Sister Time is the Best!!

 I feel so blessed to have been given the last minute opportunity to have my bestest friend and sister, Christina, and her two darling girls visit us!!!  Thanks to my sweet brother, Bryan, and amazing dad, Christina was able to spend a week here in Delaware last week!!  It was such a happy surprise since I am not sure we will be able to make it home this summer :(  Despite a few disastrous bumps in the road...we had an absolute blast!!!

Here is one random picture of Jane and Beckham on Easter!!  I just thought it was too cute not to include!

 Unfortunately on this trip, the worst, most horrible, most unlikely, disastrous event occurred. Yes, Jane got sick on the very day, Christina came in:(!! I am talkin' throw-up, diarrhea, fever sick!!  The timing was so terrible.  So as a result, poor Jane was quarantined in her room for the whole first day of our trip.  Sweet little Jane was a trooper and was happy to take one for the team to help her cousins stay healthy! I just love this sweet little gal:)

 You may not be aware of the fact that we live in a handicap accessible home.  So, the guest bathroom has a very strange shower rather than a tub.  Since Jane was sick and using our bathroom with the only tub...this was our solution to bathe Christiana's kids while still keeping them separate from Jane.  Strange... but it worked!! And Mae and Claire loved it-haha!!

 Well, I spent that first day cleaning, sanitizing, doing laundry and basically just being a basket case.  Despite all that, disaster reared her ugly head yet again on this trip.  I got sick the very next day. Ryan was nice enough to get Christina and the kids out of the house to have a little fun, while also staying away from poor sick Jane and I.  Jane and I were bummed to be left behind, but glad to see that Christina and her kids got to have a little fun. 

Thankfully, the next day we all felt good enough to make the trip to Maryland to visit my brother, Matthew and Courtney and their kids.  We had a lot of fun hanging with family.  There is nothing better than family!!!

 We took a short walk to a darling little park.  This kids had a blast!!

 Jane was a little grumpy...but snapped out of that quick.

 This was our best attempt at getting a group shot of the kids- haha!!  I love all these sweet kids!!

 Christina and I got to have another adventure at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania!! The flowers were stunning!!

 It was a little chilly so several blankets were necessary. Don't they look cute all bundled up?

 The day turned out to be beautiful and perfect. We had so much fun exploring this beautiful place on such a lovely day:)

 There was a neat little log cabin that the kids loved exploring.  Sweet baby Claire looks so darling in this pic!

 Here we are at the bell tower.

 The kids loved the Children's portion of the gardens!! 

Claire was grateful to get out of the stroller and splash around in the water for a bit!!  She was a sweetie the whole day.

 The next several days were spent just relaxing and exploring Dover :) We found a cool little Cafe inside an old home!! The kids were tough...but we did get to eat some delicious cookies!!

 As usual, we visited Fifer Farms and got their famous apple cider slushies and doughnuts!!

 And rode on the fun swings.

 The horse, tire swings are always a hit with the kids!!

This trip came and went too fast :( and Despite the crazy sicknesses that blew threw, everyone stayed healthy and we had the best time ever!!  I am so glad my sis braved the long, terrible flight alone with her two kids to visit us!!  I love my sis and am so grateful to have her.  I really do have the best family in the world!!

Knights and Animals!!!

 Last Saturday, we went and had ourselves a rather impromptu adventure.  We just needed to do something exciting and fun and this is what we came up with.  We got on the road early, and headed to he National Zoo in DC!!  It was a great zoo and a fairly nice day :) I loved seeing the cute, not so little panda bear!!

 The kids both said their favorite animal was the sea lion!!  The tank was pretty amazing and huge with a giant under water observation area.

 The lions were beautiful, too!!

 We had a great morning at the zoo, despite the NO parking AT ALL issue and the large crowds... However, the main event was when we had dinner at Medieval Times!!  I know...nerdy...but we had such a blast!!  Naturally, Jane had to dress up like a princess and we managed to convince Beckham to wear his knight costume the whole time!! 

 Our darling kids were a huge hit!!:) Here they are with the main knight and announcer- he was great :)

 We had great seats!! We were routing for the yellow and red knight-hehe!!

 The show was pretty amazing and kept our kids entertained the ENTIRE time!! They loved seeing the amazing horses do wonderful tricks...they were beautiful.

 The dinner was yummy, even though you had to eat it with your hands- which our kids certainly didn't mind!! We had roasted chicken, BBQ ribs, Potatoes, garlic bread, and tomato soup!!

 Jane was absolutely thrilled to have our knight throw a beautiful flower to her- hehe :)

 Here are some pictures of the knights competing in "the games".

 jousting...

 sword fighting...

This day turned out to be a lot of fun even though our night lost miserably :)!!  I love impromptu adventures :)

Jane's Art Show!!

 Jane had an art show this past Monday!!  It was based on the "Winnie the Witch" book series that they have been reading in her Pre-K class!!  My personal favorite piece was the life sized "witch" version of Jane!!  It was oh so cute :)

 Jane's beaded butterfly was a close second!!!

 This whole wall, which had the kids' butterflies on it, was Winnie's house!! They kids did the flowers at the bottom as well!

 These were amazingly cute, too! Jane sculpted and bejeweled her own pair of Winnie's glasses:)

 This was Jane's favorite piece of art- her rainbow witch cat!!

 I loved the "stained glass" butterflies.  All the art projects were so diverse and creative. I love Jane's school!!

 Here is Jane with a few of the darling books her art show was based of off!!

We are so proud of our little artist!!

I have alot of catching up to do....

 I know it has been awhile since I posted...and I have been so anxious to update my blog- cause so much has been going on.  But, I lost our camera cord to upload pictures, so I couldn't.  We had to order one from Amazon and it finally came!!  So here is a little catch-up:)

In February, I was in charge of the "Great to be 8" program for the second year in a row.  Well, I put a lot of effort into these little programs so I took some pictures of my work this time so I can always remember it!! I had 12 kids who needed to be invited.  Here are some of the cute little invitations I made.

 As a gift to the kids, I made these binders for each child with lots of fun pages on baptism inside to read and fill out so they can always remember their special day :) It took forever, but they turned out so cute.

 

 I had a tree and growth theme going here, so as a display I made this big tree which hung up at the front of the room.  Each leaf had a a goofy and a smiley picture of each child.  It was pretty cute!!

 I am in my seventh month of preschool with Beckham and his little friends.  It is crazy...but so much fun!!

 Here is my darling little class...

 My brother Bryan, his sweet wife Wendy and their cute son Jack who have lived in Brooklyn for the past year or so just moved... and I am sooooooo sad about it. So we went to visit them in February while my mom was it town.  It was such a fun trip and we had a blast together.  I am really going to miss them :(  Here we are eating at the famous restaurant, Serendipity!! Yum!!

 Here's the whole gang.  I miss this already!!

 We went to the Central Park Zoo!!  It was a lovely day and so much fun.

 The zoo had a kids portion that was a lot of fun. 

 Beckham loved pretending to be a spider on the spider web.

 Later, we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe...a long time tradition of the Harper family!!  It was the BEST!!

 Of course we made a trip to the Disney store and Toys R Us!!  I am really going to miss these quick trips to NY and spending time with my brother and his family.  It was a very special time for me to spend so much time with my wonderful brother.  I haven't been able to do that for a very long time and he is the BEST and I have been really grateful for this time with him and his fam!!

 My good friend, Christa came back to Dover for a day or so to meet her hubby who came back from deployment!!!  It was so fabulous to see her again!!

 I have met and become friends with some amazing ladies here is Dover!!

 Jane got a book from the library called Fancy Nancy, Tea Party!!  This book inspired Jane to really want to have a tea party- a  fancy one!!!

 So we made fancy plates and place mats together and i planned a family tea party for dinner!! The kids helped me a lot to make this party, extra fancy!!!

 The kids dressed up as a knight and a princess and we had a fabulous tea party!! We had finger foods, goodies and even a yummy fizzy drink with sherbet in it!!!  We all had a blast!!

So that is the update on us-sorry it took so long!!