Lots of Sweets in Sweet Valley

The grandchildren had a great time looking for the hidden eggs. The Dads had the job of hiding them. Most were in the grass.

The next job they have is to name the new chickens that Grandma and Grandpa got for them.

Holidays are GREAT!!!!!!

Welcome to Tennessee!

Pete and I had a lovely Easter visiting Jess and her family! Jess made sure Pete was taken care of by being our tour guide. The first battlefeild was Chickamauga. Followed through by Ink at Snodorass hill in the evening. We even had Ian learning about history. Easter had a little more for the ladies!

2nd Annual Memorial Day Party/graduation party

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! We had dinner at Stacy's parents which was lovely. Today was close to 80 degrees and made me long for summer days...hopefully the weather is as nice this summer as it was last year!

To kick off the summer The Lake House will be hosting the 2nd Annual Memorial Day Party/Kristina's Graduation Party:

When: Sunday, May 29th, 2011; 12PM or whenever you get there until the party is over!

Where: The Lake House

What to bring: Henry has been swimming 3 times already so bring your bathing suit!
If you have any fun lawn games bring them!
Bring your appetite (you know there is always too much food at Oplinger get-togethers!)
Sunscreen (there were a lot of sunburns after last years party, let's be skin conscious!)
DO NOT bring presents.

Please let me know if you are coming so I can have a list for my mom so she can have plenty of food. Hope to see everyone there!!

Happy Easter

What a beautiful day today was....

We started out the day with breakfast at mom and dad's which included our annual Egg Wars. Cally and mom were in the finals this year, mom won!

After dinner, we prepared for the egg hunt. Grandma's deer helped us out...

Cally in pursuit of her eggs...

Poor Maya was fighting sleep all day long. She caught a cat nap around 6 pm.

First annual Dessert Wars: Mike vs Kelli. I think it was a tie! :)

Finally, without planning....the four us were in the yellow (sun) spirit today.

I can't wait for more nice days like this!

Out and About

Charlie and I traveled to South Carolina to visit Evelyn & her family.

A tour of Charleston led by Tommy Dew ended with him insulting me, so Charlie had to challenge him to a duel.

Mega house on the battery in Charleston.

Beautiful gardens in Savannah, and . . .

. . . magnolias,

and guys.

Back in time for Easter and a short burst of sunshine, with brunch, at Sara & Dave's.

Cousins are fun!

Easter

We are both looking forward to having the grandchildren over at Easter for our annual Easter Egg Hunt.

A Nice Day to Go to the Zoo

Two girls happy with their new stuffed animals.

Thanks to Kelli, Ashley, Sal, and Mikey, we used our season pass to the Philadelphia Zoo for the first time. We had a really nice time! Many of the animals were out and about, and the flowering trees were in full bloom. I never appreciated or took notice to how beautiful this time of year is until our 1-year wedding anniversary. It rained on the day of our wedding. A year later on our trip to New Hope, I realized what a great time of year we happened to pick to get married. It was nice being with the family today, observing the different animals, and taking in all of the different trees and flowers that blosoom this time of year.

YEA Spring!

We can finally say Spring has Sprung in NEPA!! (geez, took long enough...)

2011 Tough Mudder

You may remember the Philadelphia Mud Run I ran with my co-workers last summer...well, in the fall, they got the brilliant idea to do the Tough Mudder. When I first read what was involved, I said absolutely not! Then, somehow, I let them talk me into signing up. Meanwhile, I forwarded the information to Shauna. Shauna was in and talked Mike into signing up. Thank goodness they did! I missed my start time with my co-workers due the time it took to get the shuttle from one of the lots. This was probably the best thing that could of happened to me that day, because that meant I might as well run with Shauna and Mike at their start time. The Tough Mudder is not considered a race, but a test of mental toughness, the strength of teamwork, and the kindness of strangers. Now, on the website, it stated this course was 9 miles long with 18 military style obstacles...when we got to registration, we saw the map of the course and it was now 25 obstacles and 10 miles. However, near the end of the course, we find it was actually 12 miles!!! Talk about mental toughness!

The course was held at a ski resort, so there were PLENTY of hills to go up and come down. Of course the beginning had one very steep hill, I was ready to give up at that point, but Shauna and Mike pushed me to keep going. We were able to stick together, along with Mike's co-worker for the entire course.

Getting ready to go up the first hill...

Thankfully, this slip and slide didn't hurt like the one we used to set up on my parents back yard!

Walk the plank obstacle....the water was FREEZING!!!

Electroshock obstacle...Shauna and I chose to skip this one, Mike and his co-worker, Shawn, powered through it!

Four hours later, we are Tough Mudders!

A special thanks to Sal...for putting up with all of the other "crazy" participants and popping up where we least expected him to snap some really great pictures.