My life in Philly!

With my brothers job, he and his family have the opportunity to move every summer to different locations, and luckily due to my single, unemployed lifestyle I have been able to go stay with them for extended periods of time. This summer they moved to Philadelphia and I decided to come spend the summer out here too. What an experience it has been so far! For starters this is my room. If you can really call it that anyway. In all actuallity its a mattress on the floor of the walk-in closet in my niece and nephew's room.

Luckily I dont have to spend much time in there cuz we have been busy doing all sorts of things including experiencing the city. . .

. . . Starting downtown we walked around and saw

City Hall

this cute game piece park

and in the middle of downtown there is this fun fountain and the famous LOVE statue

we all rolled up our jeans and jumped in, then got in trouble cuz apparently thats not ok. . . oops

And of course the experience wouldn't be complete until I had my first Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, from this cute spot downtown Sonny's.

Delicious!

VivA lAs VeGaS

After driving all through the night, we finally got to Vegas in a record 9 1/2 hours (usually a 12 hour drive, gotta love radar detectors, and Jeremy!) Our first stop was the Hoover Dam!

Then we checked in at our Hotel the EXCALIBUR.


We were so glad to be out of the car and in our hotel. . . yay BEDS!

we won some big money. . . .
. . . and I lost all mine :(

but i found a new love, electronic Roulette!

We walked the strip over and over and saw all the fun things like this giant ice cream thing,

Cesars Palace


The Luxor

Hotel Paris (the inside was gorgeouse but i didnt get a picture)

and the Bellagio's water show

We even got to go to a couple shows

The Tournament of Kings

(we got discount tickets to The Tournament of Kings after being roped in to a 3 hour long hell of someone trying to get us to purchase a timeshare. I'm still not sure if those three hours were worth it but it did save us $200.)

and Criss Angel BELIEVE!

Even though we extended our trip while we were there, it was eventually time we had to come home.

Good Bye Las Vegas. . .

Baby DEKLIN BO


my newest nephew, born on May 27!

and then there were 6. . .

Singing in the rain. . .

. . . more like Dancing and

Freezing

There was a CRAZY rain storm on memorial day, it was down pouring and even hailed a little.

We thought it would be fun to play in it so Cort, Kaydra and I went out. And we were right it was a blast, but COLD!

MEMORIAL DAY!

This weekend was kinda bitter-sweet. It was sweet in the fact that it was a 3 day weekend and we got to play tons, but bitter because it was my friends and I last weekend together. Camilla is off to Washington state to live and I leave in a short 3 weeks for Philadelphia!
On memorial day we got up early packed up lunches and headed to the mountains for a hike. If anyone knows any of us, with the exception of Jeremy, we are definitly not the most athletic/ hard core people and we don't really care that we aren't either. Probably only 3 minutes into our hike us girls were already whinning and sweaty. We made it a mile and a half and then to Jeremy's dismay demanded the we turn and go DOWN HILL now. (Poor Jere needs some guys friends!) We did have fun though climbing on rocks, taking pictures, and we saw the wood bench and carvings where Jeremy proposed to Lizzy.

our cute little FAMILY!

I know I'm so hard core its such a big rock. . .haha. . .I was afraid to get down.

What is Poison Ivy?. . .

None of us had ever seen Poison Ivy or really knew what exactly it did so luckily Jeremy is a scout leader so we whipped out his handy dandy hanbook and looked it up. While hiking we identified several poison ivy plants that at first we avoided, but after we discovered that not all people are allergic to/ have reactions to poison ivy our curiosity was spiked!

Am I allergic to Poison Ivy?. . .

Most normal people whould probably soon let that escape thir mind but not us. We wanted to find out what category we would fall in. . . so we all rubbed poison ivy leaves and berries on our right arm.

I'm not sure if the plant was to immature to have produced sap the would cause irritation or if we are all among the rare cases of not be affected by it, but none of us got itchy, rashy, red arms. I guess lucky us!

Summer Fever. . .

. . ."the gangs" first BBQ of the season

my bestest (and really only) friends Lizzy, Jeremy, Cindy, and Camilla

We are always looking for a good excuse to eat; one sunny, sunday afternoon after church we schrumaged around our houses for food and had a yummy bbq. I even experienced Grilled SPAM for the first time ever. . . not too bad.

and of course it ended in games!