Florida "Staycation"

Dave's parents were visiting this week. It was a great week. We did all kinds of things that we don't normally do. We went to Daytona Beach on Monday. That was a lot of fun. It was perfect having 4 adults to 5 children - it made it a lot less stressful. We had talked to some people about the best place to park in Daytona and two different people recommended a place called Sun Splash park. It had free parking and a little splash pad for the kids to play in while we were unpacking the car at the beginning and packing it at the end. It was a great day at the beach! The kids played and played all day - in the waves, in the sand, at the splash pad. Too much fun!

 all of us when we first got there

Tim and Pop-Pop playing in the water

Mom-Mom and Anna

 Josh with his hands full of sand

Dave was in the water the whole time - pulling kids on the boogie boards, jumping the waves with other kids, holding Anna's hand. He was such a trooper!

 cute Anna

 Sarah & Sam on the boogie boards we borrowed

 I think we wore Pop-Pop out

We also headed over to Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse at the end of our visit to the beach. I took the younger two children out to some cheesy souvenir shops while the rest of them climbed the lighthouse and toured the grounds. 

Then on Wednesday of their visit, we headed on down to a Disney hotel to visit Dave's sister who was visiting down from NY. We just had to pay for parking and then we were able to swim at the pools and use the water slides. It was such a fun day! We loved seeing Tim and Diane, Ethan and Kady, and Tim's family. We swam and swam and swam! Then we had lunch and swam some more! It was great fun. Timothy said he thinks he went down the water slide 22 times! Then we went over to the Disney Boardwalk, had some ice cream and celebrated Ethan's birthday. 

 the littlest cousins :)

at the pool behind the Swan and the Dolphin (the name of the hotel)

 

 the cousins enjoying some ice cream

Anna REALLY enjoyed her ice cream

It was fun doing some of the more "tourist" type things even though we live here! I guess that is kind of the point of a "staycation" anyway. 

We are so thankful that Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom were able to come and visit. What a special week!

Zoom-Air Ropes Course

Well, the kids have finished their year in 4H (except for a 4H record book, which will hopefully be done soon). Two years ago, my friend Bonnie and I started a 4H group. We are two alike women (We call ourselves "two peas in a pod") and so needless to say, our group had a fun, zany (if not chaotic, at times) feel to it. But, in the midst of that, we accomplished some great things with our little 4H group. The name of our group was the Hot Peppers, because as one of the older girls said, "We are spicy!" and you know - it really fit our group!

When our 4H group entered the fair this year, we won 4th place for our booth and we got $400 for our effort! So, yesterday we all went to our local zoo and did a Zoom-Air Ropes Course. We used the money we got from the fair to treat the kids to the ropes course. It was so fun! It was challenging for some of the kids, but they all did it and they felt a great sense of accomplishment when they were done. (A few of the children had done it before, like Joshua, but for many of the children, it was their first time!) It was so neat to see how encouraging they were to one another - even when some of the kids would finish, they would go back through and run along below shouting encouragement to the others. It was a blessing to this mama's heart.

Our fun and crazy Hot Peppers Group

The littlest ones went into the zoo to play at the splash pad, 

while the medium sized kids got to go on a children's course.

 Tim and his friend doing the children's course

Sarah was a little scared at first, but she enjoyed it at the end!!

She did great too!

 Joshua's best friend

 Below is our super fast Joshua going on the zip line. 

 He and one of the other kids FLEW through the course! 

(As soon as you were done getting your instruction you could start and he and the other friend were done with the whole course when everyone else was just about halfway through!)

One of the older girls finishing up on the last zip line.

What a wonderful end to our special 4H experience.

A is for Anna

You know how they say that the younger ones learn from the older ones? Well, it has certainly been true in our case. I have been working with Samuel on learning his letters and lo and behold - who should learn to write the letter A, but Anna?!

OK, this is a bulletin from church on Sunday, but if you look closely at the red A's - they were all drawn by Anna.

Also today Anna was enjoying looking at a chapter book that is actually way too old for her but I just thought it was cute:

Family bike ride

Yesterday our whole family took a bike ride on the trails here in Florida. This was something we have been wanting to do for a while. It was so fun! We had to borrow a friend's bike so that Anna could ride on the back (we don't have a baby carrier), but that worked out perfect. Anna is actually riding her little bike with training wheels now, but we knew she wouldn't be able to make it as far as we were going. The kids did great! It was over 5 miles that we biked. We rode between two parks - about 2 1/2 miles each way. So we rode up to the one that has a nice playground, played at the playground for a while and then biked back. We had watermelon and trail mix waiting in the cooler when we got back to the car! What a fun day!

Joshua Spielberg Presents...

Joshua has been having fun the last few days making stop-action movies about his Lego mini-figures. He's had a good time and is learning the basics of video editing on the computer.

The end results, in parts 1 and 2:

(Music from Templates Wise)

Circus Week in our School

This week we have been doing Circus week for Samuel in preschool. It was a fun week! We checked out several books on the circus and we have been reading those each day in his school time. We also had cotton candy one day for snack, made paper elephants for a craft and Samuel, Anna and Time painted their circus box (you will see the box in the video when there is the elephant parade).

Today everyone got involved (including an upstairs neighbor) and we had a circus of our very own. Samuel and Sarah named it the Super Circus. Enjoy!

South Carolina

I didn't include any pictures from South Carolina (sorry Mom and Dad) because we didn't remember to get out our camera those days. We were very fortunate to be able to stay with my parents in S. Carolina both going up to Kentucky and then again on the way home from Pennsylvania. I kept telling my mom their house was the best hotel ever! We got free dinner, free breakfast, 3 separate rooms, a personal bathroom and not to mention a place filled with love! We even got to hang out at their house one extra day. We are so thankful for our wonderful trip up north.

Dave's Birthday

We celebrated Dave's birthday on Easter with Dave's parents. It was a special day. Dave was kind of tired of cake after 5 birthdays in the course of 3 1/2 weeks, so we had "birthday pie." Of course, Dave really would prefer pie over cake anyday. :)

 Easter morning

with Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom

 Anna giving Daddy a hug for his birthday

 

a silly moment with Sarah

 his apple pie with candles in the shape of a 35

the birthday boys with their apple pie :)

Easter Tidings of Joy

I have always loved Easter. Spring has always been one of my favorite times of the year. I love the new buds on the trees, the spring flowers, the new birth all around us. I esp. love celebrating our Risen Savior - who is still alive today! Amen!
Isn't it just like the Lord - when we went to Kentucky, all of the tulips were blooming (my personal favorite as far as flowers go) and as we went up to Pennsylvania, all the trees were blossoming too. So us Floridians got to enjoy spring - even on a trip!

It is always special spending Easter with Dave's parents. The kids were looking forward to having an Easter egg hunt with their grandparents. We did the egg hunt the day before Easter, just for fun.

 Notice the egg taped to Dave's back :) 

 It took the kids forever to find that one!

 Anna searching for eggs

 yes, there was one in the gas tank

Everyone with their baskets

Josh's 11th birthday

After we left our dear friends in Kentucky, we headed up to Pennsylvania to see Dave's parents. We were there for Easter and for celebrating both Josh's and Dave's birthday. Today I will talk about Josh's 11th birthday. His actual birthday was while we were in Kentucky, but he really wanted to celebrate with his Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. It was such a nice time. That first night we got there, we celebrated his big day. Wow, it is so hard to believe that my baby is 11. (Before we left for our trip, I hugged Joshua and said that my baby was growing up. I told him that makes me want to cry. Sarah said, "Yeah, Mom, he's almost a pre-teen." I told her that makes me want to cry for a different reason.)

 my sweet 11 year old

 Joshua showing us his age

Pop-Pop bringing over his cake

When we got home, we actually had a little birthday party with his two closest friends from church. It was a low-key birthday party here at home - just celebrating our sweet Joshua.

 Joshua with his Lego Ninjago Rattlecopter cake - 

(how is that for a really specific request for a cake?!)

 

with his buddies. One of them even gave him the Ninjago Rattlecopter for his birthday.

What a fun day. What a sweet, growing-up boy.

Saying goodbye to our old Kentucky home

Where do I even begin? We have had a very busy couple of weeks! We got our oil change 2 weeks ago and it is just 300 miles short of needing a second oil change!! We put over 2500 miles on our good little minivan in the past few weeks. We traveled up to S. Carolina, then to Kentucky (with a very short stop in Tennessee for a hike the Smokies - we couldn't resist this! see below)

and then up to Pennsylvania. It was a great trip. It was like the Lord had wrapped up a beautiful present and gave it to us. He worked out every detail and we were so grateful.

This blog will be about our trip to Kentucky. It is titled "saying goodbye" because when we moved from Kentucky almost 4 years ago, we thought we were moving back there. Well, the plan has changed somewhat over those four years. We still currently own our house in Kentucky, but we are in the process of selling it. We hope to have it on the market next week sometime. It is bittersweet because we loved our home their in Kentucky, but ultimately, it is just a house - the memories will be ours forever, but the house is not going to be. Please pray that it will sell quickly! Also, when we left the last time, we said goodbye temporarily to our dear friends in Kentucky, but now we had to also go and say goodbye because we are moving to another place now. Although, we don't know where that is right now. So, it was a mixed bag of emotions - sadness to be saying goodbye, but also peace that the Lord is leading us in a new direction.

We had two big parties while in Kentucky. The Lord worked this out so beautifully for us. We had one party at Answers in Genesis - where Dave used to work. It was such a wonderful blessing seeing our dear friends from there. We had it at AiG so that the husbands who worked there could just come downstairs for lunch. The wives and I set it up for them. It was just lovely to see everyone. These friends are very precious to us and how we thank God for their part in our lives. After lunch, we got to hang out at the Creation Museum - such a special day.

Dave with Ron and Dan

most of the children who were present - two of them were too wiggly to stay in the picture!!

the girls :)

Anna with a ferocious dinosaur!!

"AHHH! A T-rex is after me!"
 (Good thing I stopped and took this photo while he was after me!)

playing on one of Buddy Davis's dinosaurs

this beautiful "7 C's of History" quilt in the Creation Museum

my dear friend and our littlest ones

a zonkey in the petting zoo

In the evening of this day we also had a wonderful and precious party with our dear friends from our old church. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures that night, but it was a great time!

The following day, we saw a few more very dear friends and said goodbye to them. We also met with the Realtor to get our house on the market. 

 Goodbye dear house

 my dear friend Tracy

 the kids having a good time with their dear friends

my dear friend Gloria

 our girls and one of our closest friend's girls. (Boy, are we going to miss you, Angel!!)

our boys and Josh's good friend from KY