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!

Our cute Turkey

Our cute little Turkey {Caroline} and her master I-pad skills came across this recipe from Rice Krispie Treats. We set out to make these adorable Turkey Pop Treats, and they turned out pretty cute. Looking at them makes me smile. We have a flock in our kitchen right now. They might not be as perfect as Kellogg's, but for a three-year-old C did a great job. She's ready to take them all to school now for her friends, but hopefully the little turkey's will stand up strong for the trip to school tomorrow.  They simply make you smile! Happy Thanksgiving!

Picture Time

It was time for the annual Christmas Card picture and we headed out to the farm for one of Tallahassee's picture perfect afternoon's and sunsets that you find in the fall. One the way we found out our photographer, Kay Meyer, got stuck in traffic so we quickly called up our neighbors, the Wright Family, to see if we could swing in their Christmas Tree farm. You would have thought we dropped the kids off at Walt Disney World with all the laughing, peak-a-booing and running around they were doing. Needless to say, it was a great 10 minutes and fortunately we had our camera and were able to snap a few impromptu photos before heading back next-door to Sunray Road Farm. I cant wait to see the real photographers pictures! The lighting was perfect.

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.  

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It all started with a free non-work day {Veterans Day} , gingersnap cookies and a little creativity at C's godmother's house. We cut, painted and measured, and one giant mess later, have the cutest Candy Cane door hanger. We got so motivated that we went out on Saturday and made 6 more so we can give one to all of C and T's teachers this year for the holidays. Our little arts and crafts guru {C} was in hog heaven painting away. I have no doubt she is going to grow up to be one creative young lady.

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!

Thankful Tree

Thanks to Laura, we've found the world of Pintrist, which is basically an online bulletin board. One of the pins was a Thankful tree so we decided to take a gander at making our own version. Cory and I definitely got some great laughs from watching the kids gather sticks and acorns in the backyard to hearing C's things she was thankful for ---- riding Dixie, O Toodles from Mickey Mouse and Papa Michael. In the end, it turned out fabulous and I know we will have to save all the little "thankful leaves" so we can look back at them and remember all the things we were thankful for on 2011. It looks like the Thankful Tree will be a new Thanksgiving Family Tradition.