Colorado Trip

We are settling back into the heat and humidity after an all too brief escape to the Mile High city. This was my first trip back during the summer months in a LONG time and I'd forgotten how wonderfully pleasant the Colorado summers are. The kids had a BLAST in Colorado! They enjoyed the mountains, some local parks, and spending time with Mimi and Grandpa!

We spent a day in Estes Park

And had to show Brian The Stanley Hotel

We enjoyed a picnic at Lake Estes...

... where the kids had a blast feeding the ducks!

Grandpapa and Little T were bossom buddies the whole trip!

We headed to Main Street where Hayley enjoyed some ice cream made just for her!

We made another trip to The White Fence Farm
The kids enjoyed the playground before heading into dinner...
... and they enjoyed using their "token" to pick out a special prize after dinner. Hayley ended up with a top, while Todd ended up with a whistle (lucky us!!)

The kids once again enjoyed feeding the animals...

We spent a morning at the fabulous Westlands Park,
where Todd spent most of the morning "gitin r done" on the big slide,

before we headed over to cool off in the fountains!

Who Would've Thought

Three weeks ago, if you would have told me that Mr. "Don't get my Hair Wet," and Miss "I NOT Gonna Pook my Face in the Water" would be doing this

or this

or this (yes, holding hands and actually being EXCITED before swim practice!!)

I would have said you were crazy. But fortunately, I'm the proud mother of two fish and I couldn't be more excited! Todd still has about two weeks left of lessons. He's doing a great job swimming and is still working on mastering the transition to a float so he can take some breaths and rest before turning back over to swim. I fully anticipate that by the end of next week he will be swim/float/swimming and completely independent in the pool.

ABCs

Schools out for the summer and I'm already completely pruned up from the amount of time we've spent in the pool. The kids have pretty much been in the pool everyday for the last 3 weeks. Add that to the time I've spent in the pool (don't laugh) learning to swim, and I'm pretty sure I'm becoming part amphibian. The kids both started back with their daily ISR swim lessons this morning and I'm fairly optimistic about this season! I'm pretty comfortable with Hayley in the water at this point as she's been swimming and floating around the deep end on her own for over a week now. Her biggest issue was that she REFUSED to put her face in, so her swim was more or less a doggy paddle. I've negotiated, bribed, and pleaded with Hayley for the past two months to put her face in the water to no avail. Her swim teacher convinced her in the first 5 minutes today. Fabulous. Little T has been much more of a spoil sport when it came to the water, and quite frankly I'm a big softy when it comes to him fussing at me, so I haven't been pushing him to swim. He seems to remember what he learned last year though and Ms. Amy seems to think he'll be swimming like a fish in no time. I'll be relieved to feel confident in his ability to float and get himself out of a body of water on his own. This time of year it's like a daily occurrence to hear about a local toddler drowning... AWFUL!

When we're not in the water, we've been hitting the books. I just wrapped up my studies to become a certified Nutrition and Wellness Consultant and spent a grueling weekend in a classroom at UCF completing the USATF Level 1 certification course. Hayley has been studying up on learning to tell time, and Todd has been going through ABC's bootcamp with Drill Sargeant Hayley. She seems to have taught him well! We gave him a (post spaghetti dinner) quiz last night!

Happy Birthday, Hayley!

Today, we have a FOUR year old!! Hard to believe that it was just four years ago our adventures in parenting began. We've learned A LOT, thanks in part to our very thorough teacher, Hayley! She definitely kept us on our toes as a newborn and toddler, but has grown into SUCH a sweet, loving, little girl. She's still a VERY intense little girl. There is no in between for Hayley and her enthusiasm can only be rivaled by her frustrations. She's incredibly curious and can (and does) talk nonstop!

We took Hayley and Todd to Disney a week ago to celebrate her birthday a bit early. We'll celebrate a little more thoroughly this upcoming weekend and Hayley will celebrate with a party at school on Wednesday. Here are a few pics from our trip to Disney!

We spent our first day at Typhoon Lagoon where Hayley had a swell time until the very last wave of the day. Typhoon Lagoon has a huge wave pool which shoots out 6 foot waves. Even in the most shallow end of the pool, it's enough to knock you off your feet. Hayley LOVED the waves and by the end of the day I thought Hayley and I both had enough courage for her to try one wave without me clinging to her. Sure enough, the wave knocked my little light weight over and she scraped her knee, which, if you know Hayley, you know that boo boos are the absolute END of the world. Two weeks later and she still hasn't let me forget that the healing boo boo on her knee is because I didn't hold on tight enough to her. How's that for mommy guilt??!! We did make major progress this trip however because Brian and I were finally able to convince Hayley to wear a band-aid. Hayley has had a HUGE phobia of band-aids for her entire life. Just opening the wrapper was the enough to induce screams of pure terror. Yes, this is definitely a sign my little band-aid wearer is growing up!

The next day we headed to Magic Kingdom where Hayley met Alice in Wonderland and told her all about her mermaid Silly Band. She then did a pirouette which thoroughly impressed Alice.
Next we hit the race track, the merry-go-round, and It's a Small World. Todd was a big fan of the hula dancers in Hawaii.

After an afternoon nap at the condo, we headed back to Magic Kingdom to explore the Swiss Family Robinson tree house and take a ride on the Jungle Cruise. We ended the night watching the Wishes fireworks show which Hayley said was "AMAZING!" She ooed and awwwwed the entire show!


The next morning we headed off to Hollywood Studios.

There wasn't a whole lot to amuse the kids at Hollywood Studios, but the main purpose of our visit was so Hayley could get a picture with every little girl's favorite Disney character... Lightning McQueen. For those of you thinking she'd eventually grow into the princess preference stage... it certainly hasn't happened yet!


Hayley was happy to meet Goofy and Pluto... Todd seemed a bit suspicious of them.


And then we spent some time playing in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground before heading back to the condo to rest and cool off in the pool.


We spent our final evening at Downtown Disney, dining at Hayley's favorite restaurant, T-Rex.



She let everyone know she was turning FOUR!


She was overjoyed when the servers at T-Rex brought her a sundae and sang to her! And Todd was thrilled that his sister was willing to share her special treat!




We spent the last day of our trip at Blizzard Beach. It was a busy, but great trip to Disney!




Here's some video of Todd and Hayley rockin' out to the Disney Playhouse Show we went to at Hollywood Studios. They both LOVED this!

May Activities

The school year is winding down and the temps have finally been getting back to typical Florida lately! We've been enjoying lots of time outside and taking advantage of the return of weekends spent at the pool!

Hayley has been honing her golf skills.

She's "usually" pretty pleased with her caddy.

Todd has made the transition to a big boy bed! Although most nights, this is where we find him. We'll then carry him to his own bed where he sleeps the rest of the night!

Hayley invited me to "Muffins for Mothers" at her school last Friday! I enjoyed a nice story and song.

And then we dined on muffins that Hayley had made with her class. (Well okay, Todd and Hayley dined on muffins... Todd isn't much for sharing his food!!)

How we roll

It may be a Honda, but it's got swagger!! (And yes, this is what happens to your sense of humor when you become a minivan owner!)

A Pitiful Pity Party

I need sympathy in a bad way. No, scratch that. I DESERVE sympathy in a bad way. Mama has had her second tummy bug in the period of a month. To put it mildly, my stomach HATES me right now. After a happy Easter and weekend of celebrating Mr. Todd's 2nd birthday (see pics below), Hayley managed to come down with a sudden stomach flu over a week ago. Now, I just have to brag because my children sure do know how to share.

But this was a bad bug. I even have the proof.

Yep, Todd and Hayley were rendered completely immobile for about 2 days. It's taken a full week for them to get their stomachs back to normal to the point that they will eat. I'm still not to that point and Brian seems to be fighting a touch of all this as well. Not fun.

Luckily, before the plague we had some fun! We had a great weekend celebrating Todd's SECOND birthday! I can hardly believe my big boy is 2! I'm pretty sure he grew three inches the week of his birthday and I've had several people ask me if he's a three year old lately. He absolutely adores his big sister (most of the time) and is developing his own personality. His favorite things right now are cars, footballs, and cowboys (which are actually cows... he calls them cowboys).

They say it's my birthday!


It was a beautiful day to do what little boys do best, explore nature!

My cousins stopped by...


... and brought gifts!


Then I got to enjoy a big piece of Mama's Chocolate Beet Cake!

Easter Photos

Todd has decided that big boy beds are cool... most nights anyways!

Some photos from our Easter festivities!

We colored Easter eggs.

And attended the church Easter egg hunt.

Where Hayley got to do her first potato sack race

And Todd had a frightening encounter with the Easter Bunny. Yep, that bunny is PRETTY scary!!

Sniffle City

It's been a fairly hectic, yet uneventful two weeks here as we battled the sniffles. Hayley brought home her first cold of the year a week ago and was kind enough to share with her brother. I've been VERY grateful that a respiratory virus was our biggest problem since I've lived in fear of the "YACK" bug that has been going around here. All of my friends have had it and it's highly contagious which means it spread through each of their households like wildfire. The general consensus about the "YACK" bug is that you MUST lock yourself in the bathroom for approximately 8 hours. No thank you.

So, as sick as it sounds, I welcomed the common cold with open arms this year, grateful it wasn't the alternative. Hayley never got really sick, but this was Todd's first encounter with a fever type virus and he absolutely didn't handle it well. But seeing as how his Daddy, who has now been hit with the respiratory virus, is passed out on the couch... well, Todd and Daddy MUST have had a MUCH worse virus then Hayley and Mommy did. And I'm not surprised that Hayley brought a bug home in the first place. Just a week ago I found all the vitamins I'd been giving her for a month, stuffed under my couch!!!! Apparently Hayley is NOT a fan of Juice Plus' new formula!

I've been experimenting with my new toy, a digital SLR camera. To put it mildly, I know NOTHING about photography, other than the fact that I knew I wanted a SLR so I could quit missing those awesome shots of my little darlings. Since Brian spent two years of his life on a plane (thanks GE), we had SkyMiles that we had to use or lose. Since a romantic trip to Europe seems to be out of the question in the foreseeable future, we decided to squander our miles on the camera. Anyhow, when I have some free time (ha, ha), I'm hoping to find a photography class or at least spend some time researching the art of photography and learning about this camera.


Here's some pics from our last two weeks:

T-Rod is too cool for school.

Some time at the park.

We spent an afternoon flying our new kite!

And then took some laps around the baseball field. Hayley LOVES to run and already has her sights set on running Disney's Princess Half Marathon with Mommy. It's for "princesses" you know.

A sign that spring is here! The cranes have a new set of twins and have been making their daily trek through our yard each morning and night. Hayley has named them Mommy, Daddy, Hayley and Todd. Unique, don't you think?