Costume parade

Paige's preschool had a fall festival today. All the kids dressed up a paraded around the building.

Paige's VPK class.

Happy Birthday Paige

Paige insisted on going bowling for her birthday this year. We all had so much fun! The kids bowled on one lane - Avery came in first place. The adults bowled on a separate lane - Adam won with me a close second (thanks to my three strikes in a row!!)

Pumpkin Carving

It's pumpkin carving time again! As usual, Paige was very interested in helping and Avery just wanted to see it when it was done. Thanks, Daddy, for doing most of the carving!

Eww! It's so gooey!

My very brave Avery got her ears pierced! Such a trooper and she didn't even flinch!

Mini Vacation

A couple weeks ago Adam had the opportunity to attend a Kawasaki event and stay for two nights at the Gaylord Palms Hotel. The girls and I took advantage of this and turned it into a minivacation. The girls could not contain their excitement of staying in a hotel. Now they will think all hotels are like the Gaylord. We had an awesome time!!

The Key West area of the hotel. Quite a pose, Avery. :)

We spent one day in Downtown Disney checking out all the shops and seeing a movie. Whale's Tail in 3D.

Sailboat inside the hotel.

Field Trip

Miss Lewis's 1st grade class.

Avery and two of her friends, Giana and Ava

Avery's class went on a field trip last week to the pumpking patch. So fun!

Earth Day and Congrats to Danielle

This past Saturday was graduation at Florida Southern College where I work. Our dear friend, Danielle graduated and I'm not quite sure what we'll do without her. She has become like family over that past several years and even volunteered to pick Avery up from school and help her with homework this spring. She loves my girls like they were her own sisters. We are so excited for what lies ahead for Danielle as she travels to Memphis to teach in urban schools. She has a heart for God and I can't wait to see what she will accomplish in life. We love you Dani!

Lowes was giving away free trees for Earth Day so we headed there to see what it was all about. They gave us these little tiny trees that we are supposed to plant in a pot for a year before transferring to regular ground. My track record with plants is not too stellar so I'll be shocked if they make it a year. I hope they do well.

Happy Easter!

Update: I forgot to add a picture of the blueberry pie I made for Easter. Avery's class went on a field trip to pick blueberries on a farm and she insisted a make a pie with her loot. This was my first attempt at a blueberry pie and it was so delicious!!

Happy Easter everyone! (Ok, so Easter was last weekend....it only took me a whole week to upload and post my photos.) Since the girls and I were all home on Good Friday we decided it was the perfect time to color eggs. Unfortunately, Paige came down with a fever and the stomach bug so slept through it all. We may color eggs again later this week to make it up to her.

The girls' Easter baskets and clothes. We hid eggs around the house in the morning and went to Mr. Dirk and Ms. Cole's house for lunch after church. They also hid over 100 eggs for the girls to find. What a fun time!

Summer is here!

We had our first swim of the year last weekend. We were in desperate need of some family time (life has been crazy lately!) so we headed to the pool for the day. Our weather quickly went from breezy and comfortable to humid and 90 degrees. It felt good to be in the pool again!

New family pics

I must be nominated for "Mom of the Year" because for two years in a row we have had family pictures done! This year we chose to have them taken on Florida Southern's campus. Besides having sentimental meaning (where Adam and I met) and being the place of my employment, it proved to be full of beautiful places to snap pictures. Of course there are way too many to post on the blog but here is a small sampling. Enjoy!!

My baby turns 6

Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl, Avery! She turned 6 earlier this month and with each passing birthday I get a little emotional thinking about the day she was born. The excitement and anticipation you feel right before becoming a parent is a little surreal. And then it all of a sudden becomes very real. We love you so much Avery!!

A coworker of mine has a business making cake pops. The girls loved these and they were just the right amount of cake for our little family celebration on Avery's actual birthday.

Avery wanted to have her birthday party at a local Gymnastics place that she went to for spring break. This was also the first year that she was pretty specific about WHO she wanted to invite. The staff at Gym Etc did a great job! They started off with some warm up stretches and then went through an obsticle course.

During present opening time, Avery sat on this big block and each kid enjoyed standing next to her as she opened their present.

Whew! That was close!

These pictures still amaze me. Adam got this grill as a Christmas gift a few years ago from his dad and Gramp. He was so excited to have a new grill, and such a cool one at that! Our previous grill was old and falling apart and had caught fire one day. I actually sold it for $5 at a yard sale even though the bottom had holes in it and it was really unusable.

We have had some delicious meals on this grill over the past couple of years. Some of our favorites being ribs, steaks, grilled pizza, bananas, veggies and so much more. Yesterday we were planning to grill some ribs again when this tragedy happened. Adam turned the grill on the heat it up and went inside to get the ribs ready. A few minutes later I went outside to do some weeding and saw a lot of smoke. So much that I couldn't see the cars in the drive way. The grill had caught fire!

Thankfully we had a fire extinguisher on hand to put the blaze out before the propane tank blew. It was so hot the grill melted! We used the whole fire extinguisher and still had to get the hose out to finish extinguishing the flames. As sad as it is to see the grill go, we are forever thankful that our house did not burn down and no one was injured.

Annual Trip to the Strawberry Festival

Oh how we love the Strawberry Festival! The girls could not wait to make thier own strawberry shortcake.

Daddy was such a good sport on this one!