Jayne and Tom

Springtime in North Florida is one of the many reasons we live here. The crisp, chilly mornings, crystal-clear blue skies and the smell of daffodils make every day even more memorable. Today, as we wound down the sleep back roads of Monticello, the small sign on Highway 90 was the only hint that we were near HoneyLake Plantation and about to arrive at the celebration for Jayne and Tom's rehearsal dinner. Though once you turn on their fence-linef, Spanish-moss draped lane, you know you are in a taste of the good ol' south and this only continued to get better once we arrived to the friendly hugs of Jayne and Tom's family and friends and then settled down for a great southern shrimp boil. Caroline was quite the perfect flower girl hanging on to every word of direction from the wedding planner and Jayne. Tucker on the other hand was more fascinated with the piano and water fountain. Let's hope tomorrow the front of the chapel will be more appealing to little T. One thing is for certain, its going to be another fabulous day tomorrow for the wedding uniting this meant-for-each other couple.

Cheers to the smiles of tomorrow!

A Wild Ride

Its been a wild ride these past few months, with the culmination yesteday with Cory finally buying his first N-E-W car. I must admit it is a beauty and I'm so proud that his months of research paid off and now he's the happy owner of a new 2012 BMW m6. As he was purchasing, I was in City Hall convincing City Commissioners on why they need to trust our volunteer team to build a Discovery & Adventure Garden in our upcoming Cascades Park, which I know will be Tallahassee's new hot spot. Our team's garden idea was unaminiously approved! Now to planning the Community Planting & Build Day -- Cant wait for October 6, 2012.
We've been great. Lots of travel and fun at home. Here is a snapshot from the whirlwind of the past few months. I'm looking forward to lots of rest in the next few weeks and our "staycation" in Tallahassee for Spring Break 2012!

March...

 Using items from around the house {pencils, a cleaned-out spaghetti jar, glue gun and flowers and finger paint} we created a sweet good bye "Thank You to Ms. Ashley," Tucker's speech therapist, who did miracles and took him from being -5 months in speech, to being ahead of his age group and saying sounds that 3 year olds say. He went from mute to a chatterbox in 6 quick weeks. We love her and Mary Pelagrino and Associates. We will miss her!

DECEMBER 2011....

 Some hiking with Uncle Ed when he was in town!

 Meeting our sweet cousin "baby Audrey." We enjoy Facetime so we can stay in touch and watch her grow. It was a wonderful Christmas season with family.

 Visiting our land out Sunray Road where I grew up, and stopping in our neighbor's christmas tree farm for some running around.

 A afternoon of bubbles.

 Hello. Who's there!

JANUARY....Turks & Caicos! We love our New Year's trips -- always a great way to start the year.

B-L-I-S-S! Some of the the best 10 days I've had. Absolute bliss.

 We did a lot of this...playing in the sand and water.

 More smiles than we could count, even poor Caroline who was suffering from a double ear infection had some fun -- we had to wait to get home for her to get quality medical care.  Nothing like flying home with a child who is passed out with a 103.7 fever. Nervewracking.

Oh, the conch shell. Hours of entertainment this trip with "blowing the conch shell" but it ended up getting dropped on Tucker's big toe, which = blood, crying and 9 weeks later his big black toenail falling off. Yikes!

 Our view.

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY....

 Our family celebration...with her horse-themed cake.

 The actual birth DAY wake up surprise -- Happy Birthday spelled out and lots of her favorite colors.

And her birthday party with her friends. Caroline loves snow skiing so when she requested this for her birthday party, I had to come up with a Florida-style themed ski party. It started with "ski pass" invitations inviting everyone to a party at Couch Mountain. Here friends enjoyed hot chocolate, "snow" and snowcones {it is Florida}. They also created their own snow-covered trees, made ski trail mix, went home with smores and had a great time!

 being goofy in the photo area.

 making a snow covered mountain

 Couch Mountain "Snowy Conditions"

 Snowcones- "yummers"

Everyone loves a great birthday cake

And today's weather forecast calls for snow {time to get out the toilet paper}...

FEBRUARY

And then the REAL SNOW -- Deer Valley Utah Ski Trip

And in what seems like a blink of an eye, its March 2012!

He loves the outdoors

Our little baby is turning into a little boy right in front of our eyes.  Hard to imagine that he's almost 20 months old. He really is the sweetest thing ever. Being a true Caire at heart, he cant get enough of being outside, and fortunately the weather has been perfect. You truly can see how different boys are from girls when you watch him playing compared to Caroline.  Today, I decided the sound of the crisp leaves crunching underfoot might be one of the nicest fall sounds out there.  

A Little Late, but worth the wait

We enjoyed a great weekend with NOTHING planned, well hardly anything. Which is amazing becuase I cant even remember the last time this happened. Needless to say, we had a lot of family time, but I also started uploading and going through pictures. The first major milestone that we got through in pictures was Tucker's 1st Birthday. He's such a sweeties and here are 10 things we love about him. You can see pictures here.

1) Such a sweet boy

2) The perfect cuddler

3) He loves giving kisses

4) Anything outdoors is his favorite

5) How his eyes light up when he looks at you and when you walk in the door

6) His broken tooth smile, which is because he's so full of adventure

7) He loves giving hugs, all the time

8) The way he says mama, dada and thank you is just too cute

9) how he shakes his booty whenever he hears music. It goes up, down, up, down, side to side.

10) How much he changes each week. Wish we could just bottle him up right now.
Now we need a few more do nothing days to get caught up with pictures {and life}. At least we got the Halloween decorations down this weekend and the garage cleaned out!

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun

Really, where does time go? We celebrated Tucker's 6-Month Birthday today. It seems like only yesterday that we were introducing him to Caroline. He is a gem of a child.

The six things we love about Tucker: 1) His sweet giggles that make anyone smile; 2) how much he adores his big sister and watches and smiles at her with amazement; 3) that he started sleeping through the night at 8 weeks and is such a wonderful sleeper {even when two new teeth popped in over the weekend – who knew}; 4) how he conveniently spits up on my "dry clean only" attire just as I'm about to walk out the door {I'm beyond counting on two hands the number of times this has happened – and you wonder why I'm always running 10 minutes late}; 5) he is the definition of a good baby; 6) he's the best little snuggler.

Halloween Costume – Take 1

Ruff, ruff. We got a little creative and deviated from our Halloween costume to have a special costume for the Halloween Celebration at Music Class. Tucker was the cutest little dog I've ever seen. By all his giggles, I think he thought so too {or maybe he was wondering what in the world I was doing going "ruff, ruff"}. Stay Tuned for the real Couch Halloween Costumes of 2010!

Forgive the image quality on this pic :)