HALLOWEEN!

I love halloween. I'm not quite sure why, but it has actually always been my favorite holiday. I enjoy it now a' days partly due to my ability to go to the store and buy bags full of snack size candy bars for 'trick or treaters,' the supply of which has to be replenished every few days up untill halloween. I think I also have a love for all things scary, creepy, and just a touch on the morbid side. I definately love costumes and still enjoy looking through party city circulars to pick out what I would be dressing as, if I were 10 years younger. My fascination with the holiday might possibly come from the fact that growing up, my parents never let me and my sisters actually go out and trick r' treat, horrible I know, someone should have notified CPS :) Trunk r' treats usually had to suffice. Which is still fun in my family because of my Dad's creativity:

For those of you who are not of the fanning clan, last years get-up:

Inspired by his creativity I decided to make some fun halloween decoration to go in our window this year:

Dead Head and crow -my fav.

oooh- bloody candles

Anyways, halloween is lots of fun, I can't wait untill me and dan have kids- my works of creepy art will be more appreciated (: I am hoping me and dan can go to edgar allen poe's house this year for halloween - it's here in philly!

And lastly, I will leave you with a good halloween music video- I've always been a fan of the 'yeah yeah yeahs' and their unusual videos, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auzfTPp4moA

Summer Games and Garden

So we have been enjoying our summer here. We are always looking for things to do for fun. The other day we saw a sports authority store. It is hard for me to walk by a sports store and not go in. We went in and came out with this ladder golf game. It is supposed to be played outside but it was dark out so we decided to set it up inside. We have enjoyed it. Another game we have enjoyed lately is frisbee golf. We found a course in Fairmount park we like. Sometimes the crowd at the course is a shady group but on those days we just drive right by and go on a run instead. For those of you interested in fun board games we found one we really like. It is called Wits and Wagers and is played in a group setting. We played it when the Fannings came and we loved it. Other than that we have been living the normal South Philly lifestyle, let the wife work while the man stays home. However the only difference is I don't drink so instead I do laundry, scrub the floors, basically all the Cinderella stuff. I also have been invested in my garden which has already produced plenty of tomatoes and green beans with green peppers soon to be eaten up. The pumpkin plant looks real big but there is only one little guy in there. We are already starting to give tomatoes away because we cannot eat them fast enough.

Philly, DC, NYC

We just had a week long visit from Brittan's family this past week. We loved every minute as we traveled to DC and New York. Here are some of the pics we had taken.

Last day in Philly enjoying Rita's water ice and soft pretzels
Philly art museum

They all wanted to jump in the fountain

Brittan falling in the arms of one of the founding fathers

NYC never stops

Times Square relaxing

Brittan loves her candy and was very excited to see this in the toy store

We loved the MET art museum and here we are on top

Some art in the MET

Walking to find Chinatown took a while

Do you see progress?

Just kissing my dinasours

The Capital Building

Washington monument

Beginning of our trip

Much thanks to the Fanning's for coming to visit with us. By the end of the week we were all exhausted from walking and the go go attitude that we fell asleep (to Seinfeld of course) on our hardwood floor for a Saturday afternoon nap.

Detroit!

Daniel and I drove to detroit this last memorial day weekend. It was a good 10 hour drive, and we couldn't believe that steph and steve made the same drive with 3 boys to be in Philly for only two days, earlier this year (we concluded that they were crazy). I only drove for an hour on the way back from detroit to give dan a break- he drove the other 19 hours! He's a machine. Every once in a while he would ask if I would like to drive (because sometimes sitting in the passengers seat staring at trees for consecutive hours gets boring) so I would say "sure" but then I would say something like "man, i feel like I can't keep my eyes open, maybe I will just let them rest every other 10 seconds to avoid falling asleep while I'm driving." . . . Hence, Daniel driving 95% of the time.

It was a ton of fun hanging out with the boys and steve and steph, they made it easy to forget that there was a life of drudgery awaiting us back in philly (actually philly isn't that bad). Steph made some really good food while we were there, especially her smoothies, salads and pancakes. We played alot of Wii Tanks while we were there, and we are still having withdrawls. Sometimes I will be woken up at night by dan making little missle launching and explosion noises in his sleep. We also went to Greenfield Village, a project of Henry Ford's which is basically a giant indoor/outdoor museum- with tons of historical buildings from the 17th century to present moved from thier original locations to this little 'village' setting. We got to ride on an old steam locamotive and a 1916 Ford Model T. They also had a civil war reenactment going on at the time. So, it was pretty much awesome.

Here are some pictures that we took during our stay, in no particular order:

A view from the steam engine tour of Greenfield village.

Riding the Steam Engine.

Hewitt lovin some sprite.

The confederates about to charge.

Some confederate floosies (according to Dan.)

Tired legs . . .dan wanted a seat too.

Flashing a six pack.

Our favorite 'Donny face'.

Some cool old buildings and what looks to be an alligator swamp.

Some Yankees.

Tanks ubsessee.

Donny was injured in a pool slide fall- but he's a tough cookie

Donny was eating some old halloween candy stuck on the bottom of his bucket (just kidding steph).

More tanks excitment.

Talkin to some old folks.

The best marble tower. ever.

Waiting in line for our sweet model T rides.

Pysanky!!

So for Easter this year we decided to venture from the classic egg dying and try out Pysanky. It is the Ukranian technique for dying eggs. We learned about this from our landlord one evening when we were at his house. He told us where we could get the supplies to try our own and so yesterday we went and got them. The supplies are pretty basic, some intense egg dying colors, a block of bees wax, a small flame and a kistky (the writing tool). We were able to do it as we listened to conference. Here is what we were able to come up with after two sessions of conference...

It is a difficult technique because it is hard to control the wax. The lady at the store told us that if wax falls where we do not want it we have just begun a new design. We started alot of new designs with our eggs. It was fun and we will try to get better by next year.