April part 2. I'm so proud.

So this half of April includes Watkins Glen Gorge, a beautiful hike about an hour and a half away from Syracuse. The hike is actually only about 1.5 miles but it took forever since Kate walked the whole way and I waddled the whole way. It was a lot of fun and a beautiful day. There are tons of waterfalls all the way up the path. There are a lot of stairs and despite the shortness of the hike we were puffing when we got to the top. The light made the water beautiful and I also took massive quantities of time taking pictures. To get to the hike we traveled through a bunch of vineyards (beautiful) and the town of Watkins Glen (quaint). My favorite was a vineyard called "Pompous Jackass" with a picture of a donkey. Tell me how you really feel. :) If you can, I recommend clicking on the pictures to view them larger. It's worth it.

Light on the water

Although you can kind of tell the height, not even a picture can give the impression that being there in person does. It's quite deep and narrow.
Pants waiting for her very slow mother.

One of the prettier falls

I just love how the water carves these beautiful lines in the rock over so much time.

There were a few little caves as well along the path.

Mommy and Kate

I include this one because you can tell the vastness of the view. Note the tiny people in the center.

Crazy pants with her tiger binoculars.

Kate with her daddy

There were a lot of bridges as well.

Nathan had a birthday celebration while we were in Utah. Kate is always excited to see her cousins and I'm always excited to see my Provo-ite family. :)

Nathan's flaming cake

The kids "helping" take the candles out (and testing the cake)

Handsome Grant

LaRisse and the girls in their beautiful Easter dresses

The Lentz family had a whole bunch of local families to their house for a huge egg hunt. Kate had a wonderful time (as always when she's with the Lentz fam) and did pretty well with the egg hunt. Her hair is getting very long in these pictures. It's right before I cut it. She's a beauty with any style. :)

On the hunt

Kate's haul

april part 1.

So I'm not as far behind as I thought I was, mostly because I didn't take any pictures in March. I'm doing April in two parts because I have a lot for this month and we went on a hike to a beautiful place called Watkins Glen Gorge that I will be posting lots of pictures, so rather than make the longest post in history, I decided to break it up a bit.

Kate and I went to Utah for a week just to visit everyone. We had a little picnic with Jon's family and Kate had fun with her cousins, aunts, uncles, grandpa, and grandma.

Little Sam, always happy. :)

Hudson on his leash. This just cracks me up. :)
Aunt Melissa playing croquet with Kate.

We had a little egg hunt with her other cousins as well. Kim and Nathan's kids came, Leslie and Ryan's little girl, Josh and Summer's little girls, Loni's kids, Lisa's kids, and Nickie's kids came. It was fun to see everyone again and to see the excitement in finding the eggs and prizes. Kate helped us hide the eggs for the little kids before everyone came and she did them a favor by showing them where the eggs were...

Reese, Ainsley, Meghan and Kim. Love the pretty dresses!

Kate checking out her jelly shoes. They were quite popular.

Getting instructions before the hunt began...

Easter morning was fun for us. Kate is old enough now to search for eggs and understand more what it's all about. She searched for her basket which contained a magnifying glass and she used the magnifying glass to search for eggs. :) Her painted eggs were outside (the weather was beautiful) and the plastic eggs were inside. She found every last one and hid them herself after she found them all.

Braving the bushes for that blue egg.

Looking for eggs inside. Go Sherlock, go!

Dismantling her basket.

This month I got my ultrasound to tell us the gender of the baby and to make sure everything was healthy. It's a boy!

I had a few requests for belly pictures and therefore took these. People promptly told me they were FAR bigger than that, don't worry. Then I have to remind them that this is only at five months. I'm substantially larger now and still have a couple of months to go... poor belly skin.

Jon's school had a fund-raiser 5k for their PA program. The day was HORRIBLY cold. The wind was so bitter and being right by the lake was just nightmarish. But the runners did a great job and Kate and I had fun staring at the lake. We also won a bunch of prizes in the raffle.

A view taken by the lake while we waited for the runners.

This picture is just for you, Melissa. Melissa requested to see more pictures of Jon and I but as I'm always on the other end of the camera, this will have to do. Jon finished in good time.

I still can't resist taking loads of pictures of my beautiful little girl!!

These pictures are out of order. Anyway, this is in Utah. Kate liked watering the flowers in her "pink twirly dress". I like watching that grin. :)

I paid a visit to my friend Lisa who was due within a couple weeks of this picture. She looks as lovely as ever and gave birth to a very healthy little girl named Saige.

february. flyin by!

As always I'm posting about three months behind. Oh well. Kate celebrated her 3rd birthday in the company of a family that lives near us, the Lentzs. She loves them so it was fun for her to be with them. She had a tinkerbell cake and lots of presents sent from grandparents back home in Utah plus what she got from us.

Julie Lentz with Kate

Kate getting ready to blow out her candles. Tinkerbell is actually a candle but Kate flipped when I tried to "light tinkerbell on fire." So I got three little candles to blow out instead.
Kate was so thrilled with her gifts and it was almost as fun for her to recieve packages through the mail as to get them by hand. Grandma Skene gave her this little piggy bank. She spends most of the time putting the money in, taking it out, and putting it back in again. :)

In deciding to finally put the Christmas decor away we decided we needed a better storage box. Kate decided to make us of it before it began to get filled and took her little game laptop for a hideaway session.

This one requires some explanation. Jon had a lap desk on which to put his laptop. The cushiony part on the bottom was filled with little white balls of stuffing. There was a small hole in the cushion and while mommy fell asleep Kate decided to enlarge the hole. The result was a snowstorm within our living room. sigh. i've been finding those for all the months following.