Father's Day Weekend

I am so far behind in my blogging, that I thought I would be better off to just start where we are now. There hasn't been much that has happened since our fun Florida trip. Well, maybe I just haven't really had the camera out much. I "participated" in a 5k, we have been sick off and on, we had our hardwood floors refinished (dishwasher leak back in November), then our fridge went out, then the fridge repair man damaged the floor in front of the fridge, and I think that gets us to last weekend!

For Father's Day weekend, we went up to Tennessee. My brother, Sampson, his wife, Brittany, and their new baby girl, Phoenix, were in from Utah. We haven't ever met Phoenix before, so it was really nice to see and hold her! The boys seemed to like her, but they were a little cautious around her, too. William kept crawling up to her, reaching out to touch her, and then he would pull his hand away. It was really sweet. And Phoenix was a little doll! She is so sweet!

My brother, Dan, took some great pictures over the weekend with his awesome camera, and here are some of those.

There is a little market close to the river called Rock Island Market. They have some of the best cheeseburgers on the face of the earth. Here are the boys getting their first taste of Market food. (Jonathan is on the left, in the background.) Here is William, who thinks he is starving, which is evident when you notice how much food he is trying to shove in his mouth. Emma and Jonathan With the boys still just crawling, we found it necessary to contain them down at the dock. The little inflatable raft did just the trick! (And just so you know, I am not at all concerned about them not walking yet. Yes, they are 15 months old. But they will do it when they are ready. Once they master walking, I could be in for it.) And then there's Emma. My sweet, sassy, "cool surfer girl," Emma. She loved riding the boogie board behind the jet ski (which was driven v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y!) "Oh Yeah!" She was so excited to be doing such big things. Here is Emma with her cousin, Noah, swimming around under the dock. (If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can see how blue her eyes are. They are so pretty in this picture.) Emma swimming around...

It was a fun weekend!

PS-Thanks to Dan for all the great pictures!

Florida Trip

Back in the early spring, Aaron was working on a very time demanding client. As he was finishing up the project, he was given the opportunity to take a few days off. We decided to take the kids on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Florida. It was a fun trip (except that William was at the end of a very scary Roseola incident) and nice to go somewhere as a family. We really miss Aaron a lot when he is working so much!

We went to Destin, Florida. It is one of the closest beach towns, about 6 hours away from us. The sand was beautiful, the ocean was cold, and the weather was quite nice.

Jonathan was so cute in his little hat! Emma loved playing in the ocean. She would go out into the water with Aaron, and she would try to get him to further and further out into the ocean. This is the swimsuit she chose for herself this year. She says that it is a cool girl swimsuit. I think she looks like a super cute, surfer girl in it! Jonathan was being so cute that I couldn't stop taking his picture! He just kept giving me the cutest smiles! (William was sitting in my lap the whole time, feeling pretty yucky.) Here are both the boys, in one of the rare moments that William wasn't on my lap! William and Jonathan playing with sand toys. Self-beach-portrait, with William on my lap. (I had to get a picture of myself with some sand in the background!) We went to a restaurant called "Fudpucker's." The food was decent, extremely overpriced, but we had fun anyway! A lot of fun! This restaurant also boasted its live alligators. There was a "pit" in the front of the restaurant, and these were the alligators. Don't know if you can really tell here, but they were babies. Maybe pre-teens. They were all pretty small. So, we went somewhere else to see the big guys!

We went to a place called the "Gulfarium." It was kind of like the aquarium/zoo only with gulf animals. We saw these huge alligators. They were much scarier than the baby ones. But, they hardly moved. We also saw a "multi-species" show, which consisted of a dolphin and a sea lion. They did some pretty cool tricks, like this one (above). The sea lion is holding a fish in its mouth, and the dolphin jumped out of the water to get it! In this trick, the sea lion and the dolphin are kissing. The sea lion could also throw trash in a trash can, which gave the gulfarium trainers a good opportunity to talk about throwing trash in trash cans and not in the ocean. There was a dolphin show we also watched. This dolphin is jumping through a hula hoop. (See the ocean and the pier in the background?) And finally the pier at Fort Walton Beach. People were fishing off the pier and these very large birds were all over the place. This one got so close to Aaron and Emma, so I took their picture with it! (If you look closely, you can see some of these birds standing on the light poles.)

We had a great time. And, one of the parts I am most proud of is: my "bet" with Aaron. We drove past a PacSun outlet, and we decided we could both use a new tshirt or two. Aaron bet me that I couldn't go in and get us both a shirt in under 10 minutes. And, I went in and got us both a shirt in 7 minutes! I win! (Unfortunately, we didn't really wager anything in the bet. But, I did get a new shirt out of it!)