An Awesome Weekend

We just got home from an amazing weekend at our friends house on the Gulf Coast. They invited us and the Kuhn family to stay for the weekend--9 houseguests!!

We got to try tubing, jet skiing, paddleboarding, kayaking, and boating! We swam in the gulf and spent some time on the North Sand Bar, which is a beach about 3 miles out from the mainland. The kids had a ball in Ryleigh's paddleboat and just generally enjoyed spending time together.

I will add photos soon!

It was an amazing weekend!

Mis-SHAKES

We stopped for lunch at Steak-N-Shake on our way to our friends, the Morse Family, house. The waitress accidentally knocked over Emily's shake. Emily looked very upset about it, so the waitress said, "Don't worry, sweetie, I'll get you another one."

Bailey said, "Yeah, it's okay. Everyone makes mistakes!"

And then Liam piped up, "But when you make a mistake here, they call it a mis-SHAKE!"

I thought that was very funny and clever!!

Bailey is 9!

We celebrated Bailey's 9th birthday with a small party after school on Friday with her best friend. Then we had the family over for swimming and cake on Saturday! She's also asked to go to Universal Studios to get a Harry Potter wand, so we'll plan to do that in the next few weeks.

I can't believe she's 9--it went REALLY fast!

Here's Bailey and Lydia...

And the whole gang of kids!

She asked for a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. I took the liberty of making the frosting purple, which she absolutely LOVED. It was a fun cake to make!

This one is from the party on Saturday. Ice cream cake this time around. I didn't make that one!

Color Run!

Emily and her best friend Isabella decided to participate in the Winter Springs Color Run this year. It definitely wasn't the best organized race we've done, I'll say that much. But the girls had a lot of fun. It was a small crowd and the kids got to run the course as many times as they wanted to. The girls did it twice because they hardly got any color after the first round.

 Before...

After a second lap around the course (and after they found some color and threw it at each other, LOL).

It was certainly an experience. If Emily wants to do it again, I think I'll look into the ACTUAL color run. Maybe I'll do it, too.

THIS IS NOT HOW BAILEY DIES!!!!

Bailey and Liam have been playing Minecraft this morning. Do your kids love that game as much as mine do??

Anyway, they were playing really well together for a while but then I guess Liam started doing something Bailey didn't like, which apparently ended up killing off her character. So all of a sudden I hear her yell: "THIS IS NOT HOW BAILEY DIES!!!"

Oh, boy, did I get a good laugh out of that one!

Easter 2017

How is it that Easter is already here?

My kids are getting so big. I took them out into the back yard for our annual Easter photo shoot. These are my favorite pictures!

Now I just have to get them into bed at a decent time. The Easter Bunny has a LOT of work to do tonight!

EPCOT

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend the entire day at EPCOT with my mom and my aunt. It was a real treat for me not to have to worry about anyone else for an entire day! We had so much fun. We did several rides--Mom even rode Test Track!--and looked in nearly every shop in the entire park. We ate or drank something in most of the countries and thoroughly enjoyed the many beautiful gardens and displays they have set up.

Mom and Aunt Joann tried on every hat in the whole park. I have to download all of the pictures but here's a couple fun ones!

By the way, the Nine Dragons restaurant in "China" is super good! I've never eaten there before but it was really excellent. And the prices weren't too outrageous, either!

Summer Vacation... part 1

Yesterday, Emily and Bailey had their first plane trip (Liam flew as a baby when we went to Pop-Pop's funeral in New York) to Denver, Colorado. We have an amazing 9 days of adventure lined up!

After landing in Denver, we found our rental car and headed to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison, CO. We all thoroughly enjoyed our tour by "Dino Dan," who showed us several fossil sites as well as preserved ripple marks from ocean waves and many sets of dinosaur tracks.

Here's Emily underneath a dinosaur's footprint!

 Bailey posing next to some fossilized bone:

Liam with the dinosaur bone:

Daddy and the kids in front of the dinosaur tracks. These were near what used to be the ocean shore before the mountains formed! There are a variety of tracks, including one larger and smaller matching set--likely a mother and baby!

Here's Liam next to some tracks for size reference:

This ended up being a really educational and enjoyable stop for us. We all really liked learning about the dinosaurs who lived here. Not to mention, the price is totally reasonable--free if you want to walk it yourself or only a few dollars for the tour, which was wonderful.

After DinoRidge, we headed to our rental house in Colorado Springs. We were thrilled with the house, which offered us a full kitchen, living room, three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and a laundry room. They provided toiletries, laundry detergent, cleaning products, and even some food! I was impressed.

Today we visited the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, which is where the Anasazi carved homes out of the cliff. What was really neat about this place is that they let you go through the dwellings. We were all astounded at the tiny homes which housed 2, 3, or 4 families!

After exploring the cliffs, we headed over to Garden of the Gods. We actually thought we'd just drive through there and maybe take a photo at Balancing Rock, but the kids liked that stop so much we parked in another area and hiked some trails. We climbed lots of rocks, too. The view was amazing.

Here's our family in front of Balancing Rock:

And some of the views:

We were planning to go to a Wild West museum but when we got there, we weren't overly impressed. Instead, we headed to Cave of the Winds to take a tour. It was a good tour but lots of steps, often narrow and steep, and several tight spaces to squeeze through or duck under. That was fun but I imagine not for everyone.

Most of the cave photos are very dark and not so easy to understand what you're looking at, but I liked these pictures.

We're ending our day with dinner with Will's family. We've had a great time so far!

A Day Full of Fun!

Today, the McDowell kids were super spoiled. We began our day with rollerskating at Semoran Skateway. I was very impressed with all three kids! It was only Liam's second time on skates, and he did really well! He fell down a bunch of times but he kept getting back up and giving it another try. He wasn't interested in being on the "beginner" floor that they have in the back--he wanted to be out on the REAL rink with the rest of the kids!

   

Emily also did really well. I was particularly impressed with her for joining the games. Even though she's not the strongest skater, she got out there and did the Hokey-Pokey, the Cha-Cha Slide, and the dice game (which is kind of like Four Corners but they have six cones set up and they roll a die to see which cone/s are out)! She spent some time helping Liam skate, too.

Bailey is the best skater of the three kids. She got the hang of it really quickly and was out on the rink by herself most of the day! We had so much fun we may go again next week!

After skating, we were all hungry so we headed to Steak-N-Shake for a yummy lunch and milkshakes! Then it was home to swim in the pool and take a rest. That evening, Daddy had a surprise for us: he took us to see Finding Dory! I think it was the first movie that we all saw together, which is a really exciting milestone! The kids did really well in the movie theater so it's nice to know we can start doing that more often.

What an awesome summer day of fun!

We all scream for ICE CREAM!

Today we took a field trip to Mimi and Grandpa's house to water the plants. They put in some new landscaping but they don't have sod yet, so the sprinkler system isn't on. After watering the trees, we headed down to the splash park. To our surprise, the ice cream truck was there! We all enjoyed a yummy treat before having a blast in the splash pad.