Camping at Kettletown State Park

One of our best weekends this summer was spent camping at Kettletown State Park. It's located in Southbury which is actually about a half hour away. It is amazing how one minute you can be in a fairly large city and the next you can feel like you are in the middle of no where. There are so many trees here, it just shelters you from the world! This campsite/park was really nice with great showers etc. There was also a nice lake and hiking trails. The staff had also planned lots of great activities that the kids could do. It really was just a nice set up. Just funny. I call it city camping because the campsites were really close together and the ice cream truck came by right about dinner time. The camp staff had activities planned that could keep your children occupied the whole time you were there. It was sad to me to see parents taking there kids camping and then not actually spending time with them. There was this one little boy (about 8 or 9) who kept coming over to our campsite to hang out with all the kids. It was kind of sad, because he was literally hanging out with us all Saturday morning and we never saw his parents. I think he was an only child and was just lonely. He really wanted to hold the baby, all the time. Kind of annoying, but I really did feel bad for him. As for us, we pulled into camp around 6:30 and immediately started putting up the tent. It didn't take long for me to realize that we had left one of the poles back at home. We really weren't that far from home, but didn't want to go back, so we used our ingenuity to jimmyrig our tent so it would stand. We tied it to a tree (Justin's idea) and used a branch to prop it up (my idea). OK so Justin's idea was better than mine.

THere's my oh so sturdy branch. (tiny tim's crutch as Justin called it).

The tent tied to a tree.

The sign in the bathroom asking us not to hang our tent to the tree.

John on our hike.

Super Michelle.

Nathan. This is the picture he took into kindergarten to show all of his classmates about his summer.

Climbing a huge rock on the trail.

Samantha at the lake. Love the goggles.

Joseph and John building sand tunnels.

My birthday. Justin made me a cake with fruity pebbles for frosting. It was GGGGrrreat! This picture is all the kids jumping on me and waking me up from my sunday nap with my freshly baked cake. Happy birthday to me!

A few summer highlights!

Now that school is back in session, I finally have some time to post and blog about all the fun things we did this summer. It will take me a few separate posts, but here is the first batch:

On august 23rd (the day after my birthday) my little brother Danny flew in and spent the 23rd adn 24th with us. My other siblings came as well so we had a little reunion before Danny headed off to Egypt. He had a 30 hr layover, so it was short, but fun. Maia picked him up at JFK on Monday then headed to my house where Matt and Colleen met up with us as well. We spent Monday night chatting and then on Tuesday we walked to Brooksvale park and played with the animals and threw around the football. It was great! I love my family! then we came back for thai food and more chatting. Then Matt and Colleen took Danny back to JFK where he flew away to Egypt. We are missing him, which is weird because it's not like we ever really saw him that much before he left, but it's always a little anxiety producing to have a loved one in a foreign country. I hope we get to visit him before he heads back. I'm thinking summer 2012. The siblings: Maia, Matt, Danny Megan

The whole crew minus Colleen (she took the picture for us.) lt to rt: Maia Greene, Brigham Greene, Matt Stoker, Danny Stoker, Megan Rowberry, Joseph Rowberry, Kate Rowberry, John Rowberry, Justin Rowberry, Nathan Rowberry, Samantha Rowberry, Michelle Rowberry.

The next set of pictures is from our trip to Rhode Island. One of Justin's co-workers owns a beach house in Rhode Island. We were invited to enjoy it (along with all of his other co workers.) Of course no one else has kids, but fortunately pediatricians (especially developmentalists) are very kind and tolerant of little ones. We had a BBQ at the beach house, and then went to the beach. The beach was gorgeous. The waves were much bigger than the Connecticut waves. We also learned to catch these cool little crabs. I think they are horseshoe crabs as they don't really look like the typical kind you think of. After the beach we went back to the house, cleaned up and went out to eat at a popular sea food restuarant. The boys shared a lobster because they really wanted to try it and it was a pretty good price. yum!

Our bucket of crabs. It was amazing how many there were. All you had to do was start digging and you would find tons. They just feel like little rocks and try to run away as fast as they can. It was fun to catch them.

Joey, John, Nathan and Justin catching crabs.

Michelle. See sometimes she lets me put her hair in pony tails, just not that often.

Hiking sleeping Giant with the cub scouts. (I'm the leader over the bears and wolves). It was fun!

Kate's blessing

Kate was blessed last Sunday Sept. 5th. It was really sweet. Justin's parents came up from Washington DC and so did his sister Janae and her husband and kids. Matt and Colleen came from my side. It was really sweet. I love it when we have a chance to get together with family. I made the dress she is wearing. It's hard to see the details, but the bodice is smocked. This was my first smocking project. It was really fun to learn, but took a long time. I really didn't anticipate it taking quite so long, so of course I was scrambling to finish it on Saturday night. Justin's mom actually hemmed it and did the facing while I made dinner on Saturday. She's great!

The weekend went really well. We've never really lived close to Janae and Tyson, so it was fun to spend some time with them and their little family. On Monday we went and toured Yale and went to the park, then grabbed some Thai food and played games at night.
Tuesday was a little dramatic. We went to Brooksvale park to see the animals, but got home a little late. As I was speeding to get Tyson and Janae to the train station to make their train, the power steering went out in the car. Then a few minutes later the temperature light came on. I kept driving because we were kind of close to the station and I didn't really know what else to do. Then the battery light came on. Then the car just started beeping constantly. I dropped Janae and Tyson off and the car completely died. The battery was dead. I was in the drop off lane blocking cars behind me. Luckily a taxi driver pushed me to the side of the road. I was still parked in front of the bus stop, but didn't really have any other options. I called Justin from work and he came and rescued me. We had to get the car towed to a car shop and got it fixed. It was a broken serpentine belt. The annoying thing is that we just spent a significant amount of money on it last week to fix a big oil leak that we had. Apparently this wasn't related (at least that's what they tell us). Hopefully the car will run for a while longer. We started looking at replacement vehicles, and let's just say it's not cheap to buy a car that seats 8. I would like to go a little bigger too, but don't really want to have the really big van, not a lot of options. Hopefully we'll just make it a while longer so we can save up some more money.
Here are some pictures of Kate in her blessing dress. Of course I couldn't find my camera on Sunday, so these pictures were taken a few days later, but you get the picture.

I normally really dislike collars, but it works on this dress. I love Kate's hair! She's actually wearing one of my barrette's, but has the hair to keep it in. So fun!