Happy 8th Birthday Avery!

 
 Avery and Banana age 8.  He is still willing to pose with Banana just for me. 

 
 This is how he actually feels about posing with him.


 We were able to celebrate with my family this year.  Avery wanted to pick something from the bakery to celebrate his birthday.  He has never really liked cake so he picked a cookie and ice cream.  

 
We were able to celebrate with Scott's family too!  We all enjoyed a slice of Grandma Davis's homemade graham cracker cake. 

Avery's only rule this year was that he got to play as many video games for as long as he wanted.  He spent so many hours playing Star Wars.  We did get him out to enjoy the sunshine when we went for a hike. 

These are the questions from this year:
1.  Favorite color: blue
2.  Favorite toy: remote control car
3.  Favorite food: cherries and watermellon
4.  Favorite animal: Fluffy- his hamster
5.  Favorite books:  C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia and The Magic Tree house Series
6.  Best Friends:  Jaycent and Austin
7.  Favorite thing to do outside: catch bugs
8.  Favorite holiday: Summer vacation and my birthday
9.  When I grow up I want to be a Scientist because they are cool.
10.  Favorite subject: science and experimenting
11.  Least favorite subject: Music, I love listening to it but not playing it.
12.  What if you could buy anything, what would you buy?  A farm because I like animals
13.  What is your biggest accomplishment this year?  I learned to be kind to people.
14.  What is your favorite thing to do?  I love to play with things because I am creative.
15.  I like to collect:  bugs and spiders
16.  Funniest thing that happened to you this year?  When I did an April Fools joke on Dad and he tripped.
17.  What do you like to do with dad?  Wrestle
18.  What do you like to do with mom?  Play made up games
19.  What would you change about this year?  I would live in a bigger house and have my own room   so Alia doesn't wake me up in the morning.
20.  Favorite memory this year?  Going to Disney with my cousins.

State parks, forts, baking and vbs!

 
 Hontoon Island State Park - We decided to explore a few more state parks in Volusia County.  When I read about this park online it indicated that is was an island and to get there you would ride the free ferry.  That sounds cool!  Once we arrived at the free state park we realized the ferry boat ride literally took 3 minutes and covered about 50 meters.  Once on the island we decided to take a 3 mile hike. 


 This was a really neat tree.  The limb of the fallen tree was actually living and thriving.  We tried to get the kids to take a picture next to it but one of them yelled "bee" and everyone refused to stand anywhere by it.

 We saw an owl in the tree!  It was neat to see one during the day.

 This is halfway point on the trail.  We are actually standing on one of the two mounds on the island.  The Timucuan Indians were the first inhabitants of the Island and they gathered snails from the St. John's River.  Through the years the discarded shells accumulated to form this mound.  We were proud to be standing on the only elevation in Florida!      

 It started to pour!  There was so much rain coming down, Alia stopped to get a drink from the rain coming off one of the palms.

 
 Alia saw this picture in one of my magazines and asked if we could make them.  We baked the cupcakes together and then I told the kids to pick out their candy so we could decorate the cupcakes.

 This is what they decided to do.  I am pretty sure this was all about how much candy they could get on the cupcake and not about the actual cupcake!

 This one actually has kit kat legs.

 On Father's Day we headed to St Augustine since it is within range of our electric car and we love exploring and history.

 Our first stop was Castillo de San Marcos.  For many years this fort was the northernmost outpost for Spain's vast New World empire.  Thanks to Ponce de Leon's early discovery of the area in 1513, Spain knew that this was the perfect spot to control as their fleets full of treasure sailed past .  This is the oldest masonry fort and it is well preserved.

Even though Spain claimed Florida through Ponce de Leon's discovery, France gained the first establishment there by establishing Fort Caroline on the St. John's River in 1564.  Spain saw this as a threat and King Phillip II sent an expedition under Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles to get rid of the French and establish a fort for Spain.  Menendez tried to board the French ships unsuccessfully and decided to sail south and established a fort at St. Augustine.  Almost immediately the French sent ships to attack but the ships were driven southward by a storm and wrecked and the mission failed.  Fort Caroline was lightly guarded now and the Spaniards marched north and captured the fort.  England became Spain's next contender for Florida and Sir Francis Drake attacked and burned St. Augustine in 1586.  Then in 1668 British pirates again burned St. Augustine.  This caused Spain to build Castillo de San Marcos.  It took 23 years to build the fort.  Time and time again the fort successfully stood up to siege after siege.  Great Britain and Spain traded Florida a few times during various wars and then in 1821 Spain finally ceded Florida to the United States.       

 St Augustine was a quaint little area.  We walked around the narrow brick streets and visited several little shops.  The area was a living history area and you could go into these shops and watch people in costume perform.  We also visited the Colonial Quarter which is a historic adventure tour.  The city is a replica of the 16th 17th, and 18th, century Spanish colony.  Everyone was in period costume and you followed a tour guide around telling you about St. Augustine. 

This week we went to vbs at Oasis church.  The theme was Glow for Jesus.  Wednesday night we all wore our team colors along with various glow things.  It was a really fun week!

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!