Nicole's summer vacation report

Nicole was challenged to write about her summer vacation by her first grade teacher. Before we left for NY, Nicole wrote about how she was going to go to NYC ("the sity") and see the Statue of Liberty. So being the compliant parents we are, we decided to hit the city (NYC) while we were visiting NY. This is one of my favorite things to do. I really wanted the girls to see the big buildings, ride the subway and see all the different kind of people there are in this world. We visited the World Trade Center site (see pics). You just don't realize how big of a hole these buildings left until you see it up close. We tried to talk to the girls about what happened there, so that when they learn about it in school, they could relate it to this. We then walked about an hour down to Battery Park, where you can see the Statue of Liberty from afar. Morgan was more interested then Nicole when we finally did see Lady Liberty. We then took the subway up to Times Square and ate lunch. Five pieces of pizza and two drinks cost close to $40, but who can complain when Nicole says "this is the best pizza I have ever tasted". I hope so Nic for that price!!!!! Then off to ToysRus we go. We rode on the Ferris wheel inside of the store and got the Nick Jr. car and Little people car. We were on the ride for about 20 minutes. It was great looking at this three story store from a Ferris wheel. I forgot to mention, that Grandma and Papa Nugent got dragged into this trip. I hope they enjoyed it. We finished up our trip to the city by visiting the M&M store. This store has anything and everything M&M and about thirty different colors of the candy that you can buy. Twenty dollars of M&M's later ($10.95/pound) we were off back to the subway to eat our treat. The girls did great walking and riding the subway. Just happy to be able to stand up on some sort of transportation. After finding our parking spot and contributing way more than reasonable to the parking attendant we were stuck in the tunnel traffic for an hour(about 1/2 mile away). All in all, just how we wanted to spend our day in the city, and hopefully exciting enough to make the "what I did this summer" report.

The Great NY Trip of 2008

WOW! What a fun filled week we had in NY. Thanks to all the Nugent/Tepper families. We started the trip with driving through the night to get to NY and this worked out great. We made our best time yet and the girls did really well (we won't tell on Rae this time). It only took us 12 hours and we drove straight through NYC without traffic-this a miracle in itself. The girls had non-stop activity and loved being with the cousins. We swam in Aunt Michelle's pool, fed the ducks at the Wading River Duck pond, jumped on the trampoline, went in Grandma and Papa's hot tub, Nicole and Morgan improved their swimming skills and played many different games all day and night long with (in age order) Lexi, Sierra, Amanda, Nicole, Heather, Alissa, Morgan Kyle and Rachel.

We went to Smith's Point Beach on the south shore of LI to the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were the biggest I had ever seen. The kids and Mike had a blast. I on the other hand was a little concerned about all the people the lifeguards were pulling out of the ocean on rescues. Mike
was obviously used to these types of waves as he was cool as a cucumber, I on the other hand would jump out of my beach chair every time I saw a big wave coming towards the kids. We had a great time, after I settled down. Aunt Michelle and Uncle Steve threw a LUAU party and what a "memory maker" as Grandma N. put it. We celebrated with costumes, dancing, water balloons, coconut tasting and great food. Sunday we went to see the new building at Grandma's church, great job North Shore! The guys got a boat day to themselves and then Papa and Mike took Nicole and Morgan out for a fishing trip. The girls loved it. Morgan caught a fish that got away, and Nicole a blue fish (in the pic). We cooked up the bluefish for dinner and Nicole liked it. We also celebrated Uncle John's birthday and cousin Britini's graduation from high school. We finished up our trip by going into NYC for the day. I will blog about that separately. We again drove straight throw the night on the way home and pulled into Macomb Township about 4:00am. The girls were wiped out by all of the activity and mom and dad from driving. I am going to post some additional pictures in the sidebars and will have a couple of other posts from the trip. That's it for now. June was crazy busy, hoping for a slow JULY and AUGUST.

Mississinewa Camping Trip

About a year ago, our friends the Daniel's started an email conversation about having a reunion this summer of the original "Young Marrieds group" from church. Some of the crew had moved away, all have added many children to the mix, and we felt it was time to reconnect. So, what better way then to go camping???? We decided on a somewhat central location as some were in IN, MI and MO. So off to Mississinewa, IN it was. After 6 hours of pulling a pop-up and Rachel crying and Morgan and Nicole getting along really well, we made it to the camp site. As we pull in, one of our friends notices that one of the tires on the pop-up has shredded it's tread. "A miracle we made it here" we say. We had no indication on our drive there was a problem. Our camp site was perfect, 8 sites around a cul-de-sac where the kids could ride bikes and play without danger of cars. We had a wash-out of a day on Friday and spent many hours in a Walmart and back at the camper trying to get everyone to take a nap. We had a fun day on Saturday on Lake Mississinewa swimming, BBQing and riding on the pontoon boat. The girls loved the freedom they had to run and play and get dirty without much concern from mom or dad. Bedtime came later than normal and usually after many smores and roasted marshmallows. Morgan loves to find bugs, Nicole loved riding her bike in the cul-de-sac and Rachel had another idea of what fun is. Friday morning the rain woke us up at about 5:30am. Rain on the top of a pop-up sounds like a large hail storm. So we had an awning on the camper and decided to go outside and watch the rain. Little did we know that Rae's friend Brooke had slipped over to our camper and as I look around I see Rachel and Brooke in the POURING rain riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac in the rain, in their pajama's. Not a care in the world just loving being up at 6 am riding bikes in the rain. Now that is classic Rachel Rae. We had a really nice time, and I (Kelly) loved being outside for 3 days straight. The pictures are of us with the camper(thank you Andy and Denise), Nicole and mom on the boat, Rachel and mom at the campsite table, Nicole and friend Julia sitting by the fire and Morgan and friend Kaelyn roasting marshmallows. Enjoy the pics. We will be in NY this week and back on the blog after 4th of July. Have a great holiday. Thanks for looking.