Kid Week

This past week has been kid week at our house.


Lisa needed a babysitter for the week so I have been watching Allison for her. Most of the week Jarad also came over. Hartsul has been here all week too, so he and Jarad kept each other occupied.


They have played ball and rode the scooter.
















I had forgotten how much energy it takes to keep up with a two year old.

I have to give my sister major praise for being able to do all she does. Working and keeping a house running is alot of work in itself, but add in an active two year old and you have your hands full. I know Timmy and Jarad help out alot too, but still it has to be tiring.





Allison reminds me so much of Lindsey when she was little. She is always on the go and wants to be right in the middle of whatever the other kids are doing. It has been very entertaining.




On Wednesday in particular, there were 6 kids here. Lindsey, two of her friends, Hartsul, Jarad, and Allison. The boys talked the girls into playing war....in the house.




So we had the boys with their guns and the girls with their guns hiding and shooting at each other.








Allison sat in the computer chair, in the living room, and shot them as they would go by.


One day Lindsey had another friend over and Allison talked them into coloring with her.



Several days we went outside and drew on the sidewalk.

























The kids have built things with blocks,


played war, played on the computer, and the playstation along with Jarad's wii system that he brought over a few days.





Adam came over one afternoon and joined in on the fun.











Allison found a flute that she really liked to use to wake Lindsey up with.

We played with barbies, watched some cartoons,

and just had a good time.

I have enjoyed the week very much.
My kids are nearly grown and I miss them being little, so this has been good for me to have a little one in the house.
Also, Lindsey has gotten a small taste of what it is like to have a younger sibling.
I think we have all enjoyed the week.

Honeymoon Part Three....The Finale

For the last day of our trip we decided to go to Cocoa Beach.

Just before we reached Cocoa Beach, we went through Port Canaveral. Disney Cruise Line makes its home in Port Canaveral, as well as Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. As we were driving, we could see one of the Carnival ships docked. I was trying to get a picture of it from the road, so Michael got off of the interstate and got me closer so that I could get a good picture of the ship.

I was quite impressed with the size of the ship, it was huge.

We got into Cocoa Beach just a few minutes after leaving Port Canaveral. We began looking for a hotel. Since we had left this day open we didn't have reservations. We were hoping to find a hotel with an ocean view. Much to our surprise, there were hotels with views of the ocean, but no access to it. You had to walk or drive to the main pier to access the beach. The hotel we ended up getting had beach access, but we couldn't get one with a view.

We checked into our room and headed to the beach.

It was crowded, the most crowded of our whole trip. It was the weekend and hot, so I guess that accounted for alot of that.

A few minutes after arriving on the beach, we saw the cruise ship go sailing by. It was really neat to see it sailing so close to where we were.

The Kennedy Space Center is just 20 mins. from Cocoa Beach and they advertise it well. This astronaut display was in the lobby of our hotel. In the gift shop were lots of NASA t-shirts and memorabilia.

The next morning we got up and headed to the beach for a little while before packing up and heading to Orlando for our flight home.

We went through Port Canaveral again, this time we could see three boats docked in the port.

In the picture you can see two of them, the Disney and the Royal Caribean.

We got to Orlando with plenty of time before our flight was to leave. We checked our bags, I did a little shopping, had a snack, watched the planes coming and going and Michael did some reading. I made Michael pose with Mickey at the airport.

Finally it was time to board the plane. We didn't have a non stop flight this time. We had to go into Atlanta. The flight was pleasant, we reached Atlanta in about an hour. I watched another plane land on the runway beside us, as we were landing. That was rather cool.

Oh my goodness is that a big airport. We sat on the runway waiting to taxi into the terminal for about 20 minutes. In that time, from where we were sitting I watched 16 planes take off.

I took this picture from the window of the plane while we were sitting on the runway. We could see the terminal that we needed to go to, but couldn't because there were several other planes lined up trying to get into the terminal also.

Once we got off the plane, we had to find our boarding gate. Which wasn't an easy task, because they kept changing it. Four times they changed it. We went from gate 3 to gate 25 to gate 8 and then finally gate 11. We were exhausted. We had carry on bags, that were quite heavy, and not alot of time to be at the correct gate. By the time we boarded our plane.....we were pooped. We arrived in Nashville around 11pm. Our limo driver was waiting for us, we retrieved our luggage and headed for home. It was around midnight when we got there. It was sure a sight for sore eyes.

That was our trip, I have enjoyed sharing it with you.

Be sure to check back for life with the newlyweds.........

Honeymoon Part Two

The second part of our honeymoon trip was spent in Daytona.

We decided to take a more scenic route than the interstate.

So we drove along the coast to Daytona.

It was a very pleasant drive with views of the ocean, hotels and houses.

The hotels aren't right on the water, so there are a number of spots to pull off the road and access the beach.

These were great, Michael could have his cigarette and I could walk down to the water. Usually no one was there but us, it was like having our own private beach.

We reached Daytona and found our hotel, The Plaza Resort And Spa, which is just down from the main street pier. Our room was an ocean front room with a balcony.

I love sitting on the balcony, especially at night, listening to the waves.

Because it was turtle nesting season, there were no lights at night near the beach. One night we walked down to the water to see if we could find any turtle tracks or turtles. Of course, we did not.

One of my favorite things about the beach is watching the sun rise over the water. It was the perfect beginning to the day, every day we were there. Rather it was seen from the beach itself or the balcony of our room, it was spectacular.

It is easy to tell which pictures were taken from the balcony, because I couldn't get a shot without the trees being in it.

I like watching the beach come to life. Before the sun peaks up from the horizon there are only a few people on the beach. The early morning runners or walkers and the few of us waiting for the sunrise. As daylight begins to break, you can see a few more people.

The balconies of the hotels begin to have occupants and hotel staff members are busy setting up the rental umbrellas and chairs along the beach.

Soon you can see the life guards taking their place in their watch tower chairs.

Out on the water you can see the boats begin to sail by.

By noon, the parasailers are on the water and the beach is alive with people.

The beach was really wonderful and we enjoyed it very much. We did find that Daytona is a very different place than St. Augustine. In St. Augustine, we felt safe walking around the streets of the area day or night. Daytona, was a different story. You had to keep your guard up. We were approached by pan handlers and rude pushy condo salesmen. One morning, I decided to walk to one of the shops that we had visited the day before. It was only about two blocks from our hotel. It was around 11am or so, on the main street, plenty of people around, and this man kept following me. If I slowed down, he slowed down, if I walked faster, he walked faster. I stopped at one point pretending to look at something in a shop window.....he stopped. I was beginning to get a little scared, so I quickly went into a shop and walked right up to a group of people inside, like I was meeting them. I asked them for directions. He finally walked on up the street. I didn't go anywhere without Michael after that.

While we were there we visited Ponce Inlet and the Ponce De Leon Lighthouse.

It was a very special treat for me. This made the fourth time that I have visited Daytona.

My other visits had only been for a day at the beach and even though I knew of the lighthouse, I had not even seen it until my third trip there. Even then I wasn't able to go inside the lighthouse because they were doing renovations. So this time, I was going to climb that lighthouse or else.........

There are alot of stairs to climb to reach the top, but it was sooooo worth it.

Seeing the view from the top of the beach lined with hotels, the jetty, and New Smyrna Beach across the water is awesome to me.

I do love it.....

The tickets are all day tickets so we climed the lighthouse, then left to have lunch at one of the restaurants on the water and returned to tour the rest of the lighthouse museum buildings.

After the lighthouse, we spent the rest of the day down at the beach.

From the jetty we watched a group of surfers. Some of them were pretty good.












There were several jellyfish swimming along the rocks of the jetty. It was kind of hard to get a picture of them. They would come up only for a few seconds and then back down into the water.


Michael knew that I wanted to see the lighthouse at night, so he made sure that we drove back at night to see it all illuminated.
It was truly beautiful. The picture does not do it justice.
Our time in Daytona was nice, we enjoyed it very much. It isn't a place I care to visit with the kids, but it has good points too.
Our last day of our trip we left open. We made no reservations. We decided to just play it by ear to see what we felt at the time that we wanted to do.
So be sure and check back to see where we ended up and for the final chapter.