Countdown to Oregon

It hit me yesterday that the kids and I only have two weeks left here in Florida. Josh, however, will be staying for one more month after we are gone. We have grown very attached to both the people and the place, so I am sad to be leaving, but excited for our next adventure. When we leave Florida the kids and I will be embarking on a month long road trip that will take us to Oklahoma to visit Betty and Linne, Colorado to spend some time playing at the ranch with Jenn, and then on to Oregon where we will spend a few weeks with all of my siblings (except Shaun who is still on his mission) and get to hang out with our Esquibel cousins, and then back home to Michigan. It's crazy, I know, but I really don't mind driving as long as I have a good book to listen to, and then kids travel pretty well as long as they have movies to watch. Plus, I hardly ever get to see my family, and very rarely are we all together so the long drive is worth it. If anyone happened to offer a prayer for my sanity during that time however, I would not mind at all!

OK, on to this weeks pictures. Some of these are Facebook repeats, but there are a few new ones as well.

The girls and I went on a little date to the mall one afternoon while the boys went fishing. I don't remember being interested in shopping until I was at least Samm's age. Maybe even a little older, but even Macy and Laila get excited if you say the word mall. We ended up being there for over 4 hours and they were not showing any signs of slowing down.

One of Josh's bosses here lives in a beautiful house on the water and he was the one that invited the boys over to fish. James was pretty excited about fishing since it was his first time. After several hours he hadn't caught anything though and was a little bummed so on the very last cast they told him to make it count. And make it count he did! I stopped keeping track of how many times he recounted the tale of catching a shark because it was so many. I just hope he's not disappointed next time when all he catches are fish.

All of my girls are already having swim suit issues. They are too tall for the suits their size, but if we go up a size they are too baggy. I've gone to tankinis for the older two, but Laila was just making due with baggy swim suits, until we found this one on our shopping trip. It is so perfect for her, I just couldn't pass it up. If you know anything about energy profiling, she is very much a type 4! Josh just commented yesterday about how she walks with purpose. And a little strut!

She loves her new suit and her yellow floatie!

A few days days ago we had some cooler weather (anything under 80 is now considered cold) and Josh had the day off, so we took advantage of our aquarium membership once again. The touch tank is always a big hit.

So is the fog wall

Samm's favorite place is with the sting rays. They were taking a "rest" when we got there and she was distraught that we might leave without touching them.

I'm not sure what kind of sharks these are, but they like to stay at the very bottom, which makes them hard to reach. Josh is the only one who has been able to get one.

Outside, in the aquarium splash park, some workers brought out chalk for the kids to draw with and Samm of course drew a horse.

And this sign. I never could draw bubble letters, so I'm a little jealous.

James has just recently decided that he likes drawing, and is frequently frustrated that his art is not as good as Samm, even though we remind him that she has been practicing for a lot longer, so I was very impressed with this crab he did. And as a complete side note, we finally introduced him to the concept of abstract art and he is loving it! After his first picture, we all took turns telling him what we saw in it, and he thought it was so cool that it could look like many different things.

 At church today I told the kids that we would make cookies, but we ended up not having any chocolate chips, so I told the kids we could try making strawberry ice cream in my new Vitamix (love that thing) but Samm was disappointed about no cookies, so she decided to make some herself using the M&M's from my mother's day craft that the kids had made at church. (they were clean) She found a recipe on her own, baked them up, and even cleaned up all her dishes, which is no small feat without a dishwasher. And, they tasted great, which she was very proud of. I'm not sure where she gets her love of baking/cooking, because it is not from me.

 

And finally, Josh watched the movie Hook yesterday with the kids, so while Samm was baking, Laila was pirating.

 

Here's to a new week with more sunshine and fun!

I promise, we don't go to the beach EVERY day!

I had several people make comments today at church about how often we go to the beach. And while it's true, we do go a lot, we also do other things as well. (read the following three posts if you need proof) However, due to the frequency of our visits, I felt like I should dedicate one whole post to our beach adventures. So, in no particular order, here are the beach pictures from the last few weeks.

 







 If you've ever noticed that Samm has unusually large muscles for an 11 year old girl, this is why. She spends most of her time on her hands and knees and there is usually at least one rider on her back.

I never used to think that Josh and Beau looked that much alike, but looking at this picture, you can definitely tell they are brothers.

Laila saw Josh's hat and glasses sitting by his chair, so she snagged them up with a grin on her face and pretty much thought she was the coolest girl ever when she put them on.

And I'm kind of a little jealous of her coolness. It's not something you can learn. She, like her dad, was just born that way!

This past weekend, the Beau Rollins clan was up in our area so we hit up Clearwater beach. It's a pretty touristy beach so they always have a lot going on at night on the weekends. We didn't actually know about the fireworks until we were about to leave and it was a fun way to end the night.

The beauty of my life is almost overwhelming to me in times like this. I want to remember these moments forever.

Finger in the air to our family is as nose picking is to the Morgan family! Gotta have at least one picture in every group shoot.

This was at the bay so it isn't the prettiest beach to sketch, but Samm didn't seem to care.

This was on the way home from the beach one day so I included it here. I turned around to take her picture and didn't even notice until after that she was giving me the thumbs up sign. 50 cent cones are most definitely worth a thumbs up!

She falls asleep on the beach almost as much as Josh does! I put the sunglasses on after she fell asleep to help block the sun.

This was our most recent beach day. Sadly, Josh had to work, so just the kids and I drove out to meet up with the cousins. Macy and Avenly had a great time playing mud bath.

I'm not sure why or when I took this picture, but all of our children have this crazy idea that they can't swim unless they have goggles on.

Most boys James's age don't want to be seen loving on their moms, but I'm pretty lucky because he says he wants to hug me for the rest of his life, and I'm going to remind him of that in about 5 years!

Our time here is quickly coming to an end, and I am really going to miss our relaxing afternoons at the beach.

Airboating in the Everglades

Josh has a sort of Florida bucket list that he has been making check marks on since we got here. One of the items on that list was to go on an airboat ride in the Everglades. I have to admit, I wasn't all that excited about this one at first. I wasn't really sure it would be worth the drive or the money, but I'm glad we did it. Even the kids were a little skeptical at first, but we heard Samm tell James "That was a lot more fun than I expected!" our driver was a younger guy (6th generation Everglades resident and airboater) and he seemed to be having fun showing off a little for the kids. His maneuvering skills were pretty impressive.

Laila had a scowl on her face the whole time, but she was loving every second of it.

There are a lot of raccoons that live in the area, and they are not afraid of people at all because all of the drivers stop their boats to give them snacks. Our guy was handing out Gatorade that day and we ended up with about six of them all trying to get a drink at once.

The fans on the back are no joke. They are huge!

As part of the airboat price, you also get admission to a little animal reserve close by. Some of it made me sad, because they had several big cats in very small cages, but holding the baby alligators was a lot of fun. They are a lot more soft and squishy than I imagined.

Samm would have stayed and held the alligators all day if we would have let her.

Laila wanted to hold him, but he was a little too wiggly for her.

Macy was pretty nervous about holding one, but finally at the very end decided she wanted to. Not without the towel though, in case he decided to scratch her.

 

This is Charlie.

This is Charlie's tooth that he lost while we were there. Our kids were pretty involved in asking the guy a lot of questions so he gave us the tooth as a souvenir.

 

These tigers had the biggest cage, but I can't help thinking they belong in the wild. Must be all the books the kids and I have read lately about big cats. They are beautiful animals!



 

 

 Since the airboating was only an hour away from Beau and his family, we went and stayed the weekend with them. And on that Sunday was the Fort Lauderdale temple dedication, so it was nice to have someone to swap babysitting with while we went. The only picture I have with their family from that weekend though is this one of Paisley giving me a hair do. She did a great job!

Aquarium

A few weeks ago we decided to check out the local aquarium. They have some cool fish and other animals of course that the kids loved, but they also have a splash park, which was a fun bonus. The first day we went, it was pouring rain so we didn't get to check it out, but we bought a season pass since it was only about 20 dollars more than just paying admission for our family to go once, and we have since been back to enjoy the fish and playing in the water.

 

 

Pirate captain Samm scanning the horizon for enemies!

I love this picture of Macy! She is usually a little more reserved when it comes to goofy pictures, so this makes me smile.

For some reason we didn't get any pictures of the kids touching Sting Rays, but I'm sure we will go back again before we leave so there will be more opportunities for that.

Farmers Market

This was supposed to be part of last weeks blog, but somehow it didn't make it and it was so late that I wasn't going to mess with it. So, tonight it gets a post of it's own. We have met so many great families here and have already made friends that will be very hard to say goodbye to. One of those families is the Manwarings. He is also a resident so his wife Ruth and I can relate to each other. Although he is on his second to last year of a SEVEN year neuro surgery residency, so she is pretty much a saint! Their kids are almost the exact same ages as our younger three and they all get along really well. Two Saturdays ago they invited us to go check out a really fun farmer's market in St. Petersburg. The kids were excited about seeing their friends, but not so much about where we were going, until we got there and it suddenly became the coolest place ever. So many awesome booths to check out, great food, street performers, and the most amazing balloon guy I have ever seen! Laila's is turned around, but she got Ariel.

 

 

One of the performances that we happened to catch was a group of break dancers. We got to stand right up in the front which the kids thought was awesome, and Macy and her friend Quincy got invited up to participate. Quincy was a little shy at first but ended up showing off a cartwheel at the end which I sadly didn't get, but Macy showed off some mad jumping skills!