So much for "soon" and "smaller"... this update is a couple months and a few hundred pics past that. Anyway... I just updated a ton of pictures. Everything from July until most of September is now available for your perusal. I have a few miscellaneous groups of pics that will hopefully be posted later, but they are waiting on captions that Josh has to write (he was there for the pics, I wasn't!), and I have to sort through a couple smaller folders still.

Here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to: we had a busy summer, as you will see by looking at the pics from July and August. We went to NH for the Fourth of July again, right after we had a Family Fun Fest at our church. While in NH, we took a day and drove up to the coast for some Newick's seafood and to go just over the border to Maine to visit Fort McClary. It was a beautiful day! That weekend was the start of the major heat wave for us - something we've almost been missing the last week. :-) We also had two events at the Tri-City Valley Cats within a couple weeks of each other: one with Josh's work, and one with our church. Good games! Both went into extra innings, but the Valley Cats lost the first one. They totally came back to win the second one we were at, though! It was awesome! And Annabelle is now a big Valley Cats fan. :-)

In August we spent a lot of time with Jordan when he was up from Texas for a couple weeks. We had a great time visiting with him on multiple occasions, including Josh's birthday celebration and a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Josh went on a hike with him and their dad up Buck Mountain, as well. We also had another birthday celebration at the end of the month for Ally. Lots of birthdays!

We spent an afternoon visiting with the family of one of Josh's coworkers. They have a little girl (Eve) who is a little younger than Annabelle, but they got along smashingly. They had "met" at the first Valley Cats game we went to, and we were invited to come over sometime. They had a pool, and, thanks in part to Eve, Annabelle was sort of willing to go in it (she's very nervous around pools and water). She had fun floating around in a boat in the pool, and we even convinced her to try swimming with her floaty suit on! She did great! She had such a blast! And she loved playing with Eve for a few hours.

My parents stopped by for a couple days that month too. We took advantage of the nice weather and headed over to the Saratoga Battlefield National Historical Park. I had never been there, but we have been talking about going a lot, especially since we went down to Williamsburg a few months ago. One of the most important battlefields in the country, right in our backyard! So we all went, and it is breathtakingly beautiful there!

Also in August, we got to see a couple of new friends get married. Katie and Craig are such a terrific couple, and their wedding was beautiful! Congratulations to them, and may God Bless! And thank you for letting us share in your big day!

In September we started thinking about school. Yeah, that's right: SCHOOL. Annabelle started Pre-K this year! She has been so excited about starting, and she LOVES it! So that's the biggest thing in our lives right now. It seems crazy that she's already in school, but it's true. And we are so proud of her - she has adjusted so well!

Before school started, we spent Labor Day up at Lake George with our Pastor and his family and another family from church. It was perfect weather, and we had a great cook-out and a good time walking around Fort George State Park. Such a beautiful park, and hardly anyone seemed to know about it! Annabelle loves the Pastor's kids, so she had a blast running around with them, and we all enjoyed the fellowship. It was a nice way to "end" the summer.

In other news: this summer, Annabelle started piano lessons. She is doing great and loves it! I am amazed at how much she is learning already. Thanks, Kim, for teaching her! :-)

Also, we had Annabelle's gardening project this summer. What a crazy thing. You'll have to check out the pics to understand. And I do plan on updating those pics again soon, so the story is not yet complete.

It's getting late now, so I can't remember what else I was going to say. Hopefully the pictures explain everything. The updates are all in the monthly folders in the "Picture Album Pages", the "Apartment" pages, the "Family Outings" pages (check out this year's apple-picking exploits!), and "Holiday Page." I hope you enjoy this little peek into our lives. :-)

Happy Fall!

-Katherine, 9 October 2010

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Wow! It's taken a lot of time, but I finally finished putting captions on all the pictures from our big vacation, and they are all posted! I had to do some re-arranging of the "Family Outings" page, but I think it's gonna be fairly easy to find your way around. We went to Williamsburg, VA, for our first vacation in 5 years (yes, since our honeymoon). We had a great time! We spent our 5th Anniversary (can you believe it's been five years already?) driving down to Virginia, and we spent the next few days running around seeing a ton. I can't wait to go back! ;-)

The pictures will tell most of the stories. I do have plans to put up some of Annabelle's pictures from her camera sometime, just to give an interesting perspective on things. But don't count on that too soon. I may have finished all the Virginia pictures and some of the "everyday" pictures, but our camera is loaded with more from the past almost-two-months. These will be everyday pictures as well as our Fourth of July trip to New Hampshire and a couple of other events.

Ugh, I just looked at the camera, and there are at least 727 files on it. Yeah, I'm gonna be doing a lot of picture captions! I'll let you know when they're done and up here, of course.

So that's pretty much it. Please check out the Family Outings page, the Apartment page, the Holiday page, and the Picture Album page for the current updates and new folders. Hopefully there will be another update fairly soon. It should be much smaller than this one, all things considered!

Until next time, have fun! Oh, and a special "hello" to some of our new friends checking out our site! :-)

-Katherine, 13 July 2010

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After several weeks of caption-writing and a few days of uploading and formatting, I am finished with website updates! Well, almost. I do have a couple hundred pictures on the camera still, but I'm done for a few days at least! I do not plan on writing a huge update, since it would cover from November through today... That's what the pictures are for. :-) So, I believe I have indicated which albums are new. I believe the last update was right before Thanksgiving, so the pictures are all from Thanksgiving, Christmas, etcetera, and the day-to-day stuff in-between.

There is a new folder to the left here: the "Picture Album Pages." I had planned on doing this a year ago, but didn't get to it. So instead, the "Baby Annabelle" folder covers everything from Annabelle's first days to her fourth birthday. After that, the pictures will now be grouped by month of the year in the "Picture Album" folder. This should be a little less confusing, I hope!

Please check out the pictures. I hope you enjoy catching up with us. And I hope most of the captions explain what's been going on in our lives! :-)

-Katherine, 28 April 2010

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It's that time of year again: today we are celebrating Annabelle's FOURTH Birthday! Happy Birthday, Annabelle! We have enjoyed watching you grow up so much this year - you still amaze us every day! We love you so much, and we can't wait to see what the next year has in store. Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

With All Our Love,

Mommy and Daddy, 27 February 2010

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