Florida!!!

Warning: A lot of pictures in this blog

We recently took a trip to Florida with my entire family.  We did a lot of walking, we stood in a lot of lines, we ate a lot, we spent a lot of money and we had a lot of fun!  We spent 5 days at the Disney parks, then one day at Seaworld!  Needless to say, we were very tired by the end of the trip.  We drove down (took 12 hours with kids) and it was long, but saved us a lot of money.

I have so many pictures, but cut it down for your viewing pleasure--enjoy!  

Here we are in front of Cinderella's castle.  For some reason my hand looks gigantic in this picture.  Maybe I've acquired "man hands" recently :) The first two days were cold then the wonderful Florida weather returned!

Here are the love birds in front of the castle

We went to a character breakfast and it was well worth it.  I especially liked the mickey waffles!  Here are the kids with most of their cousins (Wade and Kelly's kids)

Getting ready to watch the 3-D Bugs Life movie

This picture shows how much Carter loved the characters.  He would get so excited to see them and here he is pressing his nose up to Minnie's nose (twoo wove)

Riding a merry-go-round is serious business

We celebrated Ryan and his cousin, Ella's birthdays while in Florida.  He was very pleased with all his loot

Here I am at Seaworld.  Only a few hours into our day, I was graced by a blob of bird poop on my shirt.  Samantha got some on her hand and Carter also got some on his shirt and face.  Yuck!!  The only good thing that came out of this was that Carter and I got new shirts.

Samantha and Ryan being crazy in some silly hats they found

We had such a great time and thanks to mom and dad for providing the condos.

I would love to go back some day, it was well worth it!

Water baby

All my kids have liked their baths, but Carter absolutely LOVES his bath time.  He doesn't talk, but when he hears me say bath he crawls up the stairs and into the bathroom.  He makes such a mess of the bathroom splashing.  Samantha and Ryan think it is sooo funny!

Samantha turns 7!

Samantha turned 7 on the second and we had a small party for her at home on her birthday.  Then on the 10th she had a friend party at our house.  I originally wanted to find a place to have the party, but somehow it ended up at the house.  We had 10 girls come (half church friends and half school friends).  It was wild!!  We played hot potato, guess how many candies are in the jar, pop the balloon race (apparently I didn't blow the balloons up enough because it seemed difficult for the girls to pop them), did the limbo and played freeze dance.  The rest of the time was filled with running around and screaming.  It was a lot of fun, but exhausting.

This was taken during our family party.  Ryan was so excited to give her the gift he picked out.

Doing the limbo to the song "girls just want to have fun"

Dancing

I always make the cake and Tinkerbell was the theme, so I just bought a Tinkerbell candle and added flowers and "grass"

The entire group

Samantha has such a great group of friends and she gets really sad when we talk about moving in June.  Hopefully she'll find some fun girls on Ohio.

Melton Hill park

We went to Melton Hill park while Aaron's parents were in town.

Grandma with her walking stick

Hiking around the park

Ryan showing off the treasure he found

Cute Samantha

The whole group (except grandpa).  Ryan's face is priceless!

Worlds Fair park

A few days after Christmas the temp was in the 60's so we took the kids bikes and went to World's Fair park in downtown Knoxville.  We figured if we didn't have any snow to play in, we had awesome weather to just hang out together in!

We went up into the sun sphere and looked out on the city.  That is something our family has never done.

We raced (the kids idea)

Erica vs. Ryan

Erica vs. Samantha

Dad vs. Ryan

Dad feeling very exhausted

Bike riding

Mom and Carter on the park stage

Samantha and grandma performing on the stage

Christmas fun

Aaron's parents came to visit for Christmas and we had a great time.  It has been a long time since we have had family around for Christmas, so it was really nice having them there.  

Christmas Eve we did our traditional act out the nativity scene.  Aaron was a shepherd, but he was taking the picture.

The kids (and dad) posing in their new pajamas on Christmas eve.

Looking at gifts

Ryan got two light sabers for Christmas so he and grandpa were trying them out.

Carter turns one!

We celebrated Carter's birthday yesterday.  Here are some pictures of the event!

He thought it was so funny when the wrapping paper would rip.  He would just crack up.

More laughing at ripped wrapping paper.

So how do you like the cake?  The kids wanted a teddy bear and this was the best I could do.  

Here he is beginning to "dig in"

And this is a picture of how he liked the cake.  He hated the frosting!  Every time we put some to his mouth he would whine and make this face.  It was really funny.

We found out that the cake is all he wanted.  I don't blame him.  I'm not a fan of frosting either.