Florida

Keeping up with this blogging is a lot harder then I thought! Here is my attempt to update everyone with what our family has been up to, in a shortened version!

I am going to split this into a few different blogs to make it easier to read, and to write;)

Our Disney trip was amazing to say the least! I believe our kids were the perfect ages for this trip. We were able to do and see whatever we wanted, with the knowing that we would be returning another year to do and see more. We stayed at The Animal Kingdom Lodge for 4 days and spent one day at each of the 4 theme parks. It was a lot of walking but sooooo worth it to see the priceless fun our kids were able to have. There is so much about this trip that I could blog about!
After our 4 days at Disney we drove to Sarasota and stayed at a hotel with a view of the beach for 2 more days. We drove to Siesta Key Beach and hung out there for our last full day, and I have to say if you are ever in Florida, you really should check out this beach, the sand is like baby powder, and it was the most relaxing day I have ever had! We returned to the Largo area and had dinner with my family that lives in Florida, then took off back home the next morning. Here are a few pics of the trip!

                                Look who we found on our plane to Florida!

Our pool never closed !

The parade at Hollywood Studios

The flower festival at EPCOT

                                                        Stitch !!

We rode many rides, this was Space Mountain, Nikeli hated it!

 The kids picked out oysters, watched while they were opened and revealed pearls for them to keep.

This is one of the carving in the tree of life at Animal Kingdom. Madi was a bit grumpy at this point, can you tell?

               Mount Everest thrill ride, Madi and I rode this while the boys chickened out!

Our arrival to Sarasota, the kids could not wait to get in the water

We took a boat from Mote Aquarium out on Siesta Key and learned about all different kinds of sea life, birds, and some history about Sarasota.

Farewell Florida, until next time!

School Days and a Surprise

We had conferences at school this week. Both of the kids are improving in all subjects and all of their teachers have said how caring and well mannered they are (if you can believe that!). This just proves to us that we made the right choice moving out here. It was tough last year for them to catch up with the other students but they have both worked really hard.
 So this brings me to the surprise....we decided to take the kids to Disney World for spring break in March. We are not going to tell them until the day we leave. And hopefully the oldest does not figure out how to read this blog! More to come on this subject in in a month or so !!

Winter Storm Story

Much like everyone else , we got a lot of snow here. The kids were off school for 2 days and I also happened to have 4 days off this week. It was really nice to just lay around and relax with the kids. The first day we spent the morning watching old home videos of them when they were little, made lunch, and took naps!
That evening I was taking the recycles out to the half finished addition where we have the recycle box kept and to my surprise found a bat flying around. Thankfully we still have a door to close off that area, so I was able to keep him(or her) out of the house. I  walked the dogs to the back yard because they won't use the bathroom while they are on a leash, and I opened the door to the backroom hoping the bat would fly out during the blizzard!
The next morning we woke up to some major snow drifts in the drive way, which meant that I had to move it all before we could go anywhere. So we bundled up and went at it! I can say I was never so happy that Eli bought that snow blower last year. Some of the drifts were taller than Nik! The kids got some play time in and had some fun jumping into the drifts, and the helped shovel a little. After 3 hours of moving snow I was finally able to at least get the car out of the garage and clear the neighbor ladies driveway. The rest of the day we spent studying for the upcoming ITBS at school!
The kids are back to school today and I don't know if the bat is still hanging around, but at least I can't see it!

                                      This is where I think the bat was, but I was not getting any closer to tell for sure!  

My Baby Girl

This week I took Madison shopping for a dress, yes a DRESS!!! She has a dance coming up at school. She is not the type of girl who likes to wear dresses, so I was very excited. We went to Dilliards and she tried on several dresses and picked the first one she tried on. As she was in the dressing room I got a little emotional thinking about how my little baby is growing into such a sweet young lady. Then I began to think that this must be how my mother felt when I was trying on dresses for dances, because I also did not care for dresses. In fact I remember for my 7th grade valentines dance at school I wore jeans and a t-shirt! Kind of scares me to think that next year she will be in high school, but I am happy to think that there are going to be many more chances to go dress shopping!
Now I am going to try and put a picture of her in her dress and hope it works!

New to blogging

So here I am in the blogging world. I still have no idea how to go about this but I am giving it a shot. My goal is to try to keep everyone up to date with our family and myself. So I just ask you to please be patient with me as I explore !