We're Cruisin' Now!

Our family, along with Grammy Nancy, got to spend a fun-filled week on board the Carnival Inspiration cruise ship!

We headed to Cocoa, FL to spend a couple of days with Jen's grandparents and to visit with Mike's extended family in Titusville. From there we made our way to Tampa to board the ship and start our oceanic journey!

Good-bye Tampa!

All of us enjoyed 5 days of cruising and spending time in Grand Cayman and Cozumel. Here are some of the things we learned during our trip:

#1 - Seth LOVES to dance! And, as Mike put it, what he lacks in rhythm he makes up for in enthusiasm and energy!! Check out this little video clip of the kids doing the Cupid Shuffle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTk3ODMLRpI

One of the highlights of the trip for Seth was getting this trophy:
There were 2 dancers who performed one night and called up people to participate. Seth was one of the lucky participants and, in his own words, "I danced so good that the older guy didn't even stand a chance against me!" Such a modest child!

The dancers also spent time with the kids in Camp Carnival a couple of days teaching some dance moves. Here the kids are with Otto, the hip-hop, robot-style dancer. He was really great with them!!

#2 - Katey really never tires of eating cheese pizza! Pretty sure she had it at least once a day and sometimes twice a day!

#3 - Dolphins feel really soft and not at all slimy or scaly. We got to pet, kiss, dance with and hug a dolphin in Grand Cayman. Katey wasn't too sure about touching Cappy, our dolphin friend, but the rest of us really enjoyed this experience (though the hundreds of razor-sharp teeth were a bit unnerving for Jen!) No cameras allowed, but here is a shot of the pool area we were in.

#4 - Turtles know how to dance. This one is Raising The Roof with Grammy!
We visited a turtle farm in Grand Cayman and got to touch and hold the smaller sea turtles. We learned that if you rub under their chins/necks they calm down for a minute or so which makes holding the flapping little critters a bit easier. Again, all of us really enjoyed this experience except Katey who refused to hold a turtle but was coerced into touching one!

#5 - There are icebergs in Cozumel, Mexico!
Okay, not real icebergs, but Katey and Mike both scaled this one. If you look closely you'll see Katey on the right side and Mike and Seth in the water under her. She made it to the top 2 times!!


We spent time at Paradise Beach and there were lots of fun things to do like jump on a water trampoline, go down a huge inflatable water slide, snorkel and dig in the sand. The kids found lots of coral on the beach as well as coconuts! Seth enjoyed digging in the sand with his found coral!

#6 - Magic is fun for the whole family...but especially the kids! There was a magician that came to our table each night at dinner to do some little tricks for the kids. They looked forward to this every day!!

#7 - The top deck of the ship can get very, VERY windy sometimes.

#8 - If your room is on the lowest deck you can usually beat the elevator if you just walk.

#9 - If you walk instead of using the elevator your legs get very sore the first few days of the cruise!

#10 - Being on a cruise with Grammy and the kids was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

Blink

Friends warned me this would happen and I didn't believe them.
Relatives warned me it would happen and I didn't believe them, either.
Now I have succumbed to the group of wise(r) parents and warn others that I come into contact with...

Time flies and kids grow up faster than you can possibly imagine.

It hit me the other day - we are no longer parents to little kids. How did that happen?? I look back and think of all the hours, days time I spent wondering how I would make it through the day until Daddy got home and could help with our little crazies angels. Sometimes it felt as though they would never get big enough to _________ (use the potty, dress themselves, play unattended for 2 minutes in another room, go to school...). Wiser parents would say that I should cherish those times as they would quickly fly by. I'm pretty sure I secretly wished for that to be true in each moment. And then it happened.

Blink!

Somehow we have gone from diaper bags and strollers to backpacks and bikes. Bottoms no longer need wiping and Dora the Explorer has been replaced with The Electric Company and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Board books have given way to chapter books and early bedtimes are pushed back for fun on the Wii or with family games.

We discovered recently that Katey is now too big for restaurant play-places. It was a sad day this summer when she had to watch Seth and his friends play while she sat and finished her lunch. How did she get so big?

I don't want to leave this post with a lamenting feel. While gone are the days of free baby ice cream cones and naps every afternoon, we are experiencing some of the fun of having big kids. We can all ride the big rides at Carowinds this year and have thoroughly enjoyed the Gold Rusher again and again! We can now allow the kids a little independence of playing outside alone with friends (with certain restrictions, of course). And, we get free labor help teach responsibility through chores like sweeping the kitchen floor.

I'm looking forward to watching the kids grow more and more...and learning how to become a parent to big kids. I'm guessing that about the time we think we have a handle on that...

Blink!

Busses, Bikes and Floats

For the last couple of weeks I have been humming a very catchy tune: "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!" We had a fantastic summer but the start of the school year is always a fun and welcome event for the whole family! So, here are the kids on the first day of school - our big 4th and 1st graders:School starts early around here - Mike and the kids were at the bus stop by 6:40 AM!
Of course, with the start of school comes the rush of GERMS and 3 of the 4 of us are getting over the yuckies around here. Seth was home sick on Friday with his signature "Seth Cough" but we let him play outside that evening to get some fresh air. He decided that riding his bike would be fun...until he flipped over the handle bars, didn't let go of the bike, hit the pavement and had the bike land on top of him! Thank goodness he was wearing a helmet. Our poor little Sethy. He refused to let us take any pictures that evening, but this one was taken the next day. What you don't see is the scraped elbows, chest, back and leg...

After such a traumatic evening we were happy to have something more fun to take part in the next morning. Thanks to one of Mike's co-workers, Grammy and Katey got to be in a parade!! Seth, Mike and I watched the fun from the sidelines and picked up lots of candy. Here are shots of Katey passing out candy in the parade and Grammy waving from the float:

Even though Katey spent more time walking than riding on the float, she was ecstatic to be in a parade and make other kids happy with her fist-fulls of goodies!

3:58PM...exactly

We love our Katey Beth! For lots of reasons, really, but this post will be about one of them specifically.

Yesterday was Katey's 9th birthday! We had 3 different birthday celebrations for her this year (one birthday party, as noted in a previous post; one celebration at the lake with the Averill family and one at home last night with the 4 of us and Grammy) - that makes for a LOT of cake and ice cream!!

So, Thursday night as Katey was getting ready for bed I made the comment that I would never hug Katey as an 8 year old again. She quickly corrected me, saying: "Yes you will, I won't be 9 until about 4:00 since that was the time I was born!" I laughed and sent her off to bed.

Come to think of it, we had 4 birthday bashes for this child as I took donuts into her class yesterday to celebrate. All the kids sang Happy Birthday to Katey and after they were finished her teacher asked how old Katey was. Katey proclaimed, "I'm 8 still but at 3:58 I'll be 9!" You gotta love her sense of literalness!

Katey is growing into such a wonderful, sweet-spirited child. She is loving and kind and empathetic. Katey loves to learn and devours books as quickly as she can get her hands on them. It is our prayer that she will grow in wisdom and truth and in her walk with Christ more and more this year. Happy 9th birthday, sweet Katey. We love you so very much!!

Birthday celebration #1:

Birthday celebration #2:
Birthday celebration #3:
(it is hard to get a candle stuck into a hot lava cake!)
And, a couple of shots of Katey around her actual birth day:

Lake Vacation

We had the honor of spending last week in Greensboro, GA with the Averill family in celebration of Mom and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary! What a blessing to have such a wonderful event to celebrate!

The week was filled with swimming, boating, eating, skiing, tubing, eating, laughing, picture-taking, sleeping, fishing and celebrating (and probably a little more eating). We really spent almost every waking moment on the boat or at the table. Annie and Jen would really like the ground to stop moving now as we are in day 5 since being on the boat and still have yet to fully regain land-legs! Of course, the crazy boat driving while trying to flip tube-riders probably didn't help with Jen's motion sickness...

One thing we planned for the week as a gift to Mom and Dad was family pictures. A wonderful photographer, Gloria Slaughter, came to us to take pictures. They turned out beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased! We were a bit ornery and pulled a little joke on the parents...all the kids and grand-kids dressed in crazy colors and played it up like we were ready for pictures. Mom and Dad were good sports but we did have them going and a little worked-up before letting them in on the prank. :)

Oh, one more thing: I'm not saying who it is, but we did learn last week that someone in the Averill family has a "sassy swagger" but it is only because of pigeon toes...or so we have been told! :-)

Here are some fun photos from our wild week!

Grandma up on skis! She is awesome on the water!!

Annie learned to ski - check out the determination on her face! (Aunt Jo learned to ski this week as well!)

Seth LOVED tubing!
He got pretty brave and daring and was even flipped off the tube a couple of times and came up still smiling!

Aunt Christy and Aunt Jo...adorable!

Grandpa fishing with the kids. They both caught a fish!

The cutest little nephew around - NATE!!

Uncle Brandon and Aunt Annie

Oh, what a wonderful trip full of great memories!!

Birthday Party

We celebrated Katey's 9th birthday a little early this year with a fun Olympics of the Mind type party. There were 10 kids in total and we had a great time!

The festivities began with building card houses. The kids worked very hard on them, got very creative and did a great job!

Katey has dubbed this one the bird nest house.

This one was the tallest built!

And this one is the most effort behind a house!

Next up was the Egg Drop competition. The kids had to build a structure that would protect an egg from a 9+ foot drop! Here are the creations:

And our only kid egg that survived:

Mike created an egg contraption as well. Here is video of his being dropped...will it survive??



Poor Daddy!

After the egg drop we did some inventions. The kids got into groups and were each given a bag of items to be used for an invention of their choosing. No pictures of this, but one group made a ramp into a piggy-bank, one made a smoothie stand, one did a crazy, spikey SpongeBob thing and the most creative of all was a radio-active pizza (if you eat it you will glow in the dark so you won't be afraid of the dark anymore!).

Next came cake and ice cream! Katey chose to have a torte-like cake. A delicious pairing of Mom A's homemade chocolate cake with Ann's homemade frosting. YUMMY! And Katey did a great job of choosing colors for frosting. We had left-over batter so you can see we also did some cupcakes.


I couldn't let this post go without attaching the video of Katey blowing out her candles. Enjoy!!



Our last activity of the day was an imagination game - I showed an object and the kids had to come up with things it could be used for. Below is one of Katey's friends using a mop head as a hula skirt! This was a really fun game for the kids and they got very creative!

Overall it was a wonderful day and I think everyone really enjoyed being here to celebrate with our not-so-little-almost-9-year-old Katey! A special thanks to Grammy for all of her help with the party!

If Only...

Seth and I spent some time throwing rocks into a pond today while Katey was busy with her 2nd piano lesson. On the way back to the van a motorcycle passed us. The following conversation then ensued:

Seth: WOW! That motorcycle must have cost a lot, a lot, a lot of money!
Me: Maybe. How much do you think it cost?
S: Welllllll...maybe like about $200!

J: Oh, well how much would it cost to buy a car?
S: Probably around um $400.

J: I see. What do you think it would cost to buy a house like ours?
S: That is really a lot of money! I would say about $1000. But when you first get married you don't have a lot of money and you don't have any money to buy furniture.

J: So how much would it cost to buy a couch?
S: They cost a lot - like $30

J: People need beds to sleep in, so how much would that cost?
S: Maybe about $35. Mommy, my hands are dirty from throwing rocks. We really need to wash them.

And, it was true. His hands were really dirty from throwing rocks (but what fun we had doing it). And, Seth was growing weary of teaching me about the cost of living. If only...

Just to see what she had to say about it, I asked Katey the same questions just now. Her responses?

Motorcycle: Hmmm. Probably about $350
Car: Well, for convertibles it would be over $1000 but cars usually cost between $500 and $1500. (she said with much conviction and a sureness of her figures)
House: Probably about $900. I mean, our house is pretty big.
Couch: At least $50
Bed: $100

Sweet dreams...