We keep going and going and going....

Well, it seems like we just can't stop lately! Part of it is due to us going on a vacation, and really, who rests on a vacation!?!?

Anyway, last Thursday, we went to Brookfield Zoo! The last time we were there, Owen was 6 months old. He's now 2 1/2. He LOVED it! And I loved watching him love it! :)

First thing we did was head to the Dolphin Show! Owen loved it! Actually, all my kids loved it! Before the show began, Owen kept finding the dolphins in the pool and would point them out time and time again. It was really sweet.



Here's an attempt at getting a picture of all the grand kids on Ryan's side...

The princess couldn't walk anymore, so Owen had to pull her. Not really, but Owen was convinced that he could do it...it only last about 30 seconds before he was done! :)

Chloe and Ellie

This was Owen's face when he saw the Rhinoceros. He couldn't believe how close it was, and how BIG it was!!
None of the kids (or Auntie Jen) knew I was taking this picture of them.;) It's definitely easier than trying to get them all to look at the camera AND smile!

SILLY KIDS!!!

Where's Chloe?!!? ;)

The boys loved the fishies! That was the one thing that Owen wanted to see.

At the end of the day we let the kids play at the little park that they have there. They had loads of fun, and it burned off every last bit of energy that they had! :)

Now we're off to the lake for 5 days (Ryan will come on Friday night) ~ home for three, and then back for TEN DAYS (That time Ryan will be with me! :)) Have a great rest of the week!!!

Charades or Frogs?

Ryan has started a little thing where we play Charades with the kids. The kids love it and when daddy asks if they want to play it, they get really excited and fight over who gets to go first! :)

Chloe can pretty much act out anything from 'Mom changing a diaper' (that really happened) to 'A man riding a motorcycle.' She's actually quite good.

Now Brett, on the other hand, will jump around and "ribbit" EVERY.SINGLE.TIME!! We have to guess a horse, or cow, or some other crazy animal a few times before we yell out "A FROG!" And every.single.time Brett will jump up, clap his hands together puts a huge grin on his face and says "Yep! You pigured it out!" (he replaces the f with a p) It's quite comical actually to see how excited we get every time we "pigure" it out!;)

And Owen, well, let's just call him Brett's shadow, because all he acts out is frogs too! :D Monkey see monkey do!

I suppose it doesn't really matter. It makes the kids happy to play the game, and if they want to act out frogs every time, so be it. It's all about the memories! :)

How could I have let this happen?

A couple of weeks ago, Chloe lost her first tooth! :) She was thrilled when the tooth fairy left her four quarters under her pillow. The smile on her face, and the jumping up and down around the room were priceless.

While we were in Florida, her other loose tooth got REALLY loose. She wanted it out so bad, but was afraid to pull it. Wednesday night, we were eating dinner, and while she was eating her corn on the cob, it fell out! She was ecstatic! That night, we forgot to put it under her pillow ~ she says she didn't forget, but that she didn't want to get out of her bed to get it!;D Anyway, she went to the lake with my in-laws on Thursday night, so she didn't put it under her pillow then either. I had the tooth wrapped in a paper towel on the kitchen counter, waiting for her to come home so the tooth fairy could visit. Well, Sunday I realized the paper towel was missing. I asked Ryan if he threw it away, and he said that he did. Ryan is notorious for throwing things away!! I actually was really upset with him, and because Chloe wasn't home, I made up a master plan to get the first tooth that she lost (yes, I saved it!) and play it off like that was the second tooth that she lost ~ are you still following me?!?:)

As I was wiping down my counters last night, I found the tooth!!!! Crazy, I know, but I was thrilled! We put it in a little Ziploc baggie and placed it under her pillow.

This morning, Chloe walked into my room sobbing ~ tears rolling down her face. She could barely speak. When she was able to speak, she said, "she didn't give me any money for my tooth!" It then clicked that I forgot to put the money under her pillow. How could I have forgotten to do such an important thing ~ well, important to a 5-year old. I had to act quick, so I went into her room to see if the tooth was still there - knowing full well that it was, but I had to put on a little act. Fortunately, to my advantage, the tooth didn't stay under her pillow - it fell behind her bed. So I said, "maybe the tooth fairy didn't know that you lost a tooth, because it wasn't under your pillow." She was still crying. I called Grandma Betty, and asked her if the tooth fairy ever forgot to come to our house when we were little, and Grandma didn't really know what I was talking about. I said, "Oh, so sometimes it took her a couple of days to collect the tooth and leave the money?!" That seemed to calm Chloe down. Phew!

So now, I just have to make sure I get those quarters under the pillow tonight!!:D


**Side note - What does the tooth fairy pay at your house? Do you have a tooth fairy? Ryan and I probably only got a quarter for each of our teeth growing up, so we thought 4 quarters was pretty reasonable. Believe it or not, I've heard of people giving $20/tooth!! And on the plane coming home from FL, the girl next to Chloe said she got $30/tooth!!! WHAT?!?!?! Multiply that by 20 teeth, and you're talking $600!!!! CRAZY!!!

Happy Birthday My Sweet Boy!!

Today, Brett turned 4. FOUR.YEARS.OLD!!!! Where has the time gone?!?!

It seems as though my little baby has turned into such a sweet boy ~ overnight! I think we've finally turned a corner with him. For awhile, he would do everything the opposite of what we would tell him to do, and wouldn't care about the consequence. Now, he's really trying to please both Ryan and me, and it's just awesome! If we tell him to do something, nine times out of ten, he'll say "yes mom, or o.k. mom!" Now, I will say he still does his fair share of whining, but we're working on it! ;)

We love you Brett and we are so blessed to have you in our family!!!


Tonight, we ate dinner on the porch - per Brett's request! :)


Then we moved on to presents! I just love this picture! Brett is thrilled with the present, but take a peak at Owen! :(



And then off to Dairy Queen for a birthday treat! :)

That's it!!!

We're home now and back to the daily grind! The boys were very happy to see us, and were pretty clingy for a while, but now it's pretty much business as usual!;) I've just posted I think 6 posts below, so be sure to check them out! They're filled with pictures! :)

Downtown Disney

Monday night, we headed over to Downtown Disney for dinner and ice cream. Downtown Disney just has a lot of fun shops and things for kids!


A pose with Mr. Potato Head!

I thought it was funny that after I took this picture of Chloe, she said, "You know mom, I don't really like princesses!"

This was in front of Legoland! These dogs were made out of Lego's!!

Again, we wore her out! She fell asleep in the car, and we were only 5 minutes from our hotel!

What an awesome trip! We filled it to the max, but I'm glad we did. There's always time for sleeping at home, but not on vacation!;)

Disney's Blizzard Beach

On Monday, we went to Disney's Blizzard Beach Water Park. Ryan and I have been there before, but it was a first for Chloe, so we kept it a surprise until we pulled into the parking lot! She was so excited!!!

Blizzard Beach looks like you are on a mountain full of snow. You even get to ride a ski lift up to a couple of rides!


Chloe, Leah and Cameron by the "snowmen."

This was the view from where our beach chairs were. Their were a bunch of rides on the top of that "mountain."

Daddy and Chloe in the wave pool

Daddy and Chloe

Loads of fun! At one point Chloe said to me, "Mom, really, this was the best surprise ever!" She even said it was her best vacation ever too! :)

Universal Studios - City Walk

Sunday night, we headed to Orlando for a couple of nights. My brother Paul and his family went to Orlando to, so we got to spend a couple of nights with them too! :)

That night, we went to Universal Studios. They have something called City Walk that has a bunch of stores and restaurants. Very cool. We went to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.


Another "family picture!" :)

My nephew Cameron, my niece Leah and Chloe

Riding the waves!

Acting goofy!

We wore her out! She was asleep before the lights were off!

New Smyrna Beach

On Sunday, my sister's friend let us use her beach house on New Smyrna Beach. It was absolutely awesome! It was right on the beach, and everyone came out to spend the day there.


Here's a view of the house from the beach

It had a great patio that we all fit on!:)

Chloe loved the water! The salt water didn't seem to bother her at all. I'm not a huge fan of it, but Ryan pulled me out there to jump some waves, and it was pretty fun!

Chloe loved the boogie board!

She spent most of her day out there with daddy!


She also loved finding seashells! The sweet little thing had to collect them all!!




And here she is in the baby pool cleaning them off! :)

We had such a great day! It was awesome to get to the beach too!

THE WEDDING!!!

The morning of the wedding started out in the pool!


Uncle Paul throwing Chloe! (I love this picture!!!)


This is a shot of the pool at the hotel. Absolutely everyone in the picture is here for the wedding! Just about every time we were in the pool, we had it to ourselves! I guess it would be a bit intimidating to come into the pool with that many people in it! :) We had a load of fun though!

We went and got Chloe's hair done! She looked so pretty! Melissa gave Chloe earrings and a necklace for being in the wedding. I love this next picture...




I know this next picture is blurring, but it's the only I got. This is of my brother-in-law seeing Melissa for the first time! Yeah, it had everyone in tears!!

Melissa's dress was absolutely gorgeous! And she looked awesome in it!!


This was where the ceremony was held.

Simon and Chloe did an awesome job going down the aisle!

This was right afterwards!


The cake!


This is the cake topper - Melissa put the pink rhinestones all over it. Let me just talk about the rhinestones for a bit. Not only did the invites have I think 10 maybe 11 rhinestones on each on, the place cards had 9 on each one, the menus each had two, and her veil had a ton, but it was gorgeous (not too much!) It was all done very classy and it looked so pretty! Oh, and Simon's pillow had some on it too! :)

The happy couple!

Another happy couple! :)


Me, my brother Len, my mom and Melanie


I love this picture of my nephew, Trey and Chloe!

Chloe, Simon and Amanda being announced into the reception


Loved this picture of David and Melissa!

Daddy and Chloe

Daddy and Chloe being silly!

A family picture - minus the boys! :) We were a family of three for a little while! :)

The "Candy Bar." Each guest got to fill up a bag with pink candies!

Chloe took this picture of David and Melissa's first dance. Not too bad! :)

Thought this was a cute picture of Chloe watching David and Melissa dancing.

My little Dancing Queen!



By the end of the night, Chloe's hair started to fall down, so we took out all of the bobby pins! She decided to pin a flower in it !:)


This is the only picture I got of the flowers.

We had a great night! Seemed like everything went perfect!