Agents Fisher

 

This picture makes me laugh everytime I see it. It's in a bathroom of all places. Jackson was messing around doing silly poses while we waited for the girls to finish up. One of them reminded me of Charlie's Angels so .....

Beach in Florida

 

We went to the beach once while we were there. Of course that would be the one time it was windy and the water was FREEZING. Especially after swimming in the super heated pool at the house. The kids had fun playing at the playground and feeding the seagulls though. I wish I had a video of the seagulls. In the parking lot they were flying down and snatching snacks right out of Jackson's hand as he held it up high. That would be a really fun beach to go back to on a warmer day. As long as we wore sandals - there were a lot of shells. The best part was that you could go out really, really far without it getting very deep at all. 100 ft out and it was hardly up the kids waists. We headed home and swam in the pool

One down...

 

 

Maggie lost her first tooth while we were on our trip. Literally lost it... Just after breakfast one morning I noticed that she had a little bit of a lisp when she was talking to me. I looked a little closer and said "Maggie, your tooth is gone!" She said "really?" I thought it was pretty funny that she didn't even know it was missing. She was really, really excited about the tooth fairy coming. She wrote her a note about loosing her tooth and put it carefully under her pillow. I love to see the kids so excited about things.
* Her other bottom tooth just came out today. Now she has a pretty big hole :) It came out when she was eating a snack - she thought it was a seed and spit it out into her hand. Then she got really excited and showed me that it was her tooth.

LEGOLAND FL

 

 

 

 

Since we have a few lego lovers in our family and we were going to be close to legoland..... we added it into our trip. All 18 of us went. The buy an adult ticket get a child ticket free deal worked out perfectly - since the youngest two were still free!! We went on Thanksgiving day to try to avoid the crowds. It worked. We hardly had to wait in lines at all. The kids adsolutely loved it - and most of the adults too. It is always amazing to see the things they build out of legos. There was an entire city section with different replicas of areas built out of legos. There was a NASA section (that should probably have a blog post all to itself :) ) There was a Vegas section.... The rides are geared towards younger kids - Jackson could go on all but one ride by himself. He liked that. It was a little rough since Caleb couldn't really go on anything - even with an adult. He didn't like that at all. His favorite part was the carousel at the end. We rode it over and over as we waited for some of the others to go on a bigger ride. Maggie was scared of some of the roller coasters but loved the other rides. Hailey loved the roller coasters but got scared on a ride that was in the dark. We had a lot of fun. Hailey has asked a few times since if we can go back. My favorite thing was the 4D Clutch Powers movie that we watched. We wore 3D glasses and then there were parts in the movie that we got sprayed with water, air blew past, it snowed......... a rock monster sneezed on us. The kids LOVED it. I wish we would have planned the day better to see the other two 4D movies!! At the end of the day I got each of our kids a mystery mini fig. That was very cool. They loved opening their package to see what they got. Hailey - guy in an alligator costume, Maggie - Navy sailor, Jackson - viking, Caleb - artist. They were so cool that Matt has put them all in a 'safe' location :) Poor kids with a lego loving dad!! Maggie also got a lifeguard mini fig from one the employees. Maggie told her how much she liked her name tag (everyone had a minifig on their nametag) and she gave it to her! Matt has also confiscated that one because it reminds him of me :) He promised Maggie he would get her another one. In fact she will get three lego girls in her stocking.

FLoRiDa

 

 

We were in Florida Wed, Thur, Fri and Sat. Matt's brother and his family were there, one of his sisters and her family were there, and his parents were there. So we had 8 adults and 10 kids!! There are some old family friends from Michigan that have a house in Florida and they allowed everyone to stay there. It was great to have everyone in one place. The cousins got in a lot of play time and A LOT of swimming time. A house with a pool is AWESOME! It helped that there was a fence around the pool and doors to block the kiddos from it. The weather was amazing. Sunny and 70-80's the whole time. We did the big Tday dinner on Wed so we could go to Legoland on Thur - in the hopes the crowds would be smaller. By the end of it Caleb was getting pretty comfortable in the WARM water and would jump in to us wearing a life jacket. Maggie was practicing swimming on her own. Jackson was constantly swimming underwater and Hailey was swimming around and jumping in with her life jacket on (and a few times without - we really have to keep an eye on her) :) Our whole family loves water. It was a good trip. It's always nice to see family and get to know everyone a little better each time we visit. Maybe we should invite everyone here....... then we won't have to drive ANYWHERE!! Oh, yeah. Maybe we should fill the holes in the yard first.....

Florida here we come.....

 

We drove down near Tampa, FL for Thanksgiving. It took us two 12 hour days to get there and 2 more 12 hour days to get back. The kids travel really well considering they are buckled into carseats. DVD players help immensely. There is a pretty cool building that we stopped at for a break. The kids played at the playground. Caleb splashed in puddles. Then we drove some more. and some more.

Deck....

 

Deck progress has been slow but ongoing. It needed 8 holes for footers - each one 42" deep. Matt dug a few of them out by hand - then when Saturday came we rented an auger for the remaining 6. It was a lot of work. We couldn't get them all deep enough with the auger so Matt has been working on getting them the right depth with a post hole digger and bar. This house remodeling diet is working fairly well for him :) Now the holes are complete and ready for concrete. But the weather isn't going to hold out for us. We are supposed to get rain over the next couple of days - which fills the holes - that has to be drained out .....
We put Jackson down a hole to show how deep it was. Caleb thought that was pretty interesting and Jackson loved it.