Morning conversation

This morning Charlie woke up early so he asked if he could play on the computer before breakfast. Since we had plenty of time I said sure. Well at 7:00 I put his breakfast out for him - his standard Waffles. After 25 minutes I was prodding him to hurry. I told him if he was going to dawdle eating breakfast he couldn't play on the computer. Straight faced he looked at me and said "mom, 25 minutes is how long it takes me to eat 4 waffles". John and I just looked at each other and started laughing.

When did he get big enough to back talk with his own ideas?

Today the kids watched ET for the first time. Annie was so scared for most of the movie then at the end both kids were so excited that he lived. After the movie, Annie came up to me and asked if we could have an alien like that come live at our house.

It is so fun to show the kids movies from when we were kids and have them love them. I remember seeing ET in the Theater, I was 7, Charlie's age when it came out!

Glove!!

So I was walking Annie up to her first practice for T-ball today and she looked up at me and said "mom, What is my glove for?" I tried so hard not to laugh. She was so cute at practice and is on a team of 12 4 year old girls - nothing could be cuter!!!

Last day!

Last night we drove back to Orlando for our flight home today. We booked the perfect hotel for the night - it was IN the Airport terminal. How great was it that the bell hop took all the luggage straight the to check in gate for us!!! It couldn't have worked out better.

We actually got up this morning and John took Annie & Charlie back to Universal Studios while I packed up the room and entertained Audrey. Around 11:30 I took Audrey over to the park and we stayed until the last minute! We left Universal at 2:00 to make it to the airport for a 4:00 flight. If we hadn't stayed at the airport it wouldn't have been possible at all.

We had a great morning at the park. They kids all got to go on their favorite rides again and we saw two more shows once Audrey & I got there.

Our flight home was uneventful and the kids did great on it! All in all we had a WONDERFUL vacation!!! We couldn't have asked for more or had a better time.

Jaxsons

After breakfast and our morning at the beach we went and picked up John's Nana and took her to Jaxson's. It a great old Ice Cream Parlor - it has even been on the Food Network as a featured restaurant. The decor is covered in funny licence plates and old antiques, you cram into packed tables and booths and the waitresses still wear striped uniforms.

We had a great lunch and afternoon with Nana. After lunch Nana wanted to get the kids a souvenir to take home and so they went to a shop near the beach and each picked out some great shells to take home. We spent a few hours visiting with Nana after that and she told the kids stories about when she was a kid. The kids loved hearing about it and how she used to take Nan and Uncle John to the beach when they were kids.








I had to post this picture of Annie and Charlie in front of the tree in Nana's front yard. Nana said she has lived in her house for around 54 years now and when they moved into the house the tree was just a little thing in the yard!

Hollywood Beach!

One of my favorite things to do when we lived in Florida and would visit Hollywood was go to Hollywood Beach for breakfast. This was something John remembers doing even as a very young kid on his vacations to Florida. There is something amazing about sitting at the open air boardwalk and watching people. There are lots of families, there are even more old men, all leathery walking around with way to little clothing. The thing that always fascinated me were the groups of old Italian men sitting at the restaurants early in the morning smoking their cigars and playing cards. They remind me of retired mobsters, just relaxing away the morning.

We took the kids down to the Hollywood board walk and had pancakes. Then we took the kids down to the beach. Again, they loved the water but there were jellyfish every where - they were manowar jelly fish washed ashore, it looked like the beach had been littered with blue balloons.

Hollywood!

This morning we packed up and headed out on the road. We drove down to Hollywood to see John's Nana and his Uncle John and family.

It was so great to get spend the afternoon with them. We really wish we lived closer and got to spend more time with this side of John's family. At Nana's the kids were amazed to see all the pictures of them and their cousins, Nan & Pop and Uncle Brett. They were confused at first but it soon sunk in that Nana was all of their Nana's. Nana has a bird, Sonny, that the kids loved!

We went over to Uncle John & Aunt Kelly's house for dinner. They were so kind to have us, especially with their family being so under the weather. Uncle John was so kind to all the kids. He has a pond with tons of turtles in it that Annie was facinated with. He let her feed them and touch them. John played some catch with his cousins. Caylin who was only 6 when I meet her is graduating from High School this year. Kelby who is just adorable had the same crazy hair Audrey has - maybe she gets it from that side of the family. John has always said Audrey reminds him of Uncle John.

Day with the cousins!

Aunt Cindy, Charlie, Annie & Will on the Log Ride!


So today John headed off for the morning session of his conference and I took the kids to Islands of Adventure to meet Aunt Cindy & cousins Will & Drew. It was so much for to see the kids having such fun! Charlie and Will are 9 months apart and Annie & Drew are only weeks.

It worked perfect for Cindy & I to split the kids up, I took the littler ones for the morning so she could take Will on the rides he wanted to do that only he was tall enough for. Secretly I think Charlie was relieved he wasn't tall enough for a few - he was scared just looking at them. Islands of Adventure has some really cool rides, they had a 3-d Spiderman Ride that may have been one of the coolest rides I have ever been on.

John was able to meet us about 2:30 and after that Cindy & I took all the girls back to the hotel to swim and hang out while John took the boys back to Universal studios for the afternoon & evening to go on Jaws, ET, and some other big kid rides!






(I am not sure where the boys learned the peace sign but I had to keep telling them to stop - why do kids make funny faces & signs in great family photo ops!!!)

A Relaxing Day!

Today John had to set up for his Show and work for the afternoon so the kids and I decided to take advantage of the great resort we stayed at. We went for a walk and then checked out bikes for a while and rode around. Then we went down to the dock and feed the fish and ducks. I tried to talk the kids in going out on a paddle boat with me but they weren't having any of that - I think it was the beware of alligator signs they had posted everywhere. (I asked but they said they only get gators during mating season and they hadn't seen any in the lake for about 6 months!)

After that we then headed for the pool and water slides for a few hours. The kids ate lunch on their beach towels poolside. We took Audrey up for a nap and a break from the sun for a few hours. Around 5:00 John's sister Cindy & her kids arrived from Gainseville to spend the weekend in Orlando. The cousins had a great time playing together in the pool and getting pizza for dinner!

Tomorrow Cindy & I are going to take the kids to the theme parks!

Islands of Adventure!

Today we packed up the kids and headed to Islands of Adventure. It is a theme park that is the sister park to Universal Studios in Orlando. Can I just say our kids had the best time ever today!!! Rides sure have changed since we were kids. They have all these 3 and 4 D rides. Seriously Shrek in 4-D was so cool. You wear glasses and watch this show almost touch you, then your chair moves and blows water and air on you. At one point the Ogar farts and you feel air blow on your leg!

Charlie was tall enough for all but a few rides so he and John went off for a long time to do big kids stuff. Annie went on everything she was tall enough for. There was a Barney show that the girls adored. Although Audrey would have nothing to do with any of the characters we saw (Barney, Curious George, Scooby Doo...) but when you are only 2 feet tall a 6 foot purple dinosaur has got to be a little scary!!!

We had a great time with kids although we must have walked miles through the park. Spring Break in California isn't for a few more weeks and we didn't think to look but it is Spring Break for a lot of the Florida colleges so the park was a little crowded but that didn't stop us from having lots of fun.

St. Pete

This afternoon we drove over to St. Petersburg to check out our old house, beach and one of our favorite restaurants while we lived there.



I was shocked when I saw our old house - we moved in with John's sister, Cindy, who was traveling a lot at that time between Cedar Key and her job for the Florida Trend Magazine. 11 years ago now the neighborhood was going through a gentrification - well apparently that fell by the way side some time ago. We lived in the bottom story of a house that had been converted into an upstairs and downstairs apartment. I remember being so scared of the palmetto bugs while we were there. It felt like for most of the 18 months we lived there that we lived in our bedroom because I was so scared we would see bugs and if we closed our door and only ran the window AC unit in our room we would stay cool. (The door you see from the street isn't the front door but the door into the bigger of the 2 bedrooms - our room). No one felt like they should tell me while we lived there but on the day we moved out John finally felt like he could share with me the lady before us moved out because she woke up one night with a man standing in her bedroom steeling her TV.





After seeing the house we drove to our favorite beach. There was a basket ball court John would go play at all the time right across the street from the beach. We learned really quickly when we lived there a great beach routine. There was an outdoor shower at the park with a really nice bathroom so we would keep a bag in our car of small bars of soap and shampoo so we could rinse of in the showers in our swimsuits and then change in the bathroom after we were at the beach.

It was fun to take the kids and play in the sand. Annie loved the ocean, I think she may have been part mermaid in a past life!!! It was colder water and we knew we were going out soon for dinner so since it was late in the afternoon we didn't bother with swimsuits for the kids, luckily I had changes of clothes for the kids in the car.







After the beach we took the kids to what we remembered as a great restaurant! The 4th Street Shrimp Store.

Since John and I getting ready to celebrate our 11 year anniversary it was neat for us to take this stroll down memory lane together. For all the gripping I do about the bugs during our time in Florida we really had a great adventure while we were there. We were newlyweds with out kids who got to spend their free time exploring a new place. We loved going to the beach after work and on the weekends, for John to play basketball, fish or swim and people watch. We loved going to the early bird movie and dinner special - from 4-6 everything was 1/2 priced! We loved the adventure of learning to live so far from the area we had grown up in and our comfort zone. We got to spend time with John's sister and extended family that we may not have gotten to if we didn't try this. While I am not sure I would move back now I am so very glad we had the opportunity to do this so long ago!!!

Cross County Travlers

Can I say how great our kids are. Today we woke them up at 3:45 to head to the airport for a 6:00 flight. They were so excited they popped out of bed and off we went. We had a layover in Denver so our first flight was 2 hours and our second was going to be almost 4 hours. Promptly on the first flight during take off Audrey fell asleep in my arms and with in 1/2 an hour Annie & Charlie were both asleep. Everyone woke up about 15 minutes before we landed and were just happy to be on the way to Florida. We got to Denver and our flight was delayed for about an hour - for any of you who have flown into to Denver you know you can walk and walk and walk and still keep going. We just let the kids walk and they did great during the layover. Because we didn't end up using any of our activities on the first flight they were great for the 2nd. Audrey feel asleep during take off again and Charlie & Annie colored and played games the rest of the way. Audrey got up just about 45 minutes before we landed but she was no problem for that last little bit.

Once we got to Orlando we found our hotel. It is perfect. There are tons of activities we can do with the kids (swimming, biking, boating, fishing, golf, and a rock wall). It is a great all inclusive hotel John found on Priceline of all places so it was even a great deal.

We went to an old favorite with the kids for dinner tonight -Steak & Shake. It is fun to have the kids with us at places we went when we lived in Florida years ago.

Tomorrow we are going to take the kids to Universal Studios in the morning and then we are going to drive over to see our old apartment and take the kids to the beach in St. Pete.

Mothering moment blunder

So Charlie has been very, very sick all week. He has a bad virus that is going around his school. He has had a fever of 101 or higher since last Friday. Today I finally had to run to the little plaza market to get him some Gatorade because the poor guy isn't eating anything (really - like a half a waffle in 3 days and if you know Charlie you know that he LOVES eggo waffles and would live off of them if he could.)

Well any way as I am getting Audrey out of the car I realize she has no panties on under her dress! She was wearing a little jumper sans britches. Well I couldn't put her in the cart because well just gross! And every time I tried to carry her her little dress came up in the back and her naked but darling little butt hung out! I was so glad I only needed 3 things because she touched everything and did not understand why she couldn't have whatever she wanted!

Hopefully Charlie starts to feel better. He has missed school all week and we are leaving next week for Florida!

I am not sure life is fair!!!

So Audrey told me today while I was taking her potty "mommy, leab me allllloooone" (translated Mommy, leave me alone). All I could think was "I don't get to use the bathroom by myself - it's just not fair!!!"