Moran Family Fun

This year for Mother's Day the one thing I wanted was to get a good picture with the whole family. Even though our kids are older now, it's still sometimes tricky to find that one perfect shot where we're all looking good. Madison perpetually has her eyes shut or is just looking slightly to the left of the camera. Natalie is so cute in person, but is in the awkward stage where her smile looks so unnatural in photos. Plus, like Madison, she struggles with looking at the camera. Add to that the challenge of finding a picture where I'm happy with how I look and it's a tall order. Still, I was determined and since it was Mother's Day I couldn't be denied! After dinner we headed out to the deck and did our very best to take that one decent picture. This was as close as we got to perfect and Madison's eyes were still closed!  Jared's mom was visiting for the weekend and she kindly stepped into the role of photographer for us  In the end, my f...

Some months are busier than others and the four week period from the end of March to the end of April was a little crazy! Combine spring break with a birthday and Mormon Prom and the calendar filled up quickly. We're just putting the highlights here on the blog since that's a lot to write about and I really want to get things caught up... First up, we took a little day trip with Jared's dad up to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms. Of course, we picked a grey rainy day but it was still a fun adventure. We rode the Metro in and joined the throngs heading for the Tidal Basin and the iconic cherry blossoms.  I really wanted a picture looking up through the branches and Jared was sweet enough to add the human element to this photo. Surprisingly, I wasn't the only person lying on the ground under a tree snapping pictures! We are blessed to have handy and helpful neighbors who gave up almost an entire Saturday to work on our deck. Initially we were just ...

For my birthday this year Larisa sent me this perfect little piece of art for my sewing space. I love it and it makes me happy each time I see it sitting there by my machine. But it also makes me a little sad as well because I haven't actually sewn anything  in months. Since the beginning of this year my work schedule has been slowly taking more and more time away from, well, everything else in my life and I'm now working twice as much as I was before.  Since I have less time now for things at home I had to be willing to do less in some areas. It wasn't going to be Jared, the kids, cooking, cleaning, or seminary preparation so all that was left was sewing. When I realized that a couple of months ago I feel as if I actually mourned the loss of my hobby and spent a little while feeling sorry for myself. I had projects lined up in my head and fabric sitting on the table waiting to be cut out. Instead of ever finishing those projects I took some of my precious time and cleared...

Just a quick recap of our last day in Philadelphia, which was filled with history and sunshine.  We learned too late that it's important to reserve tickets for the tour of Independence Hall well before the actual day of your visit. We went online and tried to get tickets a few days before we left on our trip but all the slots were already full. Still, we'd heard that you could just show up that day and there might be ticket holders who were no shows whose tickets you could have. So we headed out that morning planning to at least try to get tickets, but we weren't very optimistic that it would actually work out. At least there would be plenty of other things to see and do in Independence National Historical Park. As we suspected, there weren't any spare tickets just waiting for us when we arrived at the visitor's center. BUT, when we were in line waiting to get Samantha and Natalie their Junior Ranger booklets we overhead two rangers talking about the 30+ tickets th...

I'm going to wrap up our Philadelphia adventures, and only a month behind schedule! Our first full day in Philly started off with snacks at Reading Terminal Market before we struck out for the day. When we were planning our trip we had the girls all do some research on things to do in Philadelphia and pick the things they most wanted to see or do. Almost everyone mentioned the Franklin Institute so we made that the first order of business on our one full day in the city. As we were walking there we stopped to check out anything that looked interesting!  Here's our day of fun in photo format: Abigail, Natalie, and Samantha with the Philadelphia City Hall in the background. Jared, Abigail, Natalie, Samantha, and Emily in the courtyard of the city hall. I have a love for beautiful old buildings and this one is definitely beautiful even if it's not so old. The square across the street from the city hall was filled with statues of board game pieces - dominoes, ch...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (Philly travelogue) to bring you a tale of woe. Tuesday nights are MY night. Jared works at the Washington DC Temple that night and instead of coming home he sleeps his office. The long drive home combined with an early Wednesday meeting means that sleeping at work gives him two or more extra hours of sleep. As much as I love hanging with Jared, it's kind of nice to have an evening all to myself. I can watch whatever I want on television, or shut out the world and read, or spend my evening sewing, and I typically stay up much, much later than I do when Jared's home. This week I finally stumbled to bed around quarter to one after watching Dancing With the Stars, eating some Ritter Sport, and reading a few (okay, seven) chapters of The Way of Kings . I was just drifting off when Samantha came into my room with the news. Natalie had thrown up in their bed. Ugh. I told Samantha to just climb into my bed to sleep and went upsta...

Oh food, our favorite part of every trip! Before we left for Philadelphia a couple of different people recommend that we check out Reading Terminal Market. It's kind of a cross between an indoor farmer's market and a food court. Anything you wanted to eat was probably somewhere in there among the eighty-four different vendors selling everything from cheesesteaks (of course) to whoopie pies. When I booked our hotel I could tell from the map that it was close to the Market. What I didn't realize until we arrived was that the Market was right across the street from the main entrance to the hotel! During our three days in Philly we ate there five different times and were never disappointed.  This delectable display was at a pretty amazing Italian bakery, which was next to an equally amazing Italian deli and pizza place. We brought one of the heavenly chocolate mousse cakes back to our hotel and all enjoyed a bite or two. I may have eaten pizza from the place next doo...