25 random facts...

...okay, so it's been a long time since I posted anything and I know the excuse of being busy is starting to get old, but the fact of the matter is, I'm busy! Blogging takes time and I currently don't have much time during the school year. But the good news is yesterday was the last day of school for 2010! Now we have three whole weeks to enjoy. :)

Now I have 25 random facts (one for each day of Dec. up until Dec. 25th). Enjoy:

1. Chris and Ania are coming over for dinner tomorrow night which will be a lot of fun!

2. We had our half day of school on Monday and technically it's not school at all, it's just a fun
Christmas program.

3. I got my first "real" job working for a local business for the Christmas season.

4. We are going to Portrait Innovations in a week for family pictures.

5. My braces come off in a week.

6. Joey has been taking his first steps these past few days. (His record is four sturdy steps in a row.)

7. Lil' David Anthony now weighs more than Joey Anthony. :D

8. We have discovered that Benny is totally obsessed with any kind of sugary/chocolaty food. He is also obsessed with the word "buttocks". (Where did he learn that word?!?) He'll say things like "don't look at my buttocks!" while stressing "buttocks".

9. Ben walks around being the cutest, sweetest 3 year old ever and yet at the same time, he somehow manages to wreak havoc in every corner of the house!

10. We don't decorate our house until Christmas Eve.

11. We went to Longwood Gardens last Thur. and saw it for the first time all decked out for Christmas!

12. Despite being sandwiched between four boys, Rose is an extremely girly girl. She constantly walks around with two purses, a barbie backpack, a stuffed kitty, and two or three baby dolls. (All at the same time.)

13. We started a tradition last year of celebrating Los Pasados with the Anthony family.

14. Max and John Paul frequently come up with new ways of ripping people off while making money themselves. (Yesterday they started a "store" selling different things found in their room and around the house, John Paul comes to me and says "Mary Kate, guess what! For just 10 cents you can buy a pack of gum! But you have to pick carefully because only one pack actually has gum in it, the other ones are empty!!!" lol!!!)

15. Cecilia can read a 150 pg book in one sitting. (One sitting = one hour.)

16. Max read his first full book today (a Magic Treehouse book).

17. After living with us for two years, Grammy has gotten used to eating dinner on a regular basis at around 7:00 -7:30.

18. Benny wakes my mom up early every morning with a huge grin, and he says "Look Mommy, it's morning!", while pointing to the window.

19. We had Dad's amazing potato soup a few nights ago. It was delicious!

20. Trixie and Sargent Jim (our two cats, named after two Trixie Belden characters) are starting to get along once again! (Trixie is Jim's mother and then after we got them both fixed she started hissing and attacking Jim when ever she saw him.)

21. My mom finished reading out loud the 1st Lord of the Rings to Cecilia, John Paul and I and we watched the long extended version of the 1st movie.

22. My class had a creative writing assignment for the first time in Great Books and it was only supposed to be 3-4 pgs long. However we all begged our teacher to let the page limit be 5-10 pgs because all of us had much longer than 4 pgs written. Our teacher nicely let us have 10 pg papers and she said "wow, in all my years teaching 10th grade Great Books, I've never had the problem of a paper being assigned too short!"

23. It's really late at night and I should be good and go to bed.

24. We always eat Chinese food for Christmas Eve dinner. We eat it on our nicest china with wine glasses and wine (sparkling cider for all us kids).

25. My siblings wake up ridiculously early on Christmas morning. (Well I used to wake up really early too. :P) The record being Cecilia and Max waking up at 3:30 two years ago and not going back to sleep. :0

So I hope I didn't bore you with my string of 25 facts. And now I have a couple of pictures:

Grandpa Anthony's famous chocolate turkey from Wolfgang Chocolates:


Max's 8th birthday cake:
The boys' Halloween party cupcakes (it's supposed to be a blue monster, but it just looks like a blue glob):

The dining room for the boys' Halloween party:

A promised picture of John Paul (in the green) playing soccer:
Lil' (or should I say, big), David:
I couldn't resist, Max's Halloween costume:
My 15th birthday party:


And some of my fav. photoraphy pictures:

New Tumblr Photography Blog

Hey guys, just to let you know I found out that I really like tumblr for a photography blog so I moved my photography blog from blogger to tumblr. (It shows pictures in a nice and easy way). Anyway I'm doing this 365 photo challenge thing where you have a photo of the day for 365 days. So far I'm on the 4th day. So check it out!

Here's the link:
http://marykateanthony.tumblr.com/

Fall = Best Season

Hey everyone!
I know its been awhile since I've put anything up - a month and a half - and I'm sorry. But once school started our life has been busy again! The last week of summer vacation was filled up with Hershey Park, John Paul's birthday, Ali and Greg's wedding and (for me) a retreat with my youth group. So I am giving you a few (sort of a few - more like a small bunch :D), pictures from the end of summer and the beginning of fall .

(Sadly I ran out of batteries at Greg and Ali's wedding so I don't really have any pictures of their wedding.)
(PS if you want the music off, or to change the song, halfway down on the right side board is the play list where you can control the music.)

These two pictures of the leaves are from our Japanese Maple in our front yard, the sky was literally that blue!

This is an older picture, (I took it last May), but I softened the whole thing and felt like posting it again: (It's from Longwood Gardens)
Sept. 25th was a bridal shower for a good friend. It was so beautiful.
This year Max started playing soccer. John Paul is also playing, however I have not had a chance to go to any of JP's games yet, and since I am the one with the nice camera, I only have pictures of Max playing soccer. (I will get John Paul at his next game.)
Max is the number 19 in the red penny:
He played goalie:
Stopping the ball: (That boy has some God-given talent when it comes to sports!)
My mom got a chocolate fountain for her birthday, we used a few days later:
The shocked, amazed faces they all put on. (Ben and Joe are the only ones not over exaggerating their wonder!)
And of course school means getting up before the sun which equals beautiful sunrises that I usually sleep through:
Another sunrise:We went to Longwood Gardens for my mom's birthday with Aunt Lorrie and Uncle Fred. This was the wonderful dessert at the restaurant:


And lastly, I mentioned at the beginning that I had gone on a retreat for youth group, and here are two pictures from it of me rock climbing:

And the second time I went up, I was blindfolded!
Another thing I am going to mention is I took engagement photos for my friends, Gina and Adam, (the girl whose bridal shower I mentioned above), anyway, here is my two favorite pictures from that:
Also I have a photography website which has all my best pictures in three portfolios: Nature, People, and Other (random pics). Here's the link:
http://www.wix.com/photographymk/mk-photograpy

Welcome David Michael!!

On Wednesday the 18th at 1:14 pm David Michael Anthony was brought into this world weighing 8lbs and 13 ounces and is 20 inches long. He is soooo cute!!! Pray for my Aunt Beth (his mommy), as it was a c-section and her recovery has been pretty painful.

Here are the pictures:


David and his beautiful mommy:

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And on a side note, Benny turned 3 about a week ago on the 14th so here are just a couple of pictures from his birthday:

Ricketts Glen State Park

This past Monday my dad took Cecilia, John Paul, Max, and I camping at Ricketts Glen State Park in northern PA. The last time my parents were there I was a baby. We drove up Monday and left Wednesday. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get there and because of traffic about 4-5 hours to come home on Wednesday. But we had a lot of fun in the car!!!




A beaver's dam:



This seriously looked like a movie set and not real life:


We went on the falls trail which has 26 total falls, however if you take the shorter route (it cuts out 4 miles), you only miss about 4 or 5 falls which is a good deal!


The rock under the water in this picture looks so cool because of the way the water has shaped it:



At the meeting place where the two mountain streams meet there were all these butterflies and they let me get really close to them:
I wasn't zooming that much, and this is how up close I got:

Ricketts Glen is in the mountains and so for the first half of the falls trail you walk down the mountain following one stream and then you go up the mountain following the other stream, which is how you get so many waterfalls.
This waterfall is actually the tallest one, it's 94ft tall, however the other half of it you can't see in this picture.




Driving down the mountain this was the view:
On Wednesday we stopped and went on the Evergreen Trail at the bottom of the mountain but right before that trail is the last fall which is the prettiest one of all:
It was truly spectacular and really reminded me of pictures of South America:

There were other people there swimming, but I took this picture anyway because it was so pretty:
The Evergreen Trail was really cool - it had some of the oldest trees in PA including some that have been there since before Columbus arrived in America:




A panoramic of the trail:
This chipmunk was gracious enough to let me get this picture:




This last picture is from the drive back. Because Ricketts Glen is in upper PA we got to drive back through the Appalachian Mountains.


I know this post is another long one, and I apologize, but there were so many pretty pictures to choose from!