At the beach...

Here are the pictures from Tuesday of our trip to Florida. My mom and I took the kids to Clearwater beach to take pictures by the pier. Of course they stayed dry for all of five minutes. Most of the pictures are of the girls splashing in the water. Penelope was reluctant at first to step into the water. Before long she was diving under the waves. We had so much fun. It was the perfect day.

Meet Dora...

Noah is dressing up Dora in Luke Skywalkers Jedi robe.

I mentioned Dora in the last post, so I thought I would introduce her to you all. The newest addition to our family. Dora the rex rat. The kids love her. She is a very friendly little critter. Noah named his brother so it was only fair to let Emma name our rat. Thomas has only seen her once. The other night she was making noise in her cage. Thomas jumped out of bed to run downstairs to see if someone was in the house. I told him it was only the rat. He had forgotten that we even have her. Out of sight out of mind. It's better that way. He doesn't want anything to do with her tail. It's actually soft. She's like a tiny dog.

Florida or bust...

December 9th I decided to pack up the car and drive down to Florida to visit the parents. We are staying home for Christmas and I thought it would be a nice Idea to surprise the grandparents. I had a great plan to get lot's of pictures of the kids at the beach. I have the pictures blown up in my dining room and I will share them in a later post. Last minute trips are always great. With four kids it only took me four hours to pack up the car and clean the house. I am pretty picky about everything being in order before I leave so this put me on the road at 5:45pm. The kids passed out at 9:00pm watching Finding Nemo and I drove without stopping until we reached Gainsville and needed gas. All three of the kids were pretty silent the entire trip. All but my fire craker. Nele made sure to ask me the same question over and over again for about an hour straight. "Mommy what are you doing up there"? I replied 210 times "Mommy is driving Nele". Every now and then she would say "get me out of here" or "I'm all done". My favorite was, " Where are we going"? I would reply, "To Florida Penelope". She would say " oh mommy, but where are we going"? Eight hours, four kids and one stop. Not too bad. We arrived at my moms at 1:30 , she was in such a deep sleep I could not get her up to come to the door. We packed back up, Dora and all (that is our pet rat) and we headed 10 minutes down the road to Thomas's parents house. They were so surprised to see us on their doorstep. Thomas's dad peeped through the peep hole, opened the door and said " I looked out and saw little children and thought they were lost in the dark". Thomas knows me well, so he wasn't as suprised as everyone else to hear I was in Florida Monday morning. On Monday Thomas's mom and I took the kids to Busch Gardens. Oh what fun! Perfect day, perfect weather. Thanks mom for such a great time. We had so much fun! Thanks for watching the kids so I could ride on a roller coaster. Thomas's I missed you so much. We will have to do it sometime when you are with us! Here are the kids on their first ride. Nele's face when it was in the air was priceless. She grined so big!
Thomas's mom fastening the kids in.
I can't believe I gave birth to such a fair skined child. This was the first time I have been out in the sun with a baby and been really concerned about getting them sunburned!

Emma came to life in the water. We spent over half an hour standing in the splash zone of this ride so that she could get soaked when it passed by. She would stand their and scream with glee when it came roaring by. Then she would say " again mommy, again"! She drew an audience. I looked over at one point and atleast a dozen people were standing there saying "look at the little girl"!
Emma would not leave Dragon Land very willingly. She hiked up her pants and away she went jumping from rock to rock in the splash zone. It wasn't too long before she had soaked her clothes.
Emma again...

Whoa these guys are soooo tall...

The bird atrium was fun. Everyone loved this but Nele. She still talks about how the bird bit her on her finger. She say's "that birdy was not kind to me mommy".

We traveled back home on Wed. We didn't make such great time on the way back. Stop after stop and one child screaming "get me out of here" (guess which one:) and I realized why I don't make the trip more often!

I will post the pictures of Tuesday's beach trip later. To all my friends in Florida who I did not tell I was in town, I am sorry. I did not bring my contact book with me and we were visiting for such a short time. I will try to see you guys next time. I did think of you all! Love you all!

Everyone say Turkey...

I am very behind on my posts. A big thank you to Thomas's parents (gramo and poppy) for coming up to stay with us over Thanksgiving. The kids enjoyed having you here. We had so much fun playing I spy at the table and going around telling each other all we are thankful for. We are very thankful for you guys. A side note to anyone else reading this, observe the big vase behind Penelope. Guess how long that took to come down?:) We had a great time!

The boys and Poppy

Thomas's parents came up to visit over Thanksgiving. One of the highlights for Noah was going into the wood's behind our house and shooting his airsoft gun at targets on the trees. Noah was so excited to get all geared up and venture down into the woods with the big boys.

"Thank's daddy and Poppy this is great!"

Can't really tell this is grandpa hun?