This Week

We took our kites to the beach so the boys could run around with them in the air. The wind was so strong that all you had to do was let go and the kite would go straight into the air!

James ran away from Anthony after bath time and decided to hide in the pantry. When Anthony found him, James tried to come out and realized that he was stuck! Eventually he figured out how to push aside all the things on the floor and crawled out in their place.

We went to the Marine Discovery Center's open house where they had a local fishing club doing workshops showing kids how to set up a fishing pole and how to cast it. At the end of the workshop each kid got to take home a brand new fishing pole with a bag of hooks and goodies. James and Rett both got one and were dying to try them out, so after Anthony got off of work we went to the park to fish off of the dock. Almost as soon as we got there, someone caught and reeled in a 36.5 inch redfish! It was huge!! Anthony got a picture of them measuring it once he got it out of the water.

After that James was even more determined to catch a fish. After I baited his hook, he cast it into the water, felt the fish get on, and reeled it in all by himself! What a pro!

We were running errands in Daytona and were close to the mall, so we stopped to ride the train, play on the playground, and eat some pretzels. Rett loved the train ride!

James was excited too, but was reluctant to smile.

Saturday night there was a wedding reception at church and they had a lot of leftover food, so they invited everyone to stay after church on Sunday and eat it up. Rett was sooo happy for his cupcake :)

James was bored and wanted to go home right away, so I gave him my phone and let him run around and take pictures. He got a picture of me and Anthony talking and eating.

After taking about a billion pictures of his friends eating cupcakes, he decided to place this program exactly how he wanted it and then took about 15 pictures of it. I thought his whole process was pretty cute.

We have been busy, busy, busy at our house lately. Our renters are moving out of our Gainesville condo so we are working on getting it rented and planning weekend trips to do some work on it. Anthony may be starting a post master's online program to get an additional certification for work, so I have had to scramble getting all of his paperwork and application materials together. Everything is submitted, so now we are just waiting to see if he gets in! My Etsy shop has been busier than ever this month, so I have spent a lot of my free time at my sewing machine. I have been averaging 1 to 2 orders a day! Once you factor in James' preschool, my volunteering at his school and the library, church callings, soccer practice and games it is easy to see why we feel like we are running at full speed all day :)

Beginning of October

I got a few more pictures of James at school from his school's private facebook page. I love seeing him in action! He loves going to school and has almost three straight weeks of good behavior. Thank heavens!

I started volunteering in James' class on Monday mornings while Anthony is home to watch Rett. The first morning, James wanted me to go with him to the bathroom. While he was in there he told me this story about how he found a bat in the trash can one day! It was one of the those stories that make you say, "hmmmm, how true is this....", but when I asked his teacher she said it actually happened! James was in the bathroom washing his hands when he heard a sound in the trash can. He came out and told his teacher, "There is a living creature in the bathroom!". She asked him if it was a bug and he said, "No! It is a wild animal!". She thought he was exaggerating and that it was a big bug, so she was shocked when she checked it out and found a small bat! They got it into a butterfly cage, covered it and called a local bat rescue to come get it. How crazy is that?

One morning I checked James' folder at school and was surprised to find a two page report with the results of his first vpk assessment. Apparently they test each child three times during the year: at the beginning, at the middle, and at the end. It helps them see where they are at and what to focus on with each child, as well as showing their progression. I was shocked to see that James got an almost perfect score! We have always known that he is bright, but I wasn't sure if he would be cooperative enough to actually demonstrate it.

For general conference this year, I put together surprise bags for each apostle and member of the first presidency for the boys to open when they are speaking.

I was so glad that I prepared all of this ahead of time because Saturday morning at 3am Rett woke up covered in vomit. As I was cleaning him up and changing his sheets, I realized that I didn't feel so well... It turns out I caught the 24 hour stomach bug that has been going around and I caught it bad! I haven't been sick like that in years! I couldn't get out of bed, so the boys ended up on the bed with me with whatever food they could bring from the pantry and I would open it for them and hand it to them. I couldn't even change Rett's diaper from the morning, just the motion of getting him out of his crib made me sick. I tried calling Anthony at work but he wasn't picking up his phone, so I called my mom. She got in the car and started driving the 3 hours to our house almost immediately. Grandma to the rescue! I finally got a hold of Anthony and he was able to come home at lunch time. It was a good thing my mom came because then Anthony realized he didn't feel well either!

The boys were so happy to have Grandma to play with and they watched conference together with the bags I prepared.

The next day we all felt much better, but still tired out. My mom went home and the next day she got sick! A few days later James got in our bed in the middle of the night, saying his stomach hurt and he threw up a few times. He was so miserable at one point, he didn't want to move, he just wanted to hang over the bed. Thankfully, he was able to go back to sleep and was perfectly fine in the morning. Can we be done being sick for awhile??

We've had a lot of rain lately, so we were so happy to be outside and enjoy some sun. First we went for a bike ride/walk around the neighborhood.

Then we came home and played in the backyard. Look at this face!

We finally got to play with the kites we bought in North Carolina. The weather never cleared enough for us to play with them on vacation, so James was happy to be able to play with them.

I watched my friend's little girl for a few hours and it was so much fun! She is the easiest toddler ever (she is four months younger than Rett) and James loves her death. He played with her the entire time, following her around and asking her to come play. We had to go to Wal-mart so we put our extra car seat in the car for her. It was so interesting to get a glimpse of life with three kids. If I could guarantee a baby as easy as her, I might consider it ;)

James had picture day at school, and then soccer pictures right before his soccer game. When we told him he had pictures, he said, "But I already did pictures!"

We were getting ready to take a walk and after I put Rett's shoes on him, I had to do something else really quick. Rett was at the door, ready to go and when he saw we weren't leaving right away, he threw himself on the ground in protest. So. much. drama.

James thought it was funny, so he said, "Oh, I got to get a picture of this" and he ran to the other room to get his toy phone to "take Rett's picture". At this point, Rett had gotten up, walked to another part of the room and then dramatically thrown himself down on the ground again in a different spot.

After I got the stroller ready we were on our way. James brought his critter cage and caught a large grasshopper. We found tadpoles in some leftover rainwater, so he agreed to let the grasshopper go to make room for tadpoles. Now we have tadpoles in the cage in our bathroom and we are trying to figure out how to get them to turn into frogs. Boys make life so much fun!

North Carolina Vacation

After a week at home after our Utah trip, it was time for our annual family vacation with my side of the family! This year we rented a big vacation house at the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is a loooooong car trip there, around 13 hours or so including stops for bathroom breaks and meals. At the halfway point at the border of South and North Carolina we stopped to stretch our legs and check out Reptile Lagoon. It was so much fun! They had all kinds of alligators and crocodiles and snakes.

Anthony was impressed with their variety of snakes, he even saw a few he had never seen in person before!

Right before we left, James came down with a cough/cold and when he coughs a lot, he vomits...so we did have to stop to clean up puke at a rest stop in North Carolina. When we finally made it to the vacation house we were so glad to be out of the car!

It rained almost nonstop the entire week we were there so there was a lot of this going on. I tried to not feel guilty about the amount of tv they watched, but there was not much else to do!

We tried out the beach on the second day, but the wind was so strong that it was blowing the sand onto our skin and it hurt! The pool was a little too cold for our Florida blood, but James discovered that he loooooved the "hot pool" (hot tub). We wanted to be in it all day. He finally agreed to put his puddle jumper on for the first time and actually floated around without us holding on to him (which he has never done before!). We put Rett's on too and we all got it and played in the water. 

We explored this nearby playground. It looked like so much fun! The boys played for awhile, then we decided to walk to a dock across the road and look at the water.

Trying to keep this kid fed is the hardest thing ever. He is always hungry! I measured him when we got home and he is 75th percentile for weight AND 75th percentile for height. So he is definitely putting it somewhere :)

Our third day there my phone dive-bombed off the bathroom sink while we were getting ready, bounced off the toilet paper holder and into the toilet! I put it in rice for a full day and it still wasn't working, so I spent the rest of the vacation without a phone...which means no more pictures! I tried to remind Anthony to take pictures, but we only got a few for the week. The funniest thing is that after we got home and I bought a new phone, it started working again! So now Rett uses it as an extra device to watch Netflix on.

We tried out the aquarium one afternoon when the rain was down to just a drizzle. They had a huge shark tank that was really fun to watch! I stayed with Rett while Anthony stayed with James so we went through at a different pace :)

After the aquarium, all the boys went off to have a manly lunch. On the way home they stopped at a local donut shop that is amazing and brought some home for us.

I kept the boys and went home to put Rett down for a nap. Rett and I ended up catching James' cough and cold, so he had a rough few days in the beginning of the week, coughing, gagging and vomiting at night. Anthony still can't handle being around vomit, so I ended up taking care of it during the night, cleaning the sheets and getting him into the bath, etc... We were all pretty tired a lot of the time!

There are quite a few lighthouses on the Outer Banks, so one morning we checked out the one closest to us. James really wanted to climb it, but the winds were so strong that it was closed for climbing. We ended up walking around it and then walking out on a boardwalk over the water.

While we were walking on the boardwalk we saw this rabbit eating grass. It let us come right up to him before it ran away!

We played a lot of board games as a family, as well as pool and foosball in the game room at the rental house. I smoked Daniel at foosball and it was awesome because normally he never loses. It was a grand victory! We taught James War and Go fish and he still likes to play them at home. I got hooked on a new tv show on Netflix and watched a bunch of them on a tablet while I rested in bed.

We left for home at the end of the week at 6am and didn't get home until 7:30pm!! We stopped for lunch at a chick-fil-a with a play place so the boys got to run around for a little bit. They were as ready to get out of the car as we were! After so many vacations in such a short amount of time, we are ready to stay home for awhile :)