Caladisi Island

3/4/09

One of our favorite places to visit in Florida was Caladisi Island. Caladisi Island is another state park with an ungroomed beach and we got to ride a ferry out to the island!

Hannah and Ellie were ready to go to the beach. Here they are waiting for our ferry.Walking down the dock to get to the ferry.Hannah and Ellie were so excited to get to ride on a boat!Zachary loved the ferry, too! We spent most of the day combing the beach for shells.

Greg found a live hermit crab! I was too scared to touch it!

Zach and Mommy at the beach.

Zach loved to sit in the sand!

Ellie showing off all of her shells.

I love this picture! Hannah was so excited to watch the waves come in!

Hannah and Grandma Mary exploring the beach together.

Oranges, Grapefruit, and Lemons

Roland and Mary's neighbors let us pick some fruit from their trees. Hannah and Ellie thought it was so much fun to pick oranges, grapefruit, and lemons from their trees.

What a big load!

Zach even had fun!

Greg lifting Ellie into the tree to pick an orange.

Hannah loved climbing to the top of the ladder to pick some fruit!

Zach, Ellie, and Hannah with their harvest.

After eating several oranges, we decided to juice the rest of our fruit. Hannah was such a good helper!

Ellie and Hannah watching the juice come out...Ellie was quite amazed by the process!

Homasassa Springs

3/2/2009

We spent the day at Homasassa Springs State Park today. The park was very beautiful! The kids had fun seeing many animals which are native to Florida. They especially liked the manatees, alligators, and the hippo(not native to Florida!).

Hannah and Ellie loved watching the flamingos!

Hannah and Ellie with the alligators.

Florida: Fun with the Prachars

We had a great time visiting our friends, the Prachars, while we were in Florida.

Ellie and Hannah were so excited to have a slumber party with Alayna...this worked really well until Alayna started talking about ghosts. Hannah gets scared VERY easily, so she ended up sleeping in our room after about 5 minutes. Ellie and Alayna kept each other entertained late into the evening, though!

We had a little spare time on Saturday morning before we needed to be to Holden's baseball game, so we decided to take the kids to the beach. They had never seen the ocean before, and they were quite excited!

Hannah liked getting her feet wet, but Ellie was a little too scared...she was quite content to keep her distance!
Greg tried to get Ellie to touch the water. I think the look on her face says it all!
Zach actually LOVED putting his feet in the ocean! Greg sat down with the kids to help them look for shells. I think that was their favorite thing to do at the beach!

After the baseball games on Saturday, we went to a carnival for Alayna's school. The kids were thrilled to be able to jump in a bounce house!

Ellie and Hannah also loved going down the big slide!

After a few rides and games, the kids got to make their own slushies!That's a big slushie for such a little girl!!! Here is Alayna with her blue teeth. The kids thought it was so funny!
Poor Zach didn't get to have a slushie, but he seemed to be quite entertained by all of the giggling!

Florida: Rainbow Springs

We had a great time visiting Greg's parents in Florida last week! Our first day there, Greg got to go golfing with his dad, so we decided to have a relaxing outing to Rainbow Springs State Park with Grandma Mary.

We had a picnic lunch overlooking the waterfalls!

I thought this was such a sweet picture of the girls hiking with grandma. Everything was so green and beautiful!

Zach just hung out in the stroller. He seemed to LOVE being outside, though!

Hannah and Ellie enjoyed getting close to the waterfalls. This is Hannah and Ellie in front of a little palm tree. When we first got to Florida, Hannah was convinced that they were "corn trees." I thought that was pretty creative! (Notice that the trunk of the tree looks like it has ears of corn coming out of it.)
We had so much fun at Rainbow Springs that we decided to bring Greg back later in the week. The girls had fun showing Daddy all of the fun things they had discovered earlier in the week. They were great "tour guides!"

Haircuts

2/21/09

Hannah and Ellie got their first REAL haircuts today! They were very excited to have Aubrey's aunt cut their hair! They were both very big and sat still the whole time.

The finished products! I thought they both looked so grown up!