Anniversary Adventure!

We celebrated our 5th anniversary last week! I remember when we were newly married, how 5 years sounded like such a long time. To be honest though, it’s kind of flown by. But 5 years is still a pretty good chunk of time, you know? We’re totally marriage experts now.    riiiiight… ;)

Anyway, to celebrate, we went on a getaway trip to Cocoa Beach, Florida! And we scored big time, let me tell you. Remember when my parents when on that cruise back in April? Well, they got a free week with the purchase of their cruise to spend somewhere and so they gave it to us! And then for our birthdays, since mine and John’s are both in the summer, my parents bought our plane tickets as our birthday presents. AND they watched the Little Man while we were gone. Parents of the Year award to them for sure. ;)

Because John could only get so many days off, even though our reservations were a Sat-Sat deal, we didn’t fly out until Tuesday night. My mom and sister came and picked up Nathan and they left Tuesday morning. This was the FIRST TIME I’d spent a night away from Nathan. And I was freaking out a little bit. I may or may not have written up a several-page packet on the care and keeping of the Little Man. For Nana’s benefit, of course. I actually felt bereft as they drove away that morning and it was rather lonely once they were gone. So I threw myself into deep cleaning the entire apartment – though I missed my cute laundry helper ;) – and that helped me forget how quiet it was in the apartment all by myself.

We left late Tuesday night and got into our hotel by midnight and I have to admit it was nice to know I didn’t have to worry about Nathan waking me up early the next morning! Our first day was pretty mellow, it was sooooo nice to sleep in. We walked along the beach (our hotel was right on the water!), got some breakfast, and that afternoon we stopped by the Kelly Slater stature, went to the McLarty Treasure Museum and the Florida Institute of Technology Botanical Gardens.

For those who didn’t know (like me) Kelly Slater is a famous surfer from Cocoa Beach. 11 time world champion, or something like that…ask John. He’ll be more than happy to tell you.
We didn’t get too many pictures at the treasure museum, but we learned a lot. Back in 1715, 11 Spanish galleons were taking massive amounts of treasure back to Spain and they got caught in a huge hurricane off the coast of Florida and they ALL sank. There were a few survivors that recovered some treasure, but it wasn’t until the 60s/70s that this one guy realized that these funny rocks/shells he was picking up were silver Spanish pieces of eight. He formed a treasure hunting company and they found so. much. gold. Crazy. So they had some cool things on display and we walked up to the observation deck and this is where they found all that stuff!
On our way back we found a monument to Ponce de Leon. Couldn’t resist the photo op. ;)

It took us forever to find it (there were no helpful signs! Also didn’t help that we kept looking for Florida Tech, and not Florida Institute of Technology. Minor details.) but then we stopped at the Botanical Gardens at FIT. So pretty!
I have no idea what plant this is, but we decided it looks like something Willy Wonka would use, yes?
We took pictures of each other at the same time ;)

Then it decided to downpour so we went back to the hotel and watched HGTV. We don’t have cable, so this was really exciting. ;)

Thursday we had a kayaking tour. There was a chance we’d see manatees and dolphins. I really wanted to see a manatee. Our guide was a little quirky, but very knowledgeable and the tour was really fun.
And we did see manatees!! We actually saw two, but this one was super friendly. It hung out with our group of kayaks for quite some time, and would swim right underneath us and push the kayaks around. It was sooooo cool.
After we saw the manatees, we kayaked through a mangrove ‘tunnel’. It was so pretty! (these were taken with John’s GoPro camera – and he’d submerged it earlier trying to get a picture of the manatee, that’s why there are blurry spots)

Also, we saw crabs at the beach that morning. They kind of freaked me out. There was one that kept popping up out of his hole about 2 feet away from me.

It was supposed to rain again that afternoon, so we rented a movie from RedBox to wait out the rain. We also went back down to the beach to try to find bioluminescent algae, but we couldn’t find any. Oh well.

Friday (our anniversary!!) we spent most of the day at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. John actually went surfing in the morning and then we headed over to the Space Center, where we spent the rest of the day. It was actually a much bigger attraction than I had expected. (good thing too, since the tickets were pricey) But it was super cool.

To infinity, and beyond!
They had a really neat presentation and exhibit with the space shuttle Atlantis. This is the 3rd space shuttle we’ve seen!
They had some cool simulations
We ended with a bus tour that took us over to the actual Space Center where they built the space shuttles and we also got to see the launch pads. It was also raining. Again.
This is the crawler that transports the massive machinery from the building you saw above to the launch pads. This baby gets 32 feet to the gallon. Yep. You read that right. 32 FEET to 1 gallon of diesel fuel.

Saturday was our last day. We checked out and went over to Orlando to go to the temple and then we made our way to the airport to come home. The flight went smoothly, but they lost my bag. I got it back this afternoon, though. Thank goodness! We had so much fun this week but it’s nice to be home. We were missing our favorite Little Man too and it’s nice to be all together again.

Happy Anniversary John! It’s been an amazing 5 years. I love you so much and I’m excited to see what the next 5 years have in store for us!

Birthday Peach-a-palooza

So I’m trying to do a little bloggy catch up here, so hang in there with me. I’m a good 2 weeks late, but I’ve been a little busy, okay? Sheesh!

So my birthday fell on a Sunday this year and a Fast Sunday at that, so I took the opportunity to celebrate my birthday alllll weekend! ;)

Friday night I went to dinner with some girlfriends – and someone (who shall remain anonymous ;) ) ‘accidentally’ let slip to the waitress that we were celebrating my birthday, so when they brought out my milkshake, they put a candle in it and sang ;)

Saturday we spent the day together as a family – which was probably the best part of my weekend – and we went peach picking! I’ve been wanting to go peach picking all summer, so I was pretty stoked. Nathan loved it too.

We came away with 20lbs of peaches. And oh. They were so delicious. I’ll get to that more in a bit. We also picked blackberries. These were also ridiculously tasty. Soooo tart! Nathan really wanted to help with this too, but we had a hard time keeping him from pulling off large branches of unripe berries… ;)

We took our bounty home and then we went out for birthday dinner. (yes, again. It was my birthday and I didn’t want to cook!)

Sunday was my actual birthday and I got a big surprise – my family came up to visit! I had no idea they were coming! (Which is a feat in itself, given how often I talk to my mom) We ended up postponing our fasting to the following week and had waffles with peaches and blackberries and it was amazing. They also brought me 5 boxes of my most favorite candy EVER (that I can never find): Zours. Eeee! I may or may not have eaten them all within the week. Yum. They came with us to Sacrament meeting, and then they headed home. It was such a fun surprise!

My birthday present was a little late in coming, but John and my in-laws got me a new sewing machine! And I lurrrrve it. I’ve already made something with it, but that’s another post ;)

I spent the rest of the week after my birthday trying to use up all 20lbs of peaches before they went bad! John and I peeled most of them Saturday night using this totally awesome trick (it only took us half an hour to peel them all!) and I ended up making peach crisp, peach ice cream, peach popsicles, and peach milkshakes. (click on the dessert to go to the recipe) And it was ridiculously awesome. We got through all 20lbs in a week. Oh yeah. I’m so ready for apple season. Or grapes! Right, Mom? ;)

15 Months!

Getting so big! (And we’re starting the countdown to nursery now! ;) )

*This kid LOVES his books. I mean, he’s always loved them, but there have been days this month when his books are the most-played-with items. Which basically means he pulls them out of his bookshelf, “reads” them and they somehow end up alllll over the apartment. His favorites are actually the ones we’ve gotten from the kids’ meals at Chick-fil-a. Nana often gets a kids’ meal whenever she goes, so she saves the books for us. They are just his size and it’s crazy adorable to watch him kick back and look at these little books.


*Officially signing! I thought we’d had a breakthrough when he was 12 months, but it was a fluke. He can sign ‘more’ and ‘eat’ though ‘more’ is pretty much associated with anything food related. Give me more food! Now I actually have to learn a couple more signs so that we can teach them. It’s so exciting when he can tell me that he wants to eat without any prompt from me! I’ve started using the signs for ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and when he does ‘please’ it’s more like he rubs his arms all over his chest and it’s hilarious. We’re working on it. ;)

*Has decided he hates all diaper changes. It robs him of precious playing and exploration time. You’d think I was torturing him. Good grief.

*Loves to be a helper. He’s actually getting pretty good at helping me with the laundry. I can get him to hand me clothes from the washer for me to put in the dryer, and then when the clothes are dry I can give him 1 or 2 items at a time to take over to the couch to be folded. It’s so stinkin’ cute!

*Becoming quite the dancer. Will totally dance when there is music on. We’ve added hip swinging, conducting, and head banging to our repertoire.

*I’m not really sure why we bother with toys. He has a little collection of cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, plastic containers, spoons and spatulas that he plays with far more often than any of his toys (besides his books). We have started to build towers and then knock them over. It’s great fun.

*Getting a bit of a temper! I’m so not ready for this. Will usually get frustrated when he can’t get something to work (like his board book doesn’t fit into his sand bucket) and will then throw the offending items as hard as he can. I’m waiting for a board-book-sized dent in the wall to show up here soon. That or it will be sippy-cup-shaped. Heaven forbid the cup be empty when he wants a drink!

*Cut some molars! It’s so funny to see a random tooth near the back of his mouth. We’re getting a little better at brushing his teeth with his new big boy toothbrush. So over the teething though. Why do we even have teeth, anyway?!

*Loves to have friends over. We have a few people in our ward with little people around Nathan’s age and he loves when we get to see other people his size. It’s still more parallel play than any real social interaction, but he also really likes to just watch other kids. When we go to the playground and there are older kids running around, he follows them around and watches them.

*Has started to become a little more affectionate (but still not much of a snuggler). There have been occasions when he will come up and hug my legs, without reaching for me to pick him up. There was also a time this week when I was sitting on the floor and he came up and gave me a hug from behind and rested his head on my shoulder. And stayed like that for several seconds. It was soooooo sweet. I melted.

*We are switching to one afternoon nap. I know. It’s been a little crazy. We’ve had one really rough day so far, but the rest haven’t been too bad. We’ve only been at it for a week. But he seems to be doing pretty well with it. I’m kind of missing my extra break during the day though, ;) but it’s fun to have the whole morning to run errands, go to the playground, make messes, etc.

*Loves to make noise! I gave him a metal veggie steamer pot and a wooden spoon yesterday and he had a ball. Seriously. He was making ‘music’ pretty much the entire evening. Loved it. Good thing I hardly ever use the veggie steamer…

*He is just so fun and loves to make us laugh! Love you Little Man!