Happy Halloween

We started our day with the last and final arrival of the Halloween Witch. The kids came running down the stairs, way too early, to find the treasures the witch left.
We spent a nice morning playing with our treasures, while Halloween shows played in the background. We took advantage of Halloween landing on a weekend and too the day to slow down a bit.

Pumpkin carving on the back patio, baking in the kitchen...it was TOTALLY fall! As the great pumpkin scoop out progressed outside, the kids began to find germinated sees inside the pumpkins. In fact, ALL of the pumpkins were growing pumpkin plants INSIDE them, leaves and all. Is that bizarre or what?

Pumpkin carving at the hand of Mr. D. Daddy and Grandpa had to help him finish it off.

Little Miss A and her famous LIPS!

This is her hand drawn pumpkin face...

After a nice lazy day, we began the wind up for a super fun evening. Little Miss A and Mr. D dressed up as characters from Pirates of the Caribbean...Elizabeth and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Grandma and I began the trick or treating and Daddy joined us at the halfway mark. A good time was definitely had by all!!! Sure wonder how things are going to play out next year when Halloween falls on a school day!

Pumpkin Patch

We took advantage of the beautiful weather and early afternoon to take the kids to our FAVORITE pumpkin patch! We couldn't have asked for a better afternoon! The place was virtually empty...we parked in the FRONT space and didn't have to wait in line for anything and had PLENTY of awesome pumpkins to choose from!

We were able to do everything we wanted...picked our favorite pumpkins, ran through the maze (several times), went on a hayride, ran through the flowers, fed the goats, painted pumpkins and even had pumpkin ice cream and still only spent the afternoon. :)

It was so nice to be able to share one of our traditions with Grandma and Grandpa!!!!

Surprise Visit from Grandma and Grandpa

I took off early Friday to pick my parents up from the airport. They were coming in town for the weekend to surprise Little Miss A and Mr. D with an early birthday visit. :)

The kids were in specials when we got to school. We walked into the gym, where Little Miss A was at and she was shocked. She had no idea what to say and was utterly confused as to what was happening. :) The office had called to the art room to release Mr. D. We met him in the "neighborhood" and he was SOOOO excited to see Grandma and Grandpa!!! :)

With a GORGEOUS afternoon on our hands, we checked out of school early to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa B!!!! What a fun treat!

Spring Break 2010

The weekend before Spring Break, Grandma and Grandpa Brown surprised the kids and me with a trip to Florida for a few days. The kids were SOOOOO excited, that was ALL they talked about at school...we literally counted down to Sunday! :)

Sunday morning we got up really EARLY (with the time change it was actually earlier than the alarm clock would like to suggest) and were in Orlando right after lunch. We surprised Aunt N for her birthday dinner...gosh I LOVE surprises!!!! :) We had a nice fun-filled evening with the fam!!!

Monday we went to the zoo with Grandma! This experience at the zoo was unlike any others we had taken in the past...for several reasons. The first was our experience in the bird encounter. Last year Little Miss A and Mr. D would have absolutely NOTHING to do with this exhibit, we all but RAN through couldn't even think about feeding the birds. This year, on the other hand, the kids probably fed EVERY bird in the place TWICE. They loved it so much that they were even trying to entice the birds to perch on the their hands. Unfortunately that didn't happen with the kids, just Mommy and Grandma.


We hit the train to see a side of the zoo we hadn't experienced yet. Seeing the animals SO close up and even being able to see eggs in nests was super cool, but pales in comparison to our next stop...

Mom is an amazing VIP zoo member which is the ONLY reason we got to do this...
A baby giraffe was born at the zoo ONE and a HALF weeks earlier and was an astonishing 6 feet tall weighing in at a whopping 140 pounds. Still adjusting to this new life, Momma and baby are still not part of the regular exhibit and not many people have even seen the baby yet. As if seeing the baby giraffe wasn't cool enough, Little Miss A and Mr. D got to feed Momma JoJo, with Daddy Raffiki watching from a distance with a protective eye over his sweet new family. It was an unbelievably amazing experience!!!

After a fun filled afternoon at the zoo, it was back to Grandma's house for some pool time. (The kids were constantly asking when they could go swimming.) They both threw on their suits and hit the hot tub. :)

Tuesday morning, Grandma packed a picnic lunch and we headed for the park. The picture below is triumphant one for Mr. D. After several failed attempts, disappointment and frustration in trying to master the bar (a feat his sister was easily able to do repeatedly time and again since she is still quite a bit taller than her brother) with Grandpa's help, D finally figured it out and was so proud of himself and his swinging technique. :)

We left the park and walked to the boardwalk to head for the beach. It was still way too cold, so we went with the idea of just "getting out feet wet" and left with two completely soaked kids that had a BLAST in the water!!!

Afterwards, we left the park and headed to Ron Jon's for some dry clothes and were off to the Dinosaur Store. I think my kids could have spent hours just in the gift shop. :) What a cool place. It definitely got them both talking about dinosaurs which is always fun. Library, here we come. :)

Wednesday morning, we got Aunt K and headed to Orlando, we picked up Kay then went to meet Uncle K for lunch. So special!!! :) Afterwards, with several changes of plans we ended up heading back to K & K's for some bread to take to the park to feed the ducks. No camera tricks, optical illusions or shifts in perspective here, these geese are HUGE!!!! It was hilarious to walk to the park, we could hear the geese before we saw them. Their honking sounding like a band of trumpets...hilarious!!! :)

Once the bread was gone it was off to play. This is the same park we went to before when Daddy and Uncle D spun each other so hard on the spinning wheels, they both nearly got sick. Though it was St. Patty's Day, there were no green faces this time around. :)
A St.Patty's Day dinner with super fun green drinks. What a great way to end a day. :)

We had such an amazing time!!! As always, it went WAY TOO FAST!!! Thank you so much Grandma and Grandpa!!! We love and miss you so much already!!! :)

First Word

Okay, not what you think, but equally cool. Little Miss A was on her doodle pad creating her next masterpiece, not an unusual event since she's constantly writing letters and drawing elaborate pictures. But this time she says "Look Mommy!! It says no flowers." Expecting to see a picture of some flowers with a crossed out circle around it, I was shocked to see the word "NO" surrounded by flowers. Clever girl. I love that my little scholar LOVES to write her letters. She is constantly asking how to spell words and writes them down as we spell them for her. She knows all of her letter sounds so she's now transitioning to sounding the words out on her own. :) Smart girl.

Up, Up and Away!!!

A very special outing with Grandma and Grandpa!!!!

As if a special trip to the mall shopping for school clothes wasn't enough fun, Grandma and Grandpa took the kids to do a super fun jump at a cool venue in the middle of the mall. We have lots of awesome videos of both jumps, but for some reason non of them are uploading to the blog. So I'll include some really cute pics instead. The kids had a BLAST and are STILL talking about the REALLY big jump that was "as high as a building!" Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for such a special day!!!

Weekend in Review with Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandma and Grandpa Brown joined us for the kickoff of Spring Break!!!

Chuck E. Cheese

It started off to be a really rainy weekend, so as promised we went to Chuck E Cheese Saturday afternoon. I had been promising the kids a return trip from their birthday (we still had tokens to spend) the first rainy weekend we had. The kids had so much fun playing. The place was a mad house, but even still, this was seriously the first time I wasn't a nervous wreck watching them like a hawk. We handed them a few tokens at a time so they had to check back often. Sadly, we have even more tokens and tickets to spend so a return trip is in our future AGAIN!

Sea World

With promising weather for Sunday, we headed to Sea World!!! The kids have been dying to go back. Since we had a season pass break from the place last year we thought we'd check it out again this year. Though the shows are still the same, but the impact on A & D is so much bigger this year than it ever was before!

As customary for us, we headed straight for the dolphin exhibit first. We missed the feeding times, but the dolphins were VERY lively jumping all over the place. Too fun, but our time-keeper, Mr D, insisted that we keep moving! So it was on the shark house. Our stay focused, Little Miss A, was adamant that we went into the building for sharks, so she skipped the jelly fish, octopus and sting rays and headed straight for the shark tank. The entire day was filled with these little things...hilarious!!!! The experience at Shamu's adventure land was awesome!!! The rides were still the same and with season passes to Six Flags last year, I think the kids were good on rides, so we only went on one. I think the kids could have played on the ropes, in the tunnels and slides all day and on their own. Although, A was constantly watching for D, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I guess we'd better work on that. :)

What an amazing day! We didn't get to see everything, but we'll be back!!!