The Mills Family: June 2012

Making our house a home

Well, after being here for 6 months (wow, that flew by), we have been able to work on a few rooms and spruce them up a bit. This is my favorite part of a new house – making it your own.

Here is the master bedroom before:

And kabam! You now have my favorite room in the whole house :)

Living room before:

And ooh la la, you have a livable living room!

Austin made those bookshelves from scratch. I love them :)

Seriously LOVE my red end table.

Austin worked so hard in the living room. I’m so grateful he’s so handy!

For Memorial Day, we decided we needed to get out and go for a hike. Austin had heard that Penwood State Park had some cool trails, so we decided to check it out. I must say, we were not disappointed. It was soooo humid and hot and bleck out, but a lot of our hike was under the canopy of the trees, so it wasn’t that bad (boy oh boy, I have NOT missed the humidity). Anyway, we had so much fun and I hope we can try out some more trails in the near future.

We would find these little guys growing in the middle of the trail.

Me and my buddy :)

We came across this purty little lake.

Do you see that guy? That snake and its baby were hanging out right by the edge of the trial and I walked like a foot in front of it and it scared me to death! Kylie thought it was sooo cool and she just had to go back and see the snake again.

One of my favorite parts of the hike. We had to walk up this semi-steep trail and it was all lined with stepping stones. I think this was Kylie’s favorite part too :) Love my little hiker girl.

Absolutely loved this look out point. You could see a clear view of Simsbury. It was awesome.

Sierra mad about something…

My lil sassy pants

THE END

New York

So we had the wonderful opportunity to have Austin’s brother Jordan out to our house for almost a week. He came out to help Austin put the Vantage system back in our house (which I am so stinkin stoked that we have it again). Since Jordan has never been to New York, we decided to introduce him to this crazy, fun city. Our first stop was to the Freedom Tower. I have to admit, I got a little choked up seeing this building. It was still hard to imagine that where we were standing was where the attack happened. This really is such a cool and TALL building. Did I hear it is going to end up being the tallest building in the world? Anyway, loved seeing this.

Love this picture of Kylie and Austin.

Next we headed over to Trinity church. It is one of the oldest churches in the US and it was a place of refuge for construction workers, firefighters, police officers and others who were helping to clear up the area after 9/11. I love this church. I think it is soo beautiful.

After Trinity church, we headed to Battery Park. Here is the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Ventilator Building. It was used as the entrance to the Men in Black Headquarters :)

Sierra, Austin, and Kylie with Lady Liberty wayyyy in the background.

So instead of paying to go on the ferry that takes you to Liberty Island and then Ellis Island, we decided to take the free Staten Island Ferry. I kind of wanted to go back on Liberty Island again, but we were able to still get some good shots of her.

Jordan and Kylie

On the ferry

Ahh Times Square. Probably my favorite part of New York.

These men were screaming hellfire and damnation at us.

I’m still amazed at the thousands of people who are consistently here at Times Square.

Where they drop the ball for New Years Eve.

Here we are at the Empire State Building. This place took FOREVER to get to the top. We went through one line after the other. And then when we finally got to the top, there were so many stinkin people up there it was hard to see anything. Oh well. The last time we came here it was during the day, so it was really cool to see the city lit up at night.