Finger Lakes Vacation Part 2

Yesterday we arrived home from our trip to the Finger Lakes. It was nice to be home but I was very sad not to have Stella home to greet us at the door. I'll pick her up from the "doggy hotel" as we tell Isabella, this evening, but I seriously miss my dog and am very anxious to see her.


Our trip was great though and it was very nice to spend some quality family time together. Walter didn't get very much time off from work after Isaac was born so we were really looking forward to this week. The first couple days at the lake were very warm and humid and we soon learned that the ceiling fan in the living room was not turning on with the remote. So, leave it up to the guys to think of this ingenious idea as an attempt to pull the string and turn on the fan:








Well, it didn't exactly work and thankfully didn't matter because it was cool and cloudy for the rest of the week. All of us got a good laugh out of it though!


Jesse was able to stay with us for a few days and then had to head back to work. Isabella adores Jesse and soaked up every minute of her attention.

Of course Isaac wanted to get some time with Jesse too!

We took advantage of one of the sunny days to drive up to Sonnenberg Gardens. Unfortunately, the gardens and mansion were in serious disrepair and I was kind of disappointed at the lack of picture opportunities. We still had fun hanging out and Isabella had fun running around once she got over the fact that Isaac was going to sit in the stroller this time...yeah, that didn't go over too well.

Before we left for the lake house I had Isabella collect some of her little people to take along with us. They kept her very busy for the entire week. In these pictures she is giving a bowl of "little people soup" to Josh...yum!

This duck was one of her favorite things at the lake house and the little people took turns "riding"on the duck...the unluckly ones got locked in the lantern.

After being closed up for a few days, the house had the inevitable dead bugs on the windowsills and Isabella made it her personal mission to collect them in tissues. With one particular fly she balled it up in a tissue, investigated her hands, looked up at me and said, "mommy, it has two wings, it didn't bite me, it's dead."

And then there's Isaac who continued his love affair with the playmat star. At around 8:00 p.m. on this first night my parents were at the house with us, my dad said, "is it like this every night?" He's referring to Isaac's screaming and fussing that began around 5:00 p.m. I said, "pretty much, but don't worry we only have about another hour and a half of this and then he'll finally fall asleep. That's how I get through it, I just count down the hours until about 9:30 or 10 p.m." Overall, for a nine week old, he did pretty well. I've learned in the last three years to have very, very low expectations when children are involved. I was definitely sad to leave the rocking chair in the living-room of the lake house. I spent a lot of time in that chair (I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it!) last week and it was very comfortable, which I think is hard to come by in a rocking chair.

This is a view from our dock. It was obviously a very cloudy and foggy day.

And a view of Lake Keuka from the Bully Hill Winery. I'm not much of a wine drinker so we bought two bottles of delicious grape juice!







Watching Isabella with Isaac this week was at most times wonderful, because you can tell that she really does love him, but also nerve wracking because she wants to be as close to his face as possible. I absolutely love these pictures though and I am very glad she will have a sibling...

And a few more pictures and then I need to go change my shirt because Isaac has some really spectacular spit-ups last night...

Stay tuned for pictures from the rest of our trip and Isabella's birthday!