New York Trip-the lost footage

It is always fun to download pictures from a camera and find some lost "treasures". During our trip to New York in July, we headed up to Toronto, Canada for a few days of fun. Little did we know that our trip coincided with the traveling Queen of England, a major power outage, and over 10,000 Shriners holding their national convention.... We did attempt to have some fun through this.

Ian walking around the airport in San Jose...He was just practicing his skills at this point

He was fascinated with this musical ball invention

The hotel we stayed at in Toronto had sleep number beds

Ian had fun choosing Daddy's number

Grandma and Grandpa came with us....Emma loves for others to read to her at bedtime
On Tuesday, we decided to take a ride on this...

This is the Hippo tour. We have done several duck tours in other cites and it has always been a fun way to see the city.

Emma was excited....until we found out it was the day of the Shriner's big parade and several main streets were closed

We had to take an alternate route

Along with the rest of the city

Needless to say, the 90 minute tour ended up taking 2 and a half hours! The smiles you see in this picture are because we are done!
We did not get to see Toronto at it's best, and might need to go back at some point to see what fun it has to offer!

Home Improvement

After living in our house for almost a year, we are finally jumping into the deep end of home improvement! We have started painting. If you know us and our house history, our house in Virginia needed A LOT of paint....Every wall, door and molding needed new paint after unwallpapering and covering up lots of stencil. So......It amazed us when we began our painting journey here in Emma's room and we were done by noon! Newer houses are so much easier to paint!. Here is some of our progress...

Emma chose pink! (Or as she tells everyone, light pink)

She is really happy with it
In Ian's room, we went with green

We might do wainscoting in this room as well


And the playroom is now blue


I found some cute decals at Target to decorate with


Next up, we will tackle our bedroom; we still are in negotiations over the color!

All about Ian

Ian has just turned 15 months old, so I figure it is time for another little update about what he is up to. After going to his well baby appointment last week, we found out that Ian is growing by leaps and bounds! He weighs 25 pounds (which is in the 63rd percentile) and he is a whopping 31 inches tall (which is in the 82nd percentile)!
Ian is now walking all over the place. He is not running.... yet, but he can get pretty fast when he sees something he wants, or when he is chasing Emma.
Although Ian is not saying too much yet, he is very vocal with some new instruments....He has learned how to use a kazoo and he loves walking around blowing Emma's train whistle!

He also loves drums and maracas. We are thinking of starting him on the harmonica next :)
Ian now loves to ride on the rocking horse!

He often has an extra rider on with him

We are starting to learn how to eat with utensils!

It can get a little messy at times

Emma likes to help him out sometimes!

But some food is still best picked up!

Our little baby is growing up into a toddler before our eyes!

Celebrating the 4th on the 3rd in Penfield

Dan's hometown has a great July 4th celebration every year. This year, most of the activities were on July 3rd. First thing in the morning, we headed out to the parade.

Waiting for the parade to start

Ian is not so patient

Here come the fire engines!

Ian shows some patriotic spirit

Emma and her flag

Wegmans handed out refreshing water

The local mortuary's float

Ian watches the parade go by

Emma leads he own parade

We also celebrated Daddy's birthday (Being a year older must have been tiring for him :)

Then we went to watch fireworks

Waiting for the show

Playing with glow necklaces

Ian learned how to put them over his head
Daddy had Emma convinced that the fireworks and parade were all for his birthday!

Playing In Rochester

We had a great visit in New York over the 4th of July long weekend! We love visiting Grandpa and Grandma's house; especially during this time of year because there are lots of fun things to do!

Grandma got Emma light sticks; Ian loved them too!

Emma loves playing pirate at Grandpa and Grandma's house

Testing out the pool...It was a little chilly

Ian really liked the pool toys

We also headed to the Strong Museum of play

Playing with shapes

Making designs

Who can do their puzzle faster???? (Emma won!)

Ian checks out what Emma is doing

A fun jumping game

Emma sells Grandma some fruit

Ian found lots of things to get into

Making crowns

Princess Emma

Playing store in the pretend Wegmans

Here comes Emma's next customer!
After dinner, we took Emma out to another fun place...a giant bouncing pillow

Bouncing with Daddy

It was fun to run across, too

Getting some air!