Florida Photos: SOOO Busy!

We have been blessed with a great trip to Florida this year. Grandma and Grandpa have provided us with lots of fun. That along with playdates and parties have kept us incredibly busy. So busy, in fact, that we have postponed our return trip by a day so we can actually get prepared instead of just throwing our stuff in the van and taking off.

Of course there's been lots of pool time.



















And Grandpa and Kirk took the kids to the beach (because I wasn't feeling so well that day)







The girls actually fell asleep on the beach after playing in the water and the sand!



Kirk's birthday - we had a chance to celebrate with family and friends:















Saying goodbye to Daddy is ALWAYS hard!





Father's Day at Church:









Last Saturday we visited Celebration Station (thanks Grandpa and Grandpa we had a GREAT time!!)

The girls on the little roller coaster - they loved it!





Bumper boats - it was pretty hot so I was asking the kids to spray me while I watched them :)



Kaitlyn got to drive her own go-kart and apparantly she had a lead foot :)



Grandpa and Caleb had to ride together but I still think they had fun!


Mini-golfing. Watching the girls "golf" is a riot. Mostly it involves them slowly shoving the ball into the hole :)



They needed a lot of help from Grandpa!



And since the big kids were so much quicker (Caleb even got a hole in one!) Grandma got to go on ahead.



Alyssa was pretty sick of pictues so she was done smiling by this point.



We're done! Happy, tired and HOT!



And today, an awesome Star Wars birthday party!

My Jedi knights:





Fun, balloon popping game - Kaitlyn won :)



And then we were visited by Storm Troopers!

Kaitlyn seems quite comfortable holding that gun...



Alyssa's got it a little backwards:



But Julianna has no problem with it.



Rachel need convincing to even get near the Troopers - sister love to the rescue!





Now Caleb, on the other hand, got a little different treatment... Hmmm... I did tell him I never want to see this again :)



We had a really good trip to Florida this year and we will miss our family and friends as we return home to Virginia.









Wow, we had a LOT of fun and it's soo hard to believe that our vacation is already over. Thank you so much Grandma and Grandpa for everything! We will miss you sooo much and can't wait to see you again soon. Love you!

Goodbye Florida, we'll see you soon...

Happy Father's Day From The Pool

For the second year in a row, we are in Florida for Father's Day. It's hard to be apart from Kirk on this special day and the kids certainly miss him but we're excited to share Father's Day with Grandpa :)

Because it's Father's Day and because Kirk isn't here he's missed out on a few things the kids have been doing which of course, involve the pool. So, in their own special way the kids show off their "talents" and wish their dad a Happy Father's Day. (sorry for the length - they LOVED to be filmed and even asked for more filming after this so I could get video of Alyssa "swimming up" - whatever that means!)



Have a great day daddy, we love you!!

And Happy Father's Day to my dad, you're the best dad and Grandpa the kids and I could have!

First Summer Field Trip

Grandma and Grandpa took us all to a great museum in Tampa called MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry) and the kids loved it. They have a whole section called Kids in Charge! which of course, they enjoyed.

The kids did some silly stuff like:

- lying on nails:



- losing their heads, er, bodies:





- sticking to walls:





- playing with "food":



- building stuff:



- making shadows on the wall, playing tug-of-war and seeing and doing lots of other cool and fun stuff!

It took a few hours but we were finally able to drag the kids away to other parts of the museum - the 2nd favorite of the day was "Disasterville" where our family got to experience a tornado, housefire and hurricane all in one hour!!



But don't worry - we had rescue workers handy! (I think Caleb's expression is because the sheer magnitude of his job is beginning to sink in...)



Getting blown away - Alyssa wanted NO part of it...



I can't blame her - the wind inside went up to 80MPH!!



But with all these disasters the only stressful time was figuring out what small (er, cheap) trinket to pick up at the gift shop :) I'm smiling because we're done and at the checkout! We settled on mugs with the girls names on it - of course none of them said "Julianna" so we went with "Anna" - hopefully a Sharpie will fill in the rest...



At least someone was happy:





My sad attempt at getting a shot of the kids with the cool flowers - no one really wanted to cooperate.



Thanks Mom and Dad (Grandma and Grandpa) for a great day at the museum. We can't wait till we get to go again.