Relaxation Day Three!

On Wednesday, we decided to have a relax by the pool day. The pool at our condo was really cool. It had a huge pirate ship with a slide through it and a beach entrance for the little ones. We had a ball doing pretty much nothing! Later that evening we headed back to Downtown Disney, but this time we ate at a grown up restaurant. The food was super yummy, and no dinosaurs in sight. After dinner we took the boys to find a souvineer with some money my grandparents had given them in Destin. Then took in all the Downtown Disney sites! Overall we had a fantastic relaxing day! Day 3....my kind of day!

Magic Kingdom-Disney Day Two

Tuesday was Magic Kingdom day! We got there right when they opened, Mickey and the gang were doing a big countdown with streamers, fireworks, bubbles, the whole shebang! We had our plan so we headed straight for Dumbo! The crowds were again WAY down and we never had to wait in line. We took turns riding Splash Mountain, and Day made Cory do it against his will. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see Cory is the one ducking his head behind Day. We got everything done, just like we planned and headed back for lunch and naps around 1. Unfortunately, around 4 when we were heading back, there was some rain moving in...so right about the time we walked through the gates, the sky fell out. It rained, and rained and rained for almost an hour, while we sat on the floor of a hot dog place and ate dinner. After that, we decided that we could either get soaked walking back to the car or get wet walking to some rides. So off we went to weather the storm;) It was actually pretty fun playing in the rain. We made the best of it and had a blast! They ended up canceling the parade but the fireworks were still on. They were fantastic! Day 2...success!!

Animal Kingdom...Disney Day One!

Our first day in Orlando was spent at Animal Kingdom. We had our "Touring Plan" and we were ready to go! Thankfully, my plan to come after the school year started seemed to pay off. The crowds were very small and we never waited in line more than maybe 5 minutes. We saw some cool animals and saw some cool shows. The kids did really well, and after a long afternoon we headed to Downtown Disney for dinner at T-Rex. It's owned by the same people as Rainforest Cafe, but with a Dinosaur theme. We sat in the Ice Age section, which I'm pretty sure that wanted to be as realistic as possible by making it negative 12 degrees. It was LOUD and VERY OVER STIMULATING, which means the kids LOVED it! The boys ended the day with a bubble bath in our jacuzzi tub. They had a ball and went right to sleep! So...Day 1...success! Here is a slide show to give you a play by play of our day.

More from Destin

Here are the shots from are very rushed photo shoot on the beach. We made the mistake of waiting until the morning we were planning to leave to try and get these pictures taken. We thought we had until noon to check out of the condo, but when I went to get our key fixed at around 9:45 on our way to the beach for pictures...the lady informed me that checkout was at 10. Ooops! We had most of our stuff packed, but not totally and we had planed to eat lunch in our room. I expained this to the nice lady, and she was gracious enough to give us until 11. So we had to rush through the pictures. I also didn't like the lighting as much as I did when we've done it at sunset in the past. As you can see from our eyes...it was very BRIGHT!!! Our eyes are opened, but just barely! Bright sun and white sand are not good bed fellows when taking pictures.

They still turned out pretty well, considering.

Life at the Circus...

Wow, June 9th. So much has changed in such a short time! A few short weeks after my last post, some things that I'll spare the details of, took place and my dad moved out of my parents house. The choices he was making left my mother no choice but to ask him to leave. Unfortunately, I had to be the one to discover/catch him making these choices and relay the facts to my mother. Needless to say, I have not been in a bloggy mood. I'm afraid that whatever "followers" I had, have all but deleted me from their readers.

On top of all of that, I've been super busy working on a women's retreat that our church is hosting. I am the head of the publicity team and have been working on everything from posters to name tags. Most recently, I've put together the entire program that we will use at the retreat. Between these two things, I've had very little spare time....UNTIL NOW!

We are currently on our after summer vacation! We've decided to leave all our stress at home, no one is allowed to talk about the yucky stuff waiting for us back home and we're spending some much needed quality time together. My mom and brother are here with us and we're lovin' it! We're gonna be here in Destin until tomorrow morning and then we're off to Disney World for 5 days! My grandparents came to meet us in Destin for a quick visit and it's been great to see them. Here are few pictures from our day yesterday...you might notice that my pictures look a bit better quality...that's because my husband surprised me for my birthday and bought me a D40! I'm still learning, but I LOVE it! (Maybe I'll get time to post about the amazing surprise party he also planned for me...I have an amazing husband!)

Surfer Dude Cooper


Good thing he has on those floaties!




The amazing view from our room

Papaw, Jean & the boys

Dinner on the patio at Angler's. We could look over the balcony and see the boys playing on the playground they had on the beach. Carter was bathing in the sand, and then he decided to take a quick dip in the ocean with all his clothes on...you'll see that in a sec.




The view from our table...


They loved going in the sharks mouth.

Just a tad wet. That's what happens when you fall face first into the ocean!

We had a great first day in Destin. I can already tell that two days wont be nearly enough!

Backyard Visitor

A few weeks ago we noticed we had a visitor in our tree in the backyard. We found a small dove with a nest full of two small eggs. We decided that she must not have scouted out her spot too well, since our backyard is like 'home run derby' every night. Not to mention, this tree is only about a year old and is very measly. We showed the boys and talked about how we had to be super careful not to hit the tree.

We've been giving her bread to eat, and keeping a watchful eye on the nest, thinking any day now we would see the babies. Well, today was the day! There are two fuzzy baby birds in the nest. I'm pretty sure she's wishing she'd made a bigger nest. They already look like they could fall out if the wind blows too hard.

Here's some pictures of our backyard visitors...

Spring Campout

****Note: I found this post in my folder that I had 'drafted' and forgotten about. This was from back in early March, but thought I'd give it it's moment in the limelight!****

This year for our annual Sunday School campout we went to Lake Whitney. It was a new experience for us, since this was our first time w/o our camper. We sold our old one just after the new year, and haven't found one since...so we were tent campers for the first time. We put the boys in a small tent and Day and I used a tent we borrowed from our friends the Smiths. The weather was beautiful and the fellowship was great! We had a lot of fun, but it sure is different now that so many of us have kiddos. It just makes for a lot more work and a lot more mess to clean up, more mouths to feed, more clothes to wash when you get home, more people to keep track of, and more toys to fight over share.

I think we might need a bigger table!

Pinata Time!

Conner takin' a wack at it!

Cooper rarin' back for a good swing!

Splashin' in the lake!



Trying to fly kites!

I just loved this pose from Conner. Such a ham!




The boys hangin' out by the fire.




Fishin'

Rock Throwin'

Rock Skippin'

The kids really did well overall and Cooper made a huge milestone while we were there. He's been talking for awhile about wanting to learn to ride his bike w/o training wheels, but since our first attempt, we just haven't taken the time to work on it any more. Well, Cooper made up his mind that he was going to take them off while we were camping. So the first chance he got, we took them off and he never looked back. In true Cooper form...he hopped on his bike and started riding like a pro. He did have some issues with starting and stopping, but mostly because his poor little legs are too short to reach the ground.

We are so thankful that we have a group of people that we can make memories with, that encourage us in our walk with the Lord and have seen us at our worst and love us anyway! I love the memories we are making with our family.

(By the way, in case you were wondering why Carter didn't make it into any of the pictures, its because my mother graciously offered to keep him with her for the weekend. We love ya Carter, but you're just not camping material quite yet!)