Looking Back: New Year's Eve at Niagara Falls

 I realized I never finished posting pics from our big road trip out east over Christmas break! 

After leaving Massachusetts, we traveled to Buffalo, New York for New Years Eve.

This was the first part of our trip in which we saw snow! 

 We met up with Mike and Michelle Weston and their kiddos for dinner at The Anchor Bar 

which is the home of the first official buffalo wild wings (at least they say) 

and let me tell you, the wings were delicious! And the company was even better! 

After dinner, we drove up to the Falls, on the New York side, just in time to see the fireworks! It was freezing and the mist was like little ice pellets on your face but a cool thing to see! The power and force of those falls is astounding. A perfect way to ring in 2015.

Flashback to our 13th Anniversary

Coffee in the morning
Ice cream at night
Make sure the kitchen’s clean
Then we turn out the light

Raindrops on the window
We’re on the couch
Fire in the fireplace
Best seat in the house

When God made you
He already knew
That we were meant to be
With love as deep
As the big blue sea
We were meant to be

Feet on the dashboard
Wind in my hair
As long as you’re beside me
I’ll go anywhere

I’ll make you dinner
You do the laundry
We’ll make mistakes
Then say we’re sorry
Our love will bend
But it won’t break
When we give more than we take

*JJ Heller (Meant to Be) 

Flashback to Ella's 8th Ice Skating Birthday Party

 This year for Ella's birthday in January (yes, I'm really playing catch up in blogging), we let her invite 5 friends to go ice skating at the rink near our house that has free ice skating on Wednesdays from 4-6pm! Grabbed a cake from Whole Foods and a few pizzas from Mellow Mushroom and a fun birthday party is planned with minimal effort and money:) 

Hard to believe this little one is 8 years old! Love her bunches! 

And love that she shares a birthday month with Great Grandma! 

Sophia and Arianna's Art and Music Night and Girl Scout Cookie Event

The twins started girl scouts in the 1st grade and this is their 5th year! I am so pleased with the program overall and really love how it develops leadership in my girlies. This year, they worked to plan, organize, set up, run and clean up a cookie rally for other girl scout troops to come to. Planning events/parties is such a big part of adult life (at least for me:)  and I am so grateful they got to see how to throw a big event for around 80 girls. They got to the grange around 11 am and left around 4pm. It was a hard day of work but they learned so much about what it takes to execute an event. 

they did a skit on cookie selling

Each girl worked at a craft station and troops rotated through the different stations

 This past month, we also got to attend the twins last elementary Art and Music night! 

They each had an acting part and did awesome! 

Love these twiners and can't believe how old they are getting! 

We celebrated at the NEW Dunkin Donuts that is now 10 minutes from our house! 

This is great news! 

Hiking Roxborough Park

On another VERY sunny and warm day in February (we've had a lot of those kinda days), our family went on a nice Saturday hike in Roxborough Park. I love this Park for hiking. It's close to home; the red rocks are gorgeous; there are a plethora of trails and its just so pretty.

We got to try out (for the first time) the new water back packs that Aunt Abbey got us for Christmas! 

They worked great! 

I'm not sure why these are the first trail markers you see. 

It always scares the kids half to death right at the beginning of the hike:)