Central Florida Fair

Why I live in Florida

Today was a beautiful day in Florida.  With a high of 80 degrees, beautiful blue skies.  It was a postcard worthy day.  We packed up this morning and headed to the beach - yep that's right - we went to the beach in March.  It was so much fun!  The girls loved it and besides getting sand everywhere possible they dug and dug and dug some more.  Brooklyn was afraid of the water (can't say that I blame her).  The water was on the chilly side, but that didn't stop Meredith and David from going in.  

There were sand castles built, sand fleas caught, shells collected and that warm Florida sun soaked in!

It was a joy to watch the girls enjoy the beach, laughing and skipping and chasing birds!  

Then David took us out to dinner to a place where my mom and dad would take Kristen and me when we were living in Titusville.  It's this pizza joint called Kelsey's.  They have a great greek salad.  So although we weren't in Titusville, it was a bit down memory lane today.   Cocoa Beach and Kelsey's pizza...

It makes me want to go back again on Monday, but I'm thinking this beach bum has too many "projects" to be working on around the house to have another day so soon.

Sickness all around

This Tuesday started week number 3 of sickness in our family.  

First David caught a cold which turned into a sinus infection, then I caught a cold and thankfully, although it is not gone, due to some home remedies and over the counter medicine I think I'm nearing the end.  

The girls were all free from the cold, but then a stomach virus attacked. It started about 1 in the morning on Monday night. We had a break on during the day on Tuesday and through the night on Tuesday, except that Dustin came home from school throwing up. Then this morning Brooklyn had it - not throwing up, but nasty non-the-less and about 5pm tonight Alyssa started the throwing up.  So far, David and I have been spared, but I kind of expect it to hit us tonight or tomorrow.  

Tomorrow is David's 29th Birthday, so it wouldn't be all that fun of a way to celebrate him.  

I've been attached to my bottle of Purell, my can of Lysol and my Emergen-C. David and Dustin tease me that I am spraying them with it, but I haven't - only beds and couches - without any one near by and light switches and door handles and anything else little fingers can touch.

If you think about it, pray for us!  

Celebration 2008 Pictures

Happy Father's Day!

We have a three day celebtration of Father's Day this weekend.

It started out with a day with David, the best daddy. We took Daddy to Disney's Fantasia Golf and played putt-putt. It was extremely hot...The girls stopped playing after like 7 holes because they were so hot. We were hot and sweaty, but at least we were together. Then from there we picked up lunch and came home to each and take naps. Once we woke up, we all got ready and took our daddy out to dinner to Chili's. It was a fun filled day. (I remembered to take my camera, but I forgot to charge the battery - not a good combination!)

Today, we spent the afternoon with David's dad. He came to church with us, then we went out to lunch and back home for the girls to nap and the guys to watch golf.

We planned to go swimming after our naps, but it is raining.

Tomorrow, we will celebrate with my dad. We leave early in the morning to drive to Kissimmee where we rented a boat. We will be fishing, eating, or catching some rays :) We are really looking forward to that. Once we are home, we will swim and have a cook out.

I'll post pictures of that when I can.

But to David, Wayne and Mark...

We love you! Thank you for being a wonderful dad!

Love, Us

The girls meet the boys...

A few weeks after the twins were born we were finally able to take the girls to meet Caleb and Tyler for the first time. The girls got colds right after they were born, so we patiently waited. We celebrated Mother's Day with Nonni too, so it was a fun-filled evening. Alyssa seems to be a natural little mommy and although Meredith had a rough start she finally quieted him down. Now me on the other hand, I'd have to say I am grateful that God gives me one baby at a time!

Alyssa's 5th Birthday Party

Kristen's 30th Birthday Party

Central Florida Fair

This past Monday we celebrated our 10th or 11th year of going to the Cenrtal Florida Fair with the Brooks' and Jones' families. The Davis' joined us this year and Kathy too. There were a total of 10 kids. It was so much fun! I think we all had some sort of stomach ache afterwards from all the yummy food we ate. The kids just went from ride to ride one right after the other. We got there at 4:30 and left at 10:30. It was a late night, but we sure did have a great time!

5 days old...

Caleb David and Tyler Andrew made their debut last Friday, April 18th. Here are a few pictures. More of Caleb than of Tyler only because Tyler was being hogged by other family members. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Caleb weighed 6 lbs 6 oz and was 17 3/4 inches. Tyler weighed 8 lb 8 oz and was 18 inches long.

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.

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 :)

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.

New Family Addition

Some of you may not of heard but...

Did you panic for me? No I am not pregnant and no we didn't get a dog. But next April or May our family will have a new addition to our family.

We found out about 2 weeks ago that Crystal and Aaron, (David's sister) were having a baby. They have one little boy, Joshua who just turned 1. They told us they were pregnant at his one year birthday party.

We just got a call this morning that during their ultrasound they saw 2 heartbeats!!!!! TWINS are the newest upcoming family additions.

Pray for Crystal if you think about her, she has not been feeling well. And pray that she will not worry about what things may be like once they arrive.

Meredith coming down the slide

Meredith is our adventurous child. She did the slide by herself over and over and over again! And loved every minute of it.

David and Alyssa coming down the slide

Boys will be boys

Home

Don't you love the feeling of sleeping in your own bed? As much as I loved our family vacation, I was so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed!

Anyway, we got home late monday night. I'm trying to find time to upload pictures and video, just haven't been able to fit that in yet. I'll post them when I can. Cheryl took some really precious photos of the girls.

We had a fun, relaxing time!

Family Vacation...part 3

So today was another fun filled day! We all took it easy this morning, had a big breakfast and just sat around and played. It was kind of overcast all morning so we were afraid of packing up to go to the pool. We finally did, we were able to use the indoor pool until the storm past and then out to the wonderful pool. I think we made about a million laps around the lazy river, went down the slide a dozen or so times and played until we were so hungry we had to come home. I made dinner while the girls and everyone else watched Cars. And after dinner it was bath time and bed time for Alyssa and Meredith - the joys of vacation and kids going to bed early (7 pm). It made for a fun filled, relaxing adult night! We played games, had ice cream (I had oreo's and milk), and laughed.

I'll post pictures as soon as I can find time to get them off my computer.

We are even enjoying helping the girls choose their "favorite" thing of the day. Meredith's was the water slide and Alyssa's was the lazy river. Very fitting of both of them. Oh and they both loved that they got to play with Katy and Hallye today. They are staying at the same resort, so they found us at the pool this afternoon.

The guys are leaving early in the morning to go golfing, who knows what us girls will do. Poor Joshua will be way out-numbered!