Keeping Busy!

 

 We finished school on Thursday, but I wanted to post one of my favorite memories.  Avery loved when Maia would sit with him while he worked.  What a great homeschool perk!

 On one of our Enrichment Fridays we learned about Christopher Columbus and then went to see an exact replica of the Nina and a close comparison of the Pinta.  The boats are considered sailing museums and do a tour every year traveling the Gulf Coast, the East Coast, The Great Lakes and the Midwestern River system.  The Nina is an exact replica of the original ship and it was built in Brazil, the same location, using the same techinques as the orginal ship.  I was surprised at how small the ship actually was.  It was pretty crowded on deck and had less people on it then was probably on the original voyages.

 On this Enrichment day we learned about robots and made a robot hand out of cardboard and strings.  It was pretty cool to see it work.

 We went to an airshow and visited the innovations tent.  This tent had a lot of neat science activities.  The kids loved building things with the spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. Nasa had a few tables there with cool robots too.

 Austin really got into his design.

 It was a great day to ride a horse!

 We have enjoyed learning about all of the creatures of Florida.  Avery is holding an antlion in this picture.  We discovered them because of the odd holes all over the ground which prompted my very curious children to find out what lived in them.

 
 This gopher tortoise roams the campground.  We decided to share a few carrots with him. 

 
 This is called a velvet ant.  It is a velvety orange wasp who has one of the worst stings.  They are often called cow killers because of their ability to sting with a vengeance.  The female doesn't have wings and can sting and the male has wings, is black and can't sting.


This is a regal jumping spider, who happens to be the largest jumping spider.  Her colors were beautiful and she was so interactive with us.

 We drove to Orlando to visit one of my best friends.  It was a much needed afternoon of conversation from one of my oldest and dearest friends.

 There is an awesome park in Ormond Beach called the Andy Romano park.  It is right on the ocean and has a splash pad, a park, and clean restrooms.  The kids love everything about that park and we visit it often.   

 We have weekly dinner dates here.  Alia was happy here despite the expression.  When we finished taking the picture she said, " I made a mean face to be funny!"

 We spent a very quiet afternoon at Ponce Inlet.  This is one of my favorite beaches in the area because the beach is natural and uncrowded.

We decided to bike a portion of the beach in Daytona Beach Shores.  The Beach goes unbroken for 56 miles so we have a lot of miles to cover!

This is Sugar Mill Ruins in Port Orange.  This park has the largest intact sugar cane press and a lot of dinosaurs.  This park has a lot of intersting history.  It started out as a sugar mill and was destroyed several times by the indians.  Then it was turned into a theme park and dinsoaurs were added.  When the theme park ended, they preserved it as a botanical gardens and left everything.  The kids loved running through the park looking for the dinosaurs. 


Filling shoelace orders!  The business is steadily growing and we are learning so much.  It has been great watching it grow and change over the last year.

Easter in the Florida Keys

We decided to take advantage of our proximity to the Keys and take a trip down there over Easter break.  We ended up staying on Big Pine Key.  It's in the lower keys and it's the least developed of any of the keys.  Big Pine is also home to the Endangered Key Deer, who happened to be the kids favorite part of the trip.  The Keys were an interesting mix of island life meets civilization.  I didn't expect the islands to be as developed as they were.  All of the major stores spanned from Miami all the way down but on either side of the stores, you saw the ocean.  It was a really beautiful area and one I would love to visit again. 

 Austin and Avery are always looking for crawly things.  He found a catterpillar.

There were a lot of great snorkeling spots for the kids to really explore.  They both did an amazing job considering it was their first time snorkeling.

 We found conch shells, hermit crabs, lots of fish and jellyfish.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was holding her hand and exploring the ocean together.  When she would see something she would excitedly point at it and try to talk with her snorkel on.

The boys spent the afternoon searching for snails and putting them on the rock.  One of the snails was so big it actually lived in one of the huge conch shells.

 
 On one of our walks the kids all picked up coconuts and then carried them all the way home.

 They spent a lot of time breaking them open so they could drink the water.

 We dyed Easter eggs together using kool-aid again this year.

The Easter bunny came!  The kids said that he rode to the island on a Key deer!  Since they were on an island the Easter bunny filled nets with candy. 

We had the kids plant jelly beans the night before so suckers would grow.  We found out in the morning the Key Deer had an especially fantastic Easter when they found our seeds.  This particular deer, who we named Jellybean wouldn't leave the kids all morning.

Scott was able to celebrate his 35th birthday enjoying key lime pie on an island in the keys!  What a blessing!

Canoeing alongside alligators!

We spent an awesome afternoon with Amanda, Joel, Jaycent, Gaven, and Austin canoeing 7 miles at Juniper Springs in the Ocala National Forest.  It was absolutely beautiful!  It is a clear, narrow and winding spring fed river.  There was so much vegetation along its banks and a lot of wildlife. We even saw 4 alligators! 

 Amanda and Gaven tipped less than a mile in.  I love this picture- the canoe is completely submerged!

 Our first alligator sighting!  It was a little nerve racking seeing them so close especially since it's not that hard to tip the canoe with kids in it.

 

I wish this picture was clearer but we didn't exactly stick around to watch him.  He was about 8 feet long and definitely not happy to see us.

This is not a course for beginners!  There were quite a few quick turns with trees in the way.  We even went over rapids which is hard to believe in Florida.

 
 We stopped for a quick swim, making sure the alligators were nowhere in sight.  This place had a lot of springs.  If you stepped into one you would easily sink up to your knees.  The kids were having fun trying to find the springs and then jump in them. 

 After the canoe trip we swam in the natural springs.  The water was about 65 degrees and cold! 

6 Month Picture Update

 5 years old, Ormond Beach Florida


7 1/2 years, Ormond Beach Florida

Disney and Back in 3 days!

For almost 5 years we have been telling Avery and then Alia that we would go to Disney when Alia turned 5.  It was a constant topic of conversation in our house for years and we finally hit the 5 year mark!  It actually came at a great time because we are considered Florida residents and were able to get some pretty amazing deals for those 3 days.  It was also awesome to be able to vacation with family.  The trip was fantastic.  I loved how excited they were and I was very impressed with how brave Alia was.  She was able to ride on almost all of the rides which included some scarier rides.  She loved some of the roller coasters but Tower of Terror in Hollywood was a little too scary for her.  She had her arms and legs wrapped around the seats and me when we dropped.   I couldn't get her to ride that one a second time!  Disney over all was great.  The lines were fairly short and we really didn't have to wait all that long to ride anything.  The kids were troopers and walked everywhere all three days.  Alia never once complained of being tired even though we had early mornings, late nights and she had to walk everywhere. 

Magic Kingdom

 We ran into Sue, Mark, Jake, Joy, Riley and Kylee on the Tea Cup ride!

 No Disney vacation is complete without eating something in the shape of Mickey's head.

 Sophia the First and Alia

 Disney at night was fun when you add glow in the dark toys!


Animal Kingdom


 I've always been impressed with the Tree of Life.  Animal Kingdom is probably my favorite park.  I love the large open space and the animals.

 

  On our safari

 She was very excited to meet the characters.

 Dinoland!

 She bought this monkey with her birthday money from Bama.  She named her Chocolate Banana and carried her around everywhere.  Here she is posing next to the monkeys.

Hollywood Studios

 We were able to watch a stunt show and learn how they make special effects for movies.

 This was a playground of a backyard from Honey I Shrunk the Kids.  It was great to see what the world looks like from an ants perspective.  There were a few underground ant tunnels that we adults tried to follow the kids into.  At one point the tunnels were getting smaller and narrower and we were starting to panic!

 Disney with cousins is the best!


It rained most of the day at Hollywood but that didn't stop the kids from having fun.  If you are going to do a theme park in the rain, this was a great one because almost everything is indoors.

A final birthday celebration for Jaycent and Alia's birthdays in Mexico : )!  Those sombreros were really heavy.