Long Anticipated Photos From Florida

Our trip to Florida was successful. Successful meaning, we arrived alive, mommy having not killed anyone in her stressed-out state, did all the visiting and socializing we wanted to do, didn't lose anything (this fact in itself is amazing since we had a toddler in tow), and then made it back home without mommy killing anyone again, yay. The trip was fun, as fun as a trip involving a plane ride with a toddler can be.

I won't bore you with all the long, drawn out details of our trip (that's what the photos here are for!), but I'll leave you with a few of the not-so-great highlights, in hopes that you can laugh at some of our mishaps:

* Day 1, at the airport: We are smart. Oh so very smart. Three adults (Lee, Mike, and myself) and one toddler boy... we can carry all 4 huge suitcases, a laptop bag, a backpack, a giant diaper bag, one purse, a car seat, and a stroller all in ONE trip from the car (way out in the boonies in relation to the airport entrance door), right??? RIGHT! We can, and we did. How and why we did this? That's something we're still trying to figure out. By the time we got to the check-in counter we were all a sweaty, out-of-breath mess, but we made it. ** We did smarten up and use a cart to get all of our crap back to the car on our return trip home though.

* The plane ride from Chattanooga to St. Petersburg: The flight's going great; Logan's sound asleep, sprawled out across my chest and lap, oh and I'm in the aisle seat and Lee's in the window seat. That's when something very wrong happens. Lee just has to go pee, and NOW. I'm all, "Are you sure you can't hold it?" and "Come on, Lee, he's SLEEPING." So, Lee, being the slick one that he is, gets up to carefully squeeze over me and the sleeping terror child in hopes he won't wake Logan and cause me to murder him there in front of all the other passengers. No such luck, as I'm sure you figured, or else, why on earth would I be telling this story? The kid wakes up, starts wailing, and at that moment, when I wanted to dig a hole and crawl underneath into the luggage compartment of the airplane, people start looking. And looking. And staring. And shooting dirty looks. I came pretty close to either flipping the bird or shouting out something just as rude as the looks they all gave me. Why is it when your child is screaming his lungs out and you absolutely canNOT calm him, does time seem to stop? In reality, Lee was probably in the lavatory for 5 minutes. For me, it felt like 20 minutes of hell.

* A few nice, relaxing, uneventful days in Port Charlotte later: Monday, a beautiful beach day. Lee, me, Logan, my brother Grant, his girlfriend Nikki and her kids Ryan and Lindsey all headed out to Boca Grande for a day of fun in the sun. We had fun, lots of it. I may have had just a bit too much fun. My beach day was followed by a major, severe, awful, terrible, miserable, painful allergic reaction to some unknown thing at the beach (I'm going to guess it was something to do with jellyfish goo in the water, but what the heck do I know.) Did I have eyes anymore? I'm not quite sure seeing as my entire face around my eyes swelled up so hugely that you could not see my eye color, much less if I actually owned a pair of peepers. I spent Tuesday at the lovely emergency room getting a prescription for steroid pills to make my bubble face shrink back down to normal. It took 3 whole days (maybe even a little over 3 days) before I resembled myself again. Sorry, I have no photos of that fun look I was sporting.

The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly. Those are just the horrible things I'd love to forget, but probably never will. At least I can laugh about them now. I hope you enjoy our pictures and get a taste of some of the beauty we found in our visit to Florida. Sorry this entry took me so long to post... I was getting back into my routine at home and needed to find time to just sit down and write this out and get my photos inserted. Hopefully I'll not be neglecting the blog anymore!

Logan, Mike, & Lee on the airplane flying to St. Pete

Logan in Grandma's car from the airport going to Port Charlotte

Logan & Daddy on the dock at Grant & Nikki's place

Ryan (Nikki's son) fishing on the dock

Grant

Logan & Daddy

Happy Logan

John

Grant, Logan, & Lee

The view from the dock

Logan with his Uncle Grant

Lee fishing (or pretending to, I'm not sure.)

Nikki & my Mom, Cindy

Logan playing in the kids' area in the Port Charlotte mall

I think this little girl liked Logan

I'm not sure about this, Daddy

How cute is this?

Having a blast

Logan's first time on a boat

My boys are so cute.

Captain Grant

Pretty day for a boat ride

Logan was enjoying the breeze as we rode in the boat.

Having fun!

Logan fell asleep on the boat!

Later that day, playing at Gilchrist Park in Punta Gorda

I love my silly boy!

Logan's first time at the beach!!

Grant, Ryan, Logan, & Lee playing catch

Logan with Nikki & her daughter, Lindsey

Me, Ryan, & Grant in the water

Waving to the landlubbers Logan watching Lindsey playing with his bucket... he didn't like to share


Gotta love the seagulls
Blowing up Logan's raft that ended up having a hole in the stupid thing!



Lee with Aleja, she's 97!

Ophelia, Lee, & Aleja
Ophelia, Rosa (Lee's grandmother), Lee, & Aleja
Nayade, Rosa, Lee, Aleja, & Ophelia
Me, Rosa, Lee, Aleja, & Ophelia
Rosa & Aleja
Rosa, Lee, & Aleja
Pretty flowers outside Becky's house

Logan watching Becky's bird!
Becky, Me, & Logan
Lee, Rosa, & Becky
Me, Rosa, & Becky

And... we're off!

In just a few, short hours we'll be on our way to the airport flying to Florida. I'm sooo happy to say that I got everything packed yesterday, AND was able to fit all of Logan's things in ONE suitcase. I was so worried we wouldn't have enough space only being able to check 3 bags, but I did fine.

Now I'm off to shower and get dressed and put some last-minute things away in my bag and then get Logan ready to go and fed breakfast. I sure hope today goes smoothly... toddlers and airplanes aren't usually fun... I'm hoping our boy is a little angel baby today!!

What a heartbreaking, yet amazing story

I read the Tampa and Port Charlotte newspapers occasionally since I used to live down in those areas. I just came across this absolutely extraordinary story in the St. Pete Times. When you begin reading, you'll wonder why I sent you to see such a sad, heart-wrenching tearjerker, but please, keep reading. I know the story is long, but it's very well worth your time. After reading this, it's changed me somehow. I'm not exactly sure how it has just yet, but somehow it gave me a sense of healing and hope. Hopefully you'll feel the same. It just showed me that no matter how horrible a situation, there IS hope, and there ARE good, no... GREAT people out there. This is a true display of God's amazing work that this little girl found the family she did at a time when all hope was basically lost.

I feel so accomplished!

I'm well on my way to being stress-free in terms of being ready to go on our Florida trip. I was such a busy bee today... here's what I got done:

* Got my glasses fixed

* Scored some great deals at CVS on detergent (Tide!), soaps, toothpaste, etc.

* Cleaned the entire house top to bottom -- vacuumed, dusted, washed tile floors on hands & knees, mopped the hardwood, cleaned both bathrooms... man it feels good to have a super clean house!

And... the best part: I did all this while taking care of my toddler, feeding him dinner, getting him in bed, and it's almost midnight and Lee's still not home from work. Boo!

Tomorrow will be another productive day... mowing the yard, washing all the laundry and diapers, and dyeing my hair (I've got some wicked bad roots right now) and painting my toenails. All that'll be left to do Thursday is pack the suitcases... all.... I say "all" like it's hardly anything to do. Ha! That's the day I'm dreading... I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate packing for a trip. Can you sense my hatred for packing?

Too darn much to do.

We leave for Florida on Friday and won't return until the 17th... and traveling with a toddler in tow means I have twice (or heck, three times) the packing to do than if I was just going alone or with Lee. I have a LOT to do before we go...

* Clean the house (because I hate coming home from a trip to a messy/dirty house!)

* Mow the yard right before we leave on Wed. or Thurs. so it's not a jungle when we get back.

* Go to the grocery store to get a few things (but not too much) to last us just this week until we leave (milk, etc. don't want to buy too much or else stuff will just spoil while we're gone.) Also, get a few last-minute things for our trip (travel size things, stuff like that.)

* Get my eyeglasses fixed since the nose-pad-thingy decided to fall off, making my glasses horribly uncomfortable to wear. True, I don't wear them much, just at night, but I would like them to not slash open my face when I wear them.

* "Teach" Grandma and Papa all the dog and cat routines and set them up with a dog crate at their house and set up a different, easier to use litter box for the cats (Grandma's unsure of how the automatic cat box works so I'll put out the regular "you have to scoop it" one instead.) Oh, and be sure to have enough food for the furry creatures while we're away.

* Pack all of my crap, plus Logan's crap... that's a whole-day job in itself. I'll be doing all the packing on Thursday and running around like a chicken with its head cut off that day.

* Finally, after all that's done... make it to the airport on time, in one piece, having not killed Lee, the baby, or our friend, Mike, who's also flying down with us.

Did you get tired reading all that? I sure did. Now I have to get my butt off the computer and start on my to-do list.

I may update the blog between now and when we leave, but it's not likely... watch for some posts from Florida though. We plan to take Logan on his first trip to the beach... that should be fun!

My ARTistic Child!

I haven't blogged this week, but there hasn't been a whole lot to say either. Logan and I stayed around the house for the most part. Monday night, Ryan and Harrison came over to Grandma's and Logan and Harry got to play outside in the driveway for a long while. They were playing with sidewalk chalk and Ryan was teaching Harrison how to ride his bike without the training wheels. Logan always has fun with Harrison... he sure loves that kid!

Logan played with his chalk in the driveway again in the middle of the week. I also got him some crayons and set him up in his high chair (because I'm smart and don't want my walls covered in crayon!!) He got to "color" for the first time and seemed to have fun. He doesn't have the understanding that you have to hold the paper down while you write/draw/color yet so I used tape to hold his paper to the high chair try so he could scribble away. Here are just a few pictures of Logan and his artsy-fartsy self this past week.

Oh! I almost forgot. Remember that adorable wool diaper cover with the giraffes that I talked about here last week? It arrived and I got some cute, sun-squinting shots of Logan modeling it.