Monday, May 9, 2011

Relay 2011


Friends for LIFE 2011

I did not even take my camera this year, all the pictures I have are courtesy of my Dad :)
Color guard to lead the opening lap

Jared selling pizzas

Mommy and Ryan

Survivor/ Caregiver Lap

Mom, Nan and Tracey

Mr. Willy Wonka and the Misster Relay participants

kind of blurry but it's hard to get this shot of the luminary ceremony

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JARED

WOW #12 where has the time gone?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Love,
Mom, Dad, Kevin and Ryan

Monday, May 2, 2011

Jared's Birthday Field Trip


Jared's Birthday Field trip 2011. All our boy wanted was to see the penguins, not the ones at the Georgia Aquarium down the street, the ones in Tennessee. Well, you only turn 12 once so we packed up with the kids plus Justin and Anthony. We had a GREAT day!!

First stop was the touch tank

The next visit was to the butterfly room. I think Ryan could have stayed in there ALL day. Butterfly Ry was like the butterfly whisperer. They LOVED her.

Kevin was getting SO frustrated because they would not land on him. He tried so hard to "hold" a butterfly. Ryan got one to land on her finger and shared with her bubby...

My personal favorite ;)

This picture absolutely cracks me up. I love Kevin's face :)

I forgot this ones name, yes I did know it for a while...I learned it during the up close Penguin encounter that we were able to go on...HAPPY BIRTHDAY JARED!!

So happy to be with his friends and hanging out with penguins. I think the day was everything he dreamed it would be. We got to observe the penguins with about 8 other kids. It was a great way to ask questions, watch up close and learn more about my boys favorite animal

I love this shot of the sea horse

sea dragon, so beautiful!

We did both aquarium buildings, two animal encounters (the penguin encounter and all about sharks), we saw the IMAX move about African Elephants and Orangutan monkeys in the wild. We indulged on Ben & Jerry's and totally enjoyed our Tennessee day.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

April Recap

I started the month by telling the kids to enjoy April cause before we know it, it will be summer. April and May FLY by in the Homerhouse. I am now sitting here in my bathing suit the 2nd week of June catching up from a crazy 6 weeks...

The weekend of the 15-16th we had our 8th annual Spring Garage Sale for the Relay for Life. We raised around $1,000. Not bad, I can deal with making $500 a day :) That Sunday we went to Chattanooga for Jared's birthday present, the Tennessee Aquarium with Justin and Anthony. I have about 160 pics from the day so I will post that separate.

The next weekend was Easter at the lake. The weather was beautiful and the service was great. I really enjoyed hearing the trumpets (Daddy and Rick)...maybe next year Kevin will join in. He is looking forward to taking up the trumpet in the Fall. :)

The next weekend was a Girls Weekend in Orlando. Rob gave me a trip for my 35th birthday to head down to Ft. Myers to see my girlfriend Eva. She grabbed me at the airport and we drove on up to Orlando to stay with my high school girlfriend Staci. The tow girls had never met before but you would never know it-we all had such a great time. Friday after we hung out for a bit we got all dolled up and went to dinner at Ohana, the BEST dinner place on Disney property. I have never seen (or eaten) so much food. We laughed until we cried almost every moment of the evening, what fun! Saturday we hit the parks. Staci works at EPCOT so we we lucky to get a ticket to get into the Park (THANKS STACE!!). We walked into Epcot from the boardwalk ( I had never been back there) and spent about half the day in EPCOT. I got the kids treats there, including Duffy. Duffy needs his own post...long story short, Duff is like Flat Stanley and the "Girls gone wild" spent the day walking around Epcot with our teddy taking pictures. :) Oh yeah, we are wild ones! The plan was to get the pictures developed and put into an album for Ryan. We spent the other half of the day in MGM, so much fun and I even rode the roller coaster. EEEK! Sunday I taught the girls how to geocache...after a morning at downtown Disney. I think they are both hooked :) What a great time. Eva and I said goodbye to Staci Sunday night and drove home to Cape Coral, I had a flight out Monday at 1 pm. How I hated to leave...plus I had Relay breathing down my neck.

Speaking if Relay, that was the following weekend. I will post on that next but we really did well. I was worried that we wouldn't have enough help, but everything worked out just fine. We raised a few thousand dollars the night of and ran out of pizzas three times. The new balloo-min-aries were a HIT, so great!