. We have set traps every night since and each morning we find the bait gone and the traps (we're now up to 2 different kinds for a total of 4 set) still set!!

Frustrated Farmers?

There was a cookout at our CSA farm the other week, and it was a lot of fun! We had the opportunity to eat hamburgers made from the organic Angus beef cows from the farm (delicious) and taste dishes made by the other CSA members. A few even used ingredients from the farm. The kids always have so much playing when we go to "the farm". They helped out with watering the kid's garden while George picked some dandelion greens. I thought that the growing cabbage looked so pretty and interesting. I don't know if I've ever seen cabbage growing before. We also got a vermicomposter start. Basically, we are composting our food scraps using worms in a bin on our back deck. I water it everyday and there are holes in the bottom to catch the runoff which makes for a perfect liquid fertilizer for out gardens! We have lettuce, radishes, strawberries, and red raspberries growing currently. My mom called us frustrated farmers, but I don't think we're all that frustrated. We've got all kinds of goodies growing and are producing our own fertilizer. I would consider us happy urban farmers! lol!

Playing Old School

Yep. That's the girls playing TMNT on the original NES. It still has pretty bad Nintendo disease but I can get it to work occasionally. There are parts available on Ebay, but I haven't ordered them yet. I was hoping that a good cleaning would resolve the issues so that I could keep all of the original parts, but that wasn't the case. :(
(Wow. That's sounds dorky!!)

Garage Sale

Con brought Giovanni over so that he could help George bring down a heavy TV from out attic for our garage sale. The little ones were playing so nice together that I just has to take a picture! Our garage sale was a huge success and provided us with some extra spending money for our vacation and free up some space in the basement and attic!

Sammie Dancing at Greek Summerfest

The beginners did such a fabulous job last night! Sammie led 2 of the 4 dances and did a beautiful job. We love watching her dance! When the music ended after each dance Erin yelled out "Yeah Sammie". She loved watching the kids dance and looked like she was about to run out and join them!