Pictures of our trip to Arizona

We are home...

We arrived home about 1:30am last night (Wednesday) from a long day of traveling from Arizona to Salt Lake City and then a tremendously long flight to Orlando. We all took some medicine to help us sleep and we all woke up at 10am this morning. We were greated by a joyful smile and an unknowing tilt of the head as we opened the door to dear little Brooklyn. But what a joy it is to be with her again. It was a long week of wonderings about how she was doing, what she was getting into, what she would be like (attitude) when we got home, if she would look like she grew up at all, etc. The musings of a mom, i'm sure you all know what i'm talking about. Today has been full of unpacking, checking email, going through the regular mail and a few loads of laundry. I'll update a blow by blow account of our wonderful trip to Arizona as I can.

3rd Annual Strawberry Picking Day

Last friday, the girls and me and a lot of friends from church went strawberry picking. We had a lot of fun. The girls gave up early this year, as you will see in the pictures. We had only been there about an hour and they thought it would be more fun to have snacks and play in the van. Brooklyn got completely filthy and I don't even want to think about how much dirt she ate. She would walk down the rows and squish the strawberries in her hand and then shovel it in her mouth. I could only handle that for so long. The thought of the dirt and possible bugs she was eating was too much for me. So she went in the car too, and her mommy prayed, Lord protect my little girl from anything harmful she ate today. We had a great time. And we came home with 20 quarts of strawberries for $10. They sure are yummy!

Easter

Easter came really quick for us this year. But we managed to pull it off. I thought you'd enjoy the pictures from two days of festivities. We did Easter as a family on Saturday and then Sunday after church we went to a picnic. We had a great time!

Countdown to Arizona

We are leaving next Wednesday, April 2nd to fly to Arizona to visit our dear friends the Nam's. We are taking the older girls and leaving Brooklyn for a whole week. In effort to help the girls understand when we are leaving we made a calendar. Please excuse the art, I am not a very good artist.

Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk...

So I don't normally cry, but today I almost did. Have you ever had one of these days...

The floor was mopped and carpets vacuumed before noon (thanks to a lovely friend of mine) anyway. Lunch time came and guess what - PB & J sandwich crumbs all over the rug. Then at dinner, milk was spilled again mostly on my rug, but splattered on my newly mopped floor.

"Oh no", I said, "not on my clean floor". And although not a biblical approach to my immediate temptation. I thought to myself, "don't cry over spilled milk". And the reality is, it doesn't change much. Yesterday my floor was dirty, today my floor is dirty. Yesterday my girls has sippie cups, today they got to use "big girl" cups. Today they are 4,3,1 and in the fall I'll start homeschooling and in the blink of an eye my girls won't spill milk all over my floor, they'll have milk spilled all over their floor.

Mean Friends...

Just so all my sister and her mean friends know. I deleted the picture that you were apparently giving her a hard time about. What I want to know is why "friends" would give her a hard time?

And just so you know, I unknowingly included that picture - in an effort to update my blog as quickly as possible, I just posted them with out editing them. I guess I'll always have to edit them if Kristen is in them so that her friends don't give her trouble.

Kissimmee Park Day

Last week, Kristen and I and our girlies all went to Kissimmee to spend some time at my Aunt Caroyln's house. We had a ton of fun, they have lots of fun things to do at their house. One of the most special things we did, was to take our girls to a park that my mom took Kristen and I to about 25 years ago. We have pictures of Kristen and I on the same play equipment. It was a lot of fun. Granted the play ground wasn't all that exciting to the girls, but they did have a tetertoter (sp?). I don't think my girls have ever played on one, so that was the most fun.

Chick-fil-A Grand Opening!!!

Some close friends of ours told us about this thing that all Chick-fil-A's do for their grand opening. So when we learned that we were getting a Chick-fil-A right around the corner from our house, we watched as it was built and found out it was opening today! The thing is, you have to be one of the first 100 people in line and if you are you get 52 coupons for free value meals. So we called some friends and the adventure began. We arrived at the new Chick-fil-A at 10:30 yesterday morning and set up camp. The store hired a DJ, so once it got dark there was a dance party. Oh yea baby! No, David didn't dance! Anyway, you have to stay in the parking lot until they open at 6am this morning. You can't leave for any reason, so we sat around the parking lot of Chick-fil-A from 10:30 am yesterday and left this morning at about 6:45am. But we left with 104 coupons for free chick-fil-a food. Was it worth it? YES!!!

More details...

It was a nice partly cloudy day (68 degrees was the high for the day and 58 was the low - although because of the wind and rain it felt much colder) for most of yesterday except for being really windy. But about 9pm it started storming. I mean really windy and it rained until early this morning. Our tent got flooded, and all our stuff is wet but we stayed dry on our air mattress, and even got some sleep. They fed us lunch, dinner, milkshakes in the afternoon, chicken nuggets at like 10:30 and ice cream sundae's at midnight. All for free!!! It was such an adventure - we had a ton of fun hanging out with friends from church and building memories. There were retired couples who travel around to the grand openings just for the fun of it. A few of the couples drove from Illinois and Virginia. There were also a ton of UF students some of whom had done this like 20 times.

I thought you may like to see the pictures of the activities of the past 24 hours.

Oh and for all you moms, i took my kids, but they did not spend the night.

Oh and a word to the Nam's, we look forward to doing this again with you guys. What fun that would be! Let's find one where we can vacation together and do.

Who's up for the next go round? I think its in Jacksonville in a few weeks :)

Alyssa's Ballet Recital

On November 10th, Alyssa danced in her first ballet recital. She was so cute! Her class danced at a festival at a nursing home in Winter Garden. We didn't know if she would dance or not because it was on an outdoor stage with a lot of people watching. So we told her she was dancing for the old people that were sick and that it would make them smile if she danced for them. She danced her heart out. Afterwards, we went out for ice cream to celebrate!

We are alive!

I didn't realize I had such a following in the blog world! I am so excited! So for all of you who do follow the Traugott family here is a family update!!!

Well, since my last post a lot of things have been going on in our family. Well, first there was Thanksgiving, then a big birthday party for the newest 1 year olds (Brooklyn and McKenzie), then I got a year old as well, spent the day at the spa and dinner with friends and family, a few christmas parties, David and I went away for 2 nights and while away realized our family starts our Christmas celebrations this Sunday. Oh my!!!! We have 2 more christmas parties, all of our presents to wrap and 2 more gifts to purchase.

So there isn't much of an update, except we are super busy! I'm sure just like all of you are as well.

We had some pictures taken in Novemeber of our family, so I'll post those for your viewing pleasure. After christmas, I'll post pictures of the holidays, and birthday parties.

Alyssa - 4 1/2

Meredith - 3
Brooklyn - 1!!!!

The Traugott girls!!!

(I'll post more photos of our session at a later time)

Playground Friends

Girls will be girls, right?

We got a playground when we moved into this house, but the girls won't play on it much. They used to do just fine until we had some friends over. Our friends little boy caught a lizard and made it bite his finger - you know he did what boys do. Well, i can not convince my girls that the lizards are not going to bite them. They are terrified. I thought you might like to meet the scary lizards that call our playground home.

Oh and in case you are wondering, the slide is not connected because David is working on treating the wood so he had to disconnect it.

Maybe if I named the lizards they would think they were their friends?

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Here is a long update on our family and some of the fun things we've gotten to do recently.

First off - a month or so ago we took the girls bowling for the first time. We went with some friends from church - it was so cute. The girls each picked out their own bowling ball! We got a ramp and the bummer sides to help out. They had a blast. They have kept asking when we can go bowling again. The night we went, they had Cosmic Bowling. Thats where they turn out the lights and turn on black lights so that everything glows in the dark. I thought the girls may be scared, but when they noticed the carpet glowing and their socks and the stripes on their shirts they loved it. Even Brooklyn had a great time watching. We have a video of her dancing to the really loud music. It was a lot of fun!

The next fun thing that we did was a family movie day. One Sunday afternoon David and I were really tired. So we created Family Movie Day. We blew up the air mattress, borrowed a ton of movies from a friend of our and I think we watched 6 hours of movies. Now they were mostly kid movies, but the girls loved it. We ordered pizza and ate while we watched a movie. David took a break to wrestle with the girls which helped get out some energy before the last movie of the night. It was a memorable day!

Yesterday afternoon during our outside time I decided to see what Brooklyn would do if I put her down in the grass. I figured she's almost 1, she needs a new experience right? So I put her down and she crawled around on the porch for a few minutes not going near the grass. So I had to coax her didn't I. Being the nice mommy that I am, I threw a toy just beyond her reach to see if she would crawl out in the grass. She was so cute! I love this age when everything they do is a new experience.

Our last update was the fun we had last night! We allowed the girls to dress up and went to a local church that was hosting a fall festival. They had free food, bounce houses, a hay ride, fun games. A lot of our friends went with us too. My camera battery died, so my pictures of Meredith are on a friends camera. I'll upate the slideshow once I get those.

Videos of the girls...