Winter warm up

As you probably gathered from Gerry's birthday post, we took a trip to Florida! Gerry's parents flew us down for his birthday and it was wonderful to get some sun, and even better to get to spend some time with them!

Gerry and I both had some reservations about flying with Spring and Reed, but they did just fine. I had to laugh though at the end of our flight to Florida, a woman asked me how our kids had done on the flight. I said that they had done really well. She said, "Oh, then that wasn't your kid I heard crying?" I laughed and replied that it might have been one of my kids... Having a good flight is a matter of perspective and it would have been unreasonable to expect no tears on the trip!

We did lots on the trip! You already know that we went boating, and we also went to the beach, to Busch Gardens and to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (where I interned in college). Here are the photo highlights.

Reed in the back yard.

Reed spent most of the boat trip sitting on Grandpa's lap! Gerry didn't fully explain what a great boat trip we had, we literally lost count of how many dolphins we saw, some of them jumping up right beside the boat! Spring loved it too, she snoozed almost the whole time, only getting upset when we got off the boat. Apparently she inherited her daddy's love of boating!

Spring hanging out with daddy in the front yard.

Reed really enjoyed getting to play with his cousin Marina.

It was pretty warm the day we went to the beach, but it was really windy too! Eventually the wind got to be too much and we headed home. It was blowing enough that we were getting pelted with sand as we walked back the the car.

Spring LOVED Grandma Lisa. She loved sitting in her lap and cooing at her and Spring treated Grandma to lots of laughs. Grandma had found this cute little dress before we came, then found the red crocs on an outting one day while we were there and decided Spring had to have them!

Just a cute picture!

Happy Birthday Gerry!

Happy Birthday to Gerry cruise!!!

It was pretty stormy, 15 kts wind out of the north, and cold.... about 63 degrees.

Saw dolphins, drank beer.... life is good!

Tag of fourths

Awesome idea via The Wakeman Family, tag of fourths...

What you do is to go into you photos folder, open the fourth folder there, then open the next fourth folder. When you run out of folders, pick the fourth image. Here's ours.

This is a picture of a pretty funny story. In 2004, Gerry's mom and I flew to Germany to visit her sister, Nancy. Lisa and I were very rummy from the long flight and Nancy had just picked us up at the airport. Nancy was trying to pay for our parking, but not speaking or reading any German, she tried to put German coins into the bill slot, so here she is, trying to fish out the money while her sister points and laughs at her! I was doing a fair amount of laughing too!!

Hippie camouflage

We decided to dress Spring in an outfit that Reed had worn as a baby and attempt to recreate the "hippie camouflage" picture that we had taken. I thought that doing this picture with Spring would help me see how similar they look, but seeing them in the same outfit makes their differences stand out to me more. Go figure... and I was just starting to think they really looked alike too!

So can you tell who's who? (Don't scroll down too far or you'll see a picture that will give away the answer).
























Spring is in the first picture and Reed is in the second.

And of course, I couldn't resist getting a picture of all three of them in their matching tie-dye. I must admit, I felt a little left out that I didn't have a tie-dye shirt to match! Would it be lame to have family pictures where we all wore matching tie-dye? Bear in mind, that we are people who would wear tie-dye anyway and wouldn't be wearing it just for the picture. Gerry thought it would be corny, but I kind of like the idea...

Reed had a cute moment a few nights ago at dinner. We were having BLTs with avocado (or as we like to call them, BLATs). Usually when we make sandwiches, we make a simplified sandwich for Reed, but lately, he'd been eating most of our sandwiches when we did that so we asked Reed if he wanted toast or a sandwich. He replied that he wanted a sandwich so Gerry made one and gave it to Reed. Reed promptly opened the sandwich and pushing the tomato off his sandwich exclaimed, "no salad!". I'd never heard him say the word salad before. I had to laugh! Reed's not a big veggie eater. Ironically, the next day, Spring, Reed and I went out to lunch with our friend Marcia and her son Matthew where Reed proceeded to eat half of the salad I ordered with my lunch!!


Spring is doing well too. She's getting very laughy now! As is true with most people, she seems to find things funniest when she's tired so most of the laughter we've gotten so far has been right before bedtime. She also talks more when she's tired. I'll take laughter and conversation anyday over the hours of crying before bedtime that she did when she was younger!!