Bridget and I went to the West Chester Restaurant Festival on Sunday.  It was very crowded this year, since we got there later and it was such a beautiful day outside.  But as always it was a fun time with lots of great food to be sampled.

Some of our favorites included the egg roll from Margaret Kuo’s Mandarin, the tomato pie and meatball swandwich from Limoncello Ristorante, the crab cakes from Pietro’s Prime and the Goshen Fair Donuts.

Well the deck builders, Keystone Custom Decks, came by today to finish up putting on the railing, lights and other finishing touches.  Now all we need is for our furniture to get here.

Here are some more pictures of the finished deck:

And here’s the deck all lighted up at night:

We just had 2 new Fiberon decks installed on the back of the house, one outside of the slider from the kitchen eat-in dining area, and a smaller one off of the basement slider. 

The old deck that was there was wood which was already in need to repair and not very well built, along with being very small.  The stairs were also way too steep for the dogs, they were becoming too much for Ben, so we moved them over to a better location so he would have less steps.  They can also now go into the yard from the basement, before Mom had to bring them upstairs at night to let them out.

Here are some pictures of the new deck.  They still haven’t put on the railing or finished the trim work, but it’s almost done.

You can see all of the pictures here.

Bridget and I went into center city for the weekend to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.  Of course we walked around the favorite areas of the city and I got plenty of pictures.

Here’s some from Rittenhouse Square:

Love Park / JFK Plaza:

Philadelphia City Hall:

You can see all of the pictures here.

These have all found a good home now! 

We have an oak bedroom set we need to get rid of.  There is a queen headboard, 2 open end tables, and a small end table with 2 drawers.  Please let us know if you can use any or all of it!

  

We were at Holly’s Bridal Shower on Saturday to celebrate her upcoming wedding.  Here are a few pictures.

You can see all of the pictures here.

Happy first birthday to Ben and Maddie!  We were at their first birthday party at Jimmy John’s this Saturday.  Here are some pictures:

   

   

You can see all of the pictures here.

Bridget and I took the dogs out for the day on Saturday.  We wanted to take them for a walk for some exercise, and also for a quick swim in the Brandywine creek, since it was such a nice day out!

First we started at the West Valley Nature Area, which is in Downingtown just off of Route 322.  We got tired pretty quickly because there were alot of steep hills (Halley and Ben just laid down and quit walking after a while!)… and we also couldn’t get to the creek without tresspassing on private property.

   

We then followed North Creek road off of 322, looking for a good spot to park with access to the Brandywine.  We found a nice little park, but unfortunately no pets were allowed! 

After crossing 162, we found the Stroud Preserve, which was wonderful since it is 574 acres of open nature preserve with walking trails, ponds, and access to the Brandywine… it was also very dog freindly too which was great!

And both Halley and Ben were able to cool off and go for a swim.  We found out that Ben loves to swim, he kept swimming around and around even after we got Halley out and wouldn’t come out of the water until we started to pretend that we were leaving!

At the end of the day I had tripped over some rocks by the creek’s edge, and fell down with my camera!  Yes, my honey asked if I wanted her to hold the camera for me, since she tripped over the same rock, but I stupidly said “no thanks”.  I’m glad the camera was 100% ok, except for a small scuff mark on the outer lens barrel, but you can see from this picture my honey took to “test out the camera” that I was a bit upset at first!

You can see all of the pictures from the day here.

Here are some pictures from Annaliese’s second birthday party:

You can see all of the pictures here.