festival

so everglade city is this tiny little town that we live in, we sort of live right next to it. it is tiny though &  they put on a 'seafood festival' every year and a crazy amount of people come. like 60,000 people. we took the kids and my mom and dad and my aunt paula was visiting and my dad's fraternity brother was in for the weekend so we all had a great time. kiddos especially.  

trying to get a family pic.

trying again with me & eileen and the kids

and then the kiddo rollercoaster. rowe braved it first literally all by himself and then chap and a couple other kiddos jumped on.

gotta love rollercoasters

and of course, the fun slide followed by some bright lights and driving on your own

and this one is my favorite

miss

 we all miss you like crazy already.  what has it been -  like 8 hours:-)

so eileen wanted to work on some pics for a portfolio of sorts for school/college before she left. these were some of my favorite. 

love ya

pic

why yes, that is an entire tube of chapstick in chap's mouth

skirt

this is eileen's favorite skirt.  i love it, too. we are all adjusting to the harsh reality that she is leaving in three more days.  the essence of bittersweet.  so excited for her. so sad for us.

scuba

scuba steve

feet

sweet feet

trout

so every day that andy brings home a fish for dinner, the poor fish is not only eaten and enjoyed by our crew, but is first man-handled by spiderman.

nz

thinkin' about you all, les.  hope new zealand is treating you well.

i love that i forgot to focus on andy & scotty here.  it says so much about the place to me.  the beauty of it just overwhelmed me. i just couldn't help it. anyway, hope the beauty is doing the same for ya'll.

growin'

so we're growing it back out. mr. mullet here we come.

fishin'

not much going on here. got to go fishin' on my last day off with andy.  we saw a couple of tarpon and one seemed like he was looking at my fly & i about peed my pants.  here is a random pic of an osprey from our day out in the everglades. and then there is this.

so my mom was out with andy and she said that she felt something on her head and then andy looked over and saw this on her head.  he said he about fell over.  he hasn't even seen a seagull the whole time we've been here and this one decided to literally stop by on my mom's head. hysterical. 

costume

so andy's dad sent some boxes of andy's old things and the kids have been lovin' it.  here is rowe in andy's old spiderman outfit.  i guess andy LOVED dressing up as a kid.  i think that might have passed on to our first born.

  another fun addition is andy's old train set. how neat is it to play with your son with something that you played with 25 years ago.  pretty neat.  lastly, pay no mind to the naked punkie.

ps - thanks, dandaddy

so andy and eileen and rowe went down to the keys yesterday.  andy had to have his boat worked on a bit, but they made a fun day out of it and fish were obviously the theme. here is rowe being eaten by one and feeding some more in the other.

Rayland Baxter - Olivia

a shout out to kip's and rayland. i can almost taste the estaban when i listen.

liv - thought you might like this one:-)

tl - thought you might like this one, too.  can't you just hear creede?

new

so chap's new favorite game is playing 'baby.' poor eileen was her victim this morning. she is quite a thorough momma. if you are chap's baby you are going to be swaddled, pacied, read to, bottle fed, and usually ends us with chap coercing you into letting her have the other paci so that you both can be babies together.

snowbirds

so guess who are snowbirds? my mom and dad! they are down here for a couple of months and loving the warm weather as well as their grandbabies.  here is mom teaching the kids 'go fish' and here is dad teaching getting chap into all kinds of trouble.

cold front

we are officially floridians.  it was "cold" this morning and it wasn't even below 50 degrees. so the kids have been running in circles around the house, literally running circles:-)

update

here's a picture update on our little garden. andy has taken the reigns as our master gardener and from the looks of it, he is quite the master.