What Will I Feed Them???

First of all let me say that I am happy that my kids are good eaters, butI just had to write this post because....well, frankly...I am pretty grossed out!
Keep in mind I have 3 kids and the oldest is 4 years old. The following is what was consumed today for lunch by my children (just the kids - this doesn't include my food):

1 full package of hot dogs
3 Peaches
A tupperware of leftover hamburger meat
About 2 Cups of Mustard (they filled their plates when I took Alaria up for a nap and ate it with their fingers. Yuck!)
2 Bowls of Cereal
2 Pieces of toast with peanut butter and jelly
3 cups of milk
2 cups of juice

I also have to throw in that the other night we had tacos for dinner and Cole at 5 tacos and Josh had 3. These were full size tacos like Kris and I were eating - fully loaded!

Wow! What I'm really worried about is how I am going to feed them when they are teenagers!

Florida / Take 2

A few more pictures from our trip...They had these amazing trees where vines would grow down and then take root into the ground. This is all one tree. They were huge.
This is where we stayed...

Pictures of the mini-circus (from previous post) This is just the "main tent" of their set-up.
The detail of each piece was incredible

Some memorable moments from the trip:

- of course being stranded in a deserted airport

- wearing my glasses and having them fog up every time I walked out of a building our got out of the car (not to mention the camera lens did the same thing!)

-the wildlife we saw in the yard - lizzards, squirrels, rabbits and cranes

- making fun of people at the airport (the guy who had to be in the front of every line and would do so at any cost, the over-anxious luggage claimers)

- Getting Ice Cream at Big Olaf - the coolest ice cream place down by the beach. There was a huge line clear out the door to go in.

- Walking around the shops at St. Armands

- Sitting out by the water at Phillipi Creek's Oyster Bar and enjoying delicious crab legs

- Our tour of Sarasota at 3 a.m.

- A very elderly lady at the pool doing laps for over 30 minutes! Wow!

- The street name "Tuttle"

- The GPS voice which Kris decided sounded like Barry Gibbs and we had to imitate it with each new street name

- Getting to fly first class and being able to skip past all of the lines (and have as much diet coke on the plane as I wished)

- Blistering Sunburns

- Finishing entire books (yes, Kris included)

- Eating breakfast at a little local cafe and getting a pancake that was as large as the dinner plate and 2" thick!

- A late night dollar movie with some interesting locals

- Driving past $10 million beach homes on the way to the beach

- Our (elderly) "tour guide" advising us not to go into Cheetah's because "they charge you $5 to get in and the girls do all sorts of crazy things on the stage".

7 Days in Florida + No Kids = VACATION!

We just got back from a fabulous vacation in Florida. The Hortons were AWESOME to take all of our kids for a week.

Our trip started out with a great beginning - the plane on our last flight had an overheated engine just as we were about to take off, so we had to de-board and get on a new plane. We called our ride in Sarasota to let them know we would be delayed, and said we would just call when we landed. Well...he fell asleep. And no, his phone didn't wake him up. Our flight was the last flight to land at the Sarasota airport (we landed just after midnight) and EVERYONE left. All of the passengers...all of the employees. We were literally the only two people in the entire airport. The last security guard told us as he was leaving "Good Luck. Coffee and Donuts open at 4 a.m." It was pretty strange being the only ones there! Well...I won't give you the full length story, but we finally got to our condo we stayed at at 4 a.m. What a night!!

The beach was beautiful!! This is Siesta Beach. The sand was pure white and felt as soft as flour. The water was clear and so warm. It was so great. I actually had a jelly fish come up by me as I was out in the water. Luckily I saw it just as it brushed up against my arm and was able to hurry and brush it away. We also got super sunburned the first day we went to the beach! I had little blisters all over me - it was so painful! I guess it's been much too long since I've been out in sun like that!

These are from Marina Jack's. The boats were beautiful!

We even found a board with boats for sale. This one here is just under $4 million!
We also went to the Ringling Museum. It has the mansion of John and Mable Ringling (yes, of the Ringling Circus). It was unbelievable! This house had 14 bathrooms! They spent more on their master suite than on the local high school. The bay crashed right up onto their back terrace.

This is from the Ringling Circus Museum...and of course we had to get this photo for Cole!
They have gone through and created an entire town and circus out of miniature figures. It was great! I couldn't believe all the detail and work that went into it. I'm not a huge circus fan by any means, but I really enjoyed this!

There was also an art museum with all of the artworks that John Ringling had purchased/collected. It had like 21 galleries and was enormous. The courtyard was beautiful.


We ended up with over 200 photos....but this is enough for now. Needless to say, it was a great week full of sun, relaxing, shopping, fantastic seafood, and too much ice cream! But it's good to be home again.

Lagoon

Saturday we took the kids to Lagoon and we all had a blast! Here are a few of the highlights...