Bridge of Hope Lunch

Sunday, we had lunch at the Franconia Heritage Restaurant in Franconia to support the Bridge of Hope's "Meals with a Purpose." We ate family style and it was very cool because since there were 12 people in our group, we had a whole table to ourselves. The Davis', Schreiers', Gwen, Barb and Griff and us ate until our bellies could not expand anymore.

Griff needed more hands.

Shann was eating everything. At one point, he thought that he saw some food in Jay's ear.

Build-A-Bear for Emily's Birthday

For Emily's 7th birthday Amy decided to take her to the Build-A-Bear Workshop in the Lehigh Valley Mall. Her sister Kayla got to make one too. The girls got to pick an animal and pick a sound to go into the animal. Emily chose the birthday song and Kayla did not want a sound. Then the real fun began..deciding what the bears should wear. We spent an hour just walking around and looking at all of the clothing and accessories.

Caden and Alyssa also built a bear. They made one for their new baby cousin. They chose a fuzzy bear and recorded a special message for him. They also dressed him in a pair of overalls.

Tyler came over and played Wii with Uncle Jay. Our nieces and nephew make our lives so rich and we were sad to take them home at the end of the day.

A NEW CAR!

Today we traded in our 1999 Chevy Prism. Amy hated the car, but I have to say that I am going to miss it, mostly because I am frugal and the car got excellent gas mileage. It averaged 38 miles per gallon. We had the car over 6 years and in that time it was an extremely reliable car…even though Amy called it "The Crap Car” seen below.
Our new car is a 2007 Corolla Sport and we really like it. We already have a Corolla, but this is the sport model and it looks pretty sweet. Check it out.

Car Accident

Tuesday morning, Jay was traveling out to Pittsburgh with a coworker to inspect leaks on several buildings. They were expecting a few snow flurries, but about 7 miles from the facility, it started snowing heavily and the roads started to get very slick. As they were going up a hill, a car coming down the hill had lost control, came across the center line and headed straight towards them. Adam tried to avoid the inevitable, but they were hit on the drivers side and pushed off the side of the road. The good news is that no one was hurt. The bad news is that Jay and Adam were stranded with an undriveable car 3+ hours from Adams's house. After 5 hours, they got a rental car and headed back to Adam's house where Jay's car was. Jay did make it safetly home around 9:00pm tonight.

The other drivers car - most likely totaled.

Adam's car with both tires blown out.

Baby It's Cold Inside!

How cold is it?

Well, we do have the heat on in the house, but apparently it is not warm enough for Amy.

Tonight she came up to go to bed and was all excited because she was going to bed with a hat on.

I just had to get a picture of her with it on.

I did not check to see if she also had on her jacket, scarf and mittens.

Chris Tomlin Concert

Sunday night, we went with Nate and Kara Derstein to the Chris Tomlin concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia.
It was a lot of fun except the fact that there are no seats and we had to stand for the entire concert.Check out this video I took from my Blackberry.

1980's New Year's Party

Every New Years, we have a theme party and this year was no different. The theme for this years party was the 80's. Everyone was asked to come to the party dressed in an 80's outfit.
The attendees were:

The Bells

The Davis'The Gotwal'sThe HillsThe Derstein'sThe Michalak's The Schreier'sThe Liberger's
Mike And Shannon
The Shanks
And Us

Throughout the night, we played many games. We played Frogger.

Sang Karaoke.

Who knew that Shann could sing AND dance.

We played 80's Jeopardy.

And we played a Rubik's Cube game.

The best dressed male and female were Barry Linberger and Amy Gardocki.

Things did wind down before the ball dropped.

Hope to see everyone next year.

Happy New Year!!!