Celebrating Nathan!

Aunt Joni, Grace and Lucas and Addison stayed at the condo the day we went to Epcot for Nathans birthday. They made a candy tree for him and decorated the condo for the party when we returned! It was so sweet and fun. The candy tree was very cool!

Birthday Fun at Epcot

Epcot Birthday Fun

On Nathan's birthday we went to Epcot. Since all the family was here he had a special day with his dad, his Uncle Dave, Uncle Brian, sister Ella, Grandmom and of course me, his mom.

His birthday ice cream cookie..Papa Dan would be proud.

Besides having a day at Disney we also had a birthday party for him at home the next day. There he opened presents one of them being a new bike from his Papa John!

Superman cupcakes were the birthday cake of choice. Thank you Grandmom for making these wonderful treats!

But today I am six!

Happy Birthday Nathan! We love you so much and are very proud of you! We are so thankful that we have you in our lives.

Tonight I am still 5 years old

We love birthdays and Nathan is the only summer birthday so it seems like forever till his birthday comes along.

Another busy week in Florida

This last week we were so busy. Grace had basketball camp every morning. She was 1 girl out of 20 girls and 100 boys. All the girls from her winter team went to the camp. But since there were so many boys they all were split up,one girl per team. Grace liked the boys on her team and her team ended up getting 3rd place in the tournament. She was very pleased with that. We also had a playdate 4 out of the 5 days this week after basketball. Besides basketball and playdates, we had dentist appts, am afternoon at the beach with the Foxes, karate and then tubing down the river. Whew, no wonder I had to take a nap this afternoon!

The Rainbow River

This weekend we went to the Rainbow River with a group of friends. The river is in the middle of Florida near Ocala. We rented tubes and floated for 2 hours down the river. The water was a fresh water, crystal clear, beautiful river. We saw turtles, fish and Grace and her friend Hannah saw 3 river otters. The river stays a constant 72 degrees year round. It was refreshing and cool. It reminded me of being in northern Minnesota. This was an experience that I would not typically think of a "Florida" activity. But we are discovering so many fun things to do here.

More rainy day fun pictures

Rainy Day Fun

It has been raining here a lot. The kids had a great time dressing up and making home movies. They also had my camera and took several pictures. It is always fun to find these "gems" on the camera.

4th of July Weekend

Anthony and Nathan playing
Sparkler Fun!
And lots of kids in the pool.

Happy 4th of July

The 4th of July weekend was very busy and fun for us! We went on Friday night to our towns' firework show. Then on Saturday our friends the Donaldsons, they have 5 kids, came over and we had a cook out. We all went to Magic Kingdom that night to watch the fireworks, which were amazing. If you have never seen fireworks 360 degrees around you I highly recommend it. Although that night we did not get home until 1:30am! Then on Sunday the Donaldson came back and swam all afternoon. We ended the weekend with all 13 of us going out to eat.

A few more from the holiday weekend

We definitely like to have fun!

The result of a fun long weekend

We like to have fun but we also get very tired! Living the Florida lifestyle has brought the concept of napping back to our house, even with the older kids and mommy and daddy! I probably will get chewed out some day by Ella for posting these. But they are too cute!

Another Missing Tooth

Nathan II is almost 6 yrs old and is losing a bunch of teeth. His top front teeth are also loose. He is so proud of losing these teeth. He also thinks it is wonderful when the tooth fairy comes to visit him!