Paddle Board Adventure

One final story from our trip to Florida, and then I promise to move on to more current news :)

Marcus and the boys had a little adventure the morning that we went to the Sebastian Inlet Tide Pool that I think deserves a post of its own. Marc's dad met us there and brought one of his paddle boards along. Marcus took the paddle board out for a little spin, and then he let me go out on it. I have never been on a paddle board before, and I thought it was pretty fun. After I came back, Marcus decided to take Caleb out on the board. I was a little nervous, since Caleb did not have a life jacket and he and Marcus were going out into a pretty strong current, but I knew that Marcus is a superb swimmer and experienced life guard, so I held my tongue. They paddled around for a while, and then came back in to give Ethan a turn. I was even less excited about this, since Ethan couldn't even swim alone, but I handed him to Marcus and reached to take Caleb off. Marcus stopped me and said he was going to take them both out. I told him that I thought that was not a good idea and I would rather him just take one at a time. He still wanted to take them both, so I let it go, not wanting to embarrass him with an altercation in front of his dad.

As I watched them go, I bit my lip and prayed that neither boy would fall off the board and everyone would get back safely. Everything went smoothly for the first few minutes, but then I heard my father-in-law (who has the guts to deliberately touch jelly fish and surf amongst sharks), mutter "This is really not a good idea...really quite dangerous..." That was all I needed to hear, so I called out to Marcus and waved my arms toward shore. A moment after he glanced up, someone lost his balance, and all three were dumped off the board and into the water. I dove in and swam out toward them, but (since I am not a superb swimmer) I knew it would be a minute or two before I could get out that far. Marcus had told the boys beforehand that, if they fell in, Caleb was to swim to the board and hold on, and Marcus would go after Ethan. That is exactly how it played out. Caleb surfaced and grabbed the board, and Marcus scooped Ethan out of the water and put him back on the board. By the time I arrived, things were under control. (Other than Ethan repeating, "Daddy, don't ever, ever, ever, ever do dat again.") Marcus wanted to take them back out so they could end on a more positive note, but my nerves had had all they could take, so I vetoed that and we all headed back to shore. If I have anything to do with it, there will be no more boarding ventures into the ocean without life jackets for many years.

Time With Family

We arrived in Melbourne (Marcus's hometown) early Monday evening. Our whole trip to Florida was actually planned around being in town for Marcus's mother's 60th birthday. To add to the celebration, we decided to surprise Mimi about our family coming to town. We pulled up at her house, let the boys out of the car, and sent them to ring the door bell by themselves. Mimi was expecting her son-in-law, Josh, and it took her a minute to process that it was really her only two out-of-town grandchildren. When she recovered and realized it was really us, there was much laughing and catching up.

Mimi had a great birthday week, complete with lots of time with her five grandchildren, a home-cooked meal of lasagna, and the best birthday present ever: all the kids worked together to compile a book of photos from her childhood on, as well as letters from all of her children and close friends. Needless to say, she loved it :) And to top it all off, we took all the grandkids for a (semi) professional photo shoot, and now Mimi has a framed picture of her five grandbabies on the wall :)

Other highlights of a our time with family were a morning at the Sebastian inlet tide pool (which the kids LOVED), an afternoon at the Melbourne Zoo lagoon, an adults-only dinner at the Melting Pot (thanks to Mimi both for paying and babysitting!), lots of swimming (both in Mike's pool and Mimi's pool), late night talks at Mike's house, and (for Marcus & Mike), lots and lots of PS3 time :)

All in all, the kids had a great week. They handled all the chaos really well. Caleb made us proud many times with his willingness to share and his cooperative attitude. Ethan made us proud by not having a potty training relapse during the nine days of travel. Even though he's been potty-trained for months, we thought we might have to put him in Pull-ups this week because of all the time in the car and the constantly-changing environments, but he ended up doing great! We did have to make a lot more potty stops than we are used to on the road, but it was totally worth it to get through the whole trip with dry underwear :)

As for the trip home, I will spare you the details. Let's just suffice it to say that I'm glad we don't have another road trip on the calendar until Christmas :)

(Mimi hugging Marcus after our surprise arrival.)

Pictures From Orlando Weekend

Group picture of the 11 kids (w/o 2-year-old Conner, who was MIA)

Ethan climbing the rope wall...pretty impressive for such a little guy

I enjoyed the water slides almost as much as the boys did :)

We came across a locust while walking to the pool.

The boys enjoyed holding it and letting it crawl on them.

Here is the living area of our condo.

Orlando Weekend

To continue the account of our trip... we spent a night in Gainesville with our good friends, Lauren and Danny (and their three children). In the morning, both families loaded up their respective cars and we all drove the 2 1/2 hours to Orlando to join the other two families we would be spending the weekend with. We met them at the Bass Pro Shop on International Drive a little before noon. (Where of course we had to tell everyone about our recent Bass Pro Shop Adventure.) We spent about an hour walking around in there, and then, just as we were about to leave, Marcus stopped to point out something interesting: a representative from Gatorland was standing around with a 4-foot American alligator. The gator's mouth was taped shut with black duct tape, and he was just crawling around on the floor of the Bass Pro Shop. At first, I could hardly believe it, but before I even said anything, the boys (and every other kid around) were petting the gator. We hung around for a while, talking to the guy from Gatorland, and ended up even having a picture taken of the boys holding the gator. (Check back later for a picture.)

The next place we went was the Ginn Reunion Resort, which is where we stayed for our annual reunion with a group of friends from our years in Gainesville, FL. Through the six years that we have done this trip, our families have grown significantly. Now, the kids outnumber the adults! Everyone but us has three kids, so there were eleven kids and eight adults. Add to that the fact that eight of the eleven kids are boys, and you can imagine the mayhem in the condos we rented :)

Nevertheless, we all had a great time visiting, and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves in the resort's water park. One day, Ethan even took a nap in my arms while we floated the lazy river in an inner tube. And even with three days in a row in the sun, nobody got a sunburn. When the weekend was over, we piled back into our loaded-up car and headed to the east coast for some time with Marcus's family.

Caleb & Chase

I will continue blogging about our trip tomorrow, but, for today, here is a funny conversation between 4-year-old Caleb and his 5-year-old cousin, Chase.

Chase loves Transformers, and he was busy arranging 15+ of his Transformers in an army on his side of the play room. Caleb came over and asked Chase if he could have a Transformer to play with. Chase picked up one and told Caleb its name and what it does. Then he started to hand it to Caleb, but reconsidered and replaced it in the army. Then he picked up another one and repeated the same routine. When Chase was holding and talking about the third Transformer, Caleb got tired of waiting, picked up the nearest toy, and began playing. This is where it got funny:

Chase: Hey! That's my Transformer! You can't take it!

Caleb: (loudly) IT'S NOT YOURS! EVERYTHING BELONGS TO GOD!

Chase: (matching Caleb's decibel) NO IT DOESN'T! MY MOMMY AND DADDY BOUGHT THESE FOR ME!

Caleb: (one notch louder) GOD GAVE THEM THE MONEY!

I laughed so hard! (And Chase let Caleb play with the Transformer :)