Family History in PA

Sunday was our day for checking out Poppy's roots. Our first stop was at Stoverdale Cemetery in Hummelstown, PA. I was certain this first stop would bore our kids and lead to craziness but for some reason they found this "Zombie" place very interesting. The cemetery has been around since the 1800's and we found quite a few Brady ancestors there, including my great-great grandparents Jeremiah Brady and A.Elizabeth Louck and my other set of great-great grandparents George Shumaker and Barbara Jones. Rebecca, who is our resident family historian, was able to verify some dates and Tyler and I were able to pick out what kind of headstones we want for our future graves (think classic zombie graves for Tyler, make sure it looks ancient)

This is what I call Lillian's "pout pout face." I get excited anytime I can capture it on camera:

Next we stopped across the street from Three Mile Island, which is a nuclear power plant that had a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. We are all probably radioactive now:

In our desperate search for a bathroom, we came across this amazing gem of a playground. It's called Hoffer Park and the kids did not merely want to stop for a bathroom break, they wanted to play there all day! So we let them play for a bit before heading on:

Then we went to my dad's grandparent's, William Brady and Bertha Slesser's, first house in Middletown which he also lived in with them at times. It was kind of awkward taking pictures outside of it since the owner saw us and was wondering what the heck we were doing. But since Poppy isn't shy, he let them know all about his history with this house and that helped ease the awkwardness.

Our next stop was at the Middletown Cemetery. This is where my grandparents are buried and 3 of my dad's grandparents are buried (William Brady, Bertha Sessler, and Barbara Shumaker). Unfortunately we discovered that they never inscribed my grandma's death date on her gravestone. Poppy's going to have to get to the bottom of this when he gets back to Arizona. 

After naps in the hotel room we headed to the ghetto where my dad's parent's first home was and where he also lived before they moved out of state. It was a sketchy neighborhood and we were all a little frightened to get out of the car so we did a drive by photo. 

Once we got our photo we headed back to the awesome park we had discovered earlier and had a picnic there and let the kids play until they were pooped and ready for bed!