Vacation

Dan and I made corn chowder and bread bowls for supper. It smells so good. I can't wait to see how it turned out. The bread bowls are baking right now. I'd been looking for a recipe for quite a while now, ever since we had bread bowls at Old Sturbridge Village. I finally found one on Pinterest.
This has been a really nice, relaxing vacation. We didn't do anything huge, just lots of little stuff, and enjoyed the down time. I'm sad that it's ending on Monday. I want more time! Anyway, here is what we were able to do:

• Went swimming in North Conway with Rodriguezes
• Went to the Weather Discovery Center in N. Conway
• Went to Zeb's in N. Conway
• Had Megan and Taylor for the weekend
• Went bowling with Megan, Taylor, and Nathan
• Went to Karate in Casco on Thursday night (brought Mom and Gram with us)
• Had my foot x-rayed
• Went to Olive Garden for my birthday with Dan
• Did some scrapbooking with Patricia, while Nathan played with the boys
• Did some more scrapbooking on my own
• Gave Joseph a piano lesson, while Nathan played with Ephraim
• Nathan played with Branson and Kaedon
• Nathan and I painted with watercolors
• Went to the movies to see The Vow (such a good movie)
• Had a game afternoon with Aunt Diane, Kathy, Payge, and Owen (N played with Owen most of the time)
• I walked on the treadmill four times! (This is huge!)

Tomorrow we are going to celebrate my and Emily's birthdays! It should be a good ending to our vacation.

Vacation!

We're having a great vacation so far. On Saturday we went to North Conway to go swimming at our timeshare. We invited the Rodriguez's to go with us, plus Megan brought Taylor, so we there were 11 of us. We had a great time swimming and going in the hot tub. Then we went to Pizza Hut for lunch, Zeb's for lots of candy, and then the Weather Discovery Center, which is a hands-on science museum about Mount Washington. They have some really neat activities there. My favorite was a little pond with a boat in it. You have to guide the boat to a certain destination by pressing buttons that turn little fans. It was pretty tricky. The kids were able to do it faster than us adults! The kids also loved pretending they were weather reporters, and could see themselves on TV.

Today I brought Nathan, Megan, and Taylor to go bowling. Megan and I won, then Nathan came in third, and Taylor came in last. We had a lot of fun. We saw some people we knew, including a friend of Nathan's from school, so he thought that was really neat. Then we went to the Dollar Store to get some candy, then to the movies to see The Vow. It was such a great movie. We all loved it. After the movie, we went to Burger King. Needless to say, I spent way too much money today! Oh, well, I'll just have to be good for the rest of vacation.

I came down with a horrible cold last week. I'm still really congested. This is my second really bad cold this winter. I had to go on antibiotics for the last one, so hopefully I won't have to do that for this one.

Third Place

Megan had a gymnastics meet yesterday, and she came in third place overall! She came in 2nd in vault and 2nd on floor. I am so proud of her. She's awesome! Dan and Nathan went to watch. I couldn't go, but I am super excited to see the next one.

I went to a baby shower for Hannah last night. She is here for about a week, along with Becca, Mike, Mikey and Emmett. The shower was so fun. She's having a little girl, Taya! She got so many cute little girly clothes. It was also really fun seeing Becca and her family. We had never met Emmett before. He is so adorable. It was great to see him, especially with the rough start he had. He's already had two major surgeries, poor little guy. He was so smiley and cuddly, even with people he doesn't even know.

I'm looking forward to vacation next week. I would love to go someplace warm, but it's not in the budget right now. I was just looking at my budget today, and hopefully, we'll have all of our debt payed off in about 19 months! Then hopefully we'll have more money to spend on trips and things like that. We'll still owe money on Amber's hospital bill, and my car, but those are long term things. I really hope we can do this in 19 months. I'd love to just know that we're debt free and that we can have money to do some more fun stuff, especially traveling. This time of year always makes me want to travel to someplace warm.

Karate

Here's my little ninja! Nathan started karate classes in December. He goes every Tuesday afternoon right after school to the gym at OES. It works out great because I usually have meetings or work to do and then I pick him up at 4:30. I like to get down there before 4:30 though, so I can watch for a while. Nathan and Megan and I went on Saturday to watch a tournament in Casco. He didn't want to be in one quite yet, although I'm sure he could have done just as well as quite a few of the other white belts. I think he'll be willing to do the next one.