All good things must come to an end, as did our fun-filled Florida vacation.  We spent our last day in Naples, a place I could easily live!  We started our day at The Naples Zoo.

For those who were on our trivia team last Fall, you know that this is considered to be the most poisonous animal on Earth.  Glad he was glassed in!

We got there just in time for the lunch time feeding of the gators.

Here gator, gator.

Each of them had names and responded when called.

We learned a lot of cool stuff here from the alligator feeding team.  Apparently gators can live as long as humans and can go have up to 1,000 teeth in their lifetime.

We read this sign to Blake, and he was on high alert for the rest of the day about getting anywhere near the plants.

Going on a little boat ride.

Blake was secretly telling me that the monkey's bottom looked really weird.

Our boat driver/tour guide pointed out that this animal is like King Julian from Madagascar, which really got our kids' attention.

We got to feed the giraffes!

It's fine.  He's poisonous, but it's fine.

I consider it a major success that we walked out of this gift shop without buying anything.

Time for lunch at Olive Garden.

Back at the house, it was time to pack up a week's worth of clothes and toys and start shoving them back into suitcases.

Master bedroom.

Master bath.

This was the shower in the master bath, which was not at all conducive to privacy.  I have seen this sort of shower in several new homes and thought how great it would be to have a  nice open shower like this...until this trip.  You couldn't so much as turn on the shower water and you had a little person just standing there chatting you up for the duration of your shower.

Kitchen.

Ice cream!

The dining room that went completely unused. 

Living room that opened up to the lanai.

Bedroom that no one used.

Kids' bathroom.

Kids' room.

The other bathroom.

And one last night around the pool.

Lounging.

We spent the Tuesday of our vacation at Aunt Ginny's house.  Matt's Great Aunt Ginny lives right on the canal on Pine Island and has a perfect spot for fishing, which is exciting for Matt, who loves to fish.  That entertained the kids for a little bit, but not nearly as long as it entertained Matt.

A pretty great way to start any Tuesday, especially any Tuesday in JANUARY!

Off to Aunt Ginny's house...

We usually fish with live shrimp, which disgusted the kids in a big way.

Blake really liked casting out, but he freaked out any time a fish got near him.

Anastasia (one of Cinderella's step sisters) oversaw the fishing.

Not a bad replacement for a back yard.

Charlie, who has been around since we started visiting Ginny about ten years ago.

Alexandria is not in love with Blake's head tilting on her during photo shoots.

My big catch for the day.

Not every birthday I've celebrated has been quite this warm!  The morning of my birthday we drove down to Lake Trafford for an airboat tour.

The boat was pretty loud at times so we all had this sweet ear muffs on.

Right away we saw an alligator.  The kids didn't think he was very big.  He looked plenty big to me.

Alexandria was a little nervous so she held pretty tightly to my hand for most of the time.

I used my zoom some on these pictures, but we were pretty close.

Howling in the wind.

We spent the afternoon lounging and swimming, which is pretty much my perfect day.

Later that night we went out for a nice steak dinner, just what this pregnant mama was craving.

I even got some nice birthday drawings from the kids.

The funniest part of dinner was watching Blake crack open his peanuts and toss them on the floor (totally acceptable at this restaurant).

SATURDAY

One of my favorite things (I have a list of about 100) about Florida is waking up in January to fresh air and bright sunshine!

Waiting for the pool heater to do its job and warm up that water.

Heading out to Sanibel...

The birds were stalking us in a major way.  One of them swooped down and snagged a Dorito out of Alexandria's hand, and another one swooped down on Matt's sandwich.

Shells everywhere!

It's COLD water!

This girl was super brave!

Blake preferred the beach to the ocean.  He was pretty certain that the sharks were going to get him out there.

After we'd spent a few hours at the beach, we headed back to our house to get ready for dinner.  Then we went to pick up Matt's Great Aunt Ginny.

This is Matt's favorite place to eat on the island.

Pretty decent pics from Matt's phone.

And after we got home, we had Popsicles for dessert.

SUNDAY

On Sunday morning we got up and went to church in Ft. Myers at The Southside Church of Christ, where we have attended several times before on trips.  And afterwards we enjoyed lunch at Five Guys, where there was a whole lot of dancing at our table.

Then we were off for an afternoon of swimming and lounging around the pool.  The hot tub was so much warmer than the pool, so the kids spent most of their time in there.

This house came equipped with lots of fun pool and sand toys!

Taking in a little Sunday night football.

What a fun time we had during our week in Florida.  I could definitely get used to the year round sunshine, leaving the house without a coat and daily swimming. 

Traveling always seems to bring out some extra funny quotes from the kids, and we tried to write them down as they said them, but I know we didn't get them all recorded.  One of the funnier ones happened on the bus ride from the airport parking lot to the St. Louis airport.  Blake, who has always been thrilled with flying, says to us, "How many different ways can a plane catch on fire?"  And pretty quickly Alexandria followed that up with, "Well, it could crash."  Always a good way to start a vacation.

As the kids get older, it is MUCH easier to travel with them.  They can carry their own carry-ons, sit still on the plane and get along (better) in the airport.  For that we are thankful!  This was probably our last "easy" vacation for a few years as the new baby will add some extra chaos and equipment.  For the first time in six years, we went on vacation without a stroller!  It was a freeing moment!  I was hesitant to do this, but Matt said it would be fine, so I went with it.  And he was right--everyone did great without it and it was nice that we didn't have to mess with it.

Airplane entertainment for Alexandria.

The window seat is about all the entertainment Blake needs. 

Here's the bonus of flying into the Orlando airport--the tram.  We've flown into this airport a few times, and the kids always love this part.  In fact, they love all of the "riding" they get to do on trips--buses, airplanes, elevators, escalators, trams.

We spent the first night of our trip in Winter Haven, FL, home to LegoLand Florida.

Blake was the first one up so the DVD player kept him quiet while Dad and Alexandria slept in and I got ready for the day.

Watching a pirate show.

Our first roller coaster of the day.

Alexandria and I rode on the boats while the boys went on a big roller coaster.

While we were separated, Blake also went to driving school and got his license.  Matt did a nice job of taking pictures with his phone for me.

We spent quite a bit of time checking out all of the elaborate Lego city designs in the park. 

Such a neat place!  And this LegoLand seemed to have way more designs than the San Diego LegoLand we visited last May.

Matt won by a long shot on this ride/game!

The boys were going to go to Coastersaurs while we were on Safari Trek, but Blake thought the 45 minute wait was too long for him, so they went elsewhere.  Alexandria and I later went on this coaster, and she proved herself to be very brave!

This is the coaster where the boys were, I think.

They went up there too--Island in the Sky.

And this was their view from WAY up there.

And Matt said that Blake also went on the fire truck ride about four times.

Matt went on an ice cream run while we were on the giant carousel.

The park closed at 6, so we took our weary legs south to our Florida home for the week.

It should also be noted that experiencing LegoLand while pregnant is far more tiresome when pregnant, in case you didn't think it would be.   I am in decent shape, but the LegoLand workout nearly took me down.  I was glad to sit in the car for a couple of hours after that day.

If we hadn't been planning to go on vacation just a few days later, I would have been really sad for our holiday break to be over.  I definitely have a greater appreciation for days with everyone at home.  While the house is quieter, we miss Blake while he's at school. 

A package from Papa Bruce and Gma Suzanne arrived!

There was a frenzy over popping all of the packaging, of course.

We sent Angela and Drew off to KC after having a fun couple of days with them.

We played outside a bit.

And we started on a MAJOR project--baby's room!  The room that used to be our office has become the baby's room.  That means we had to move a giant three shelf bookcase unit and a huge L-shaped desk OUT of the room.  Gotta give a shout out to Drew and Dace for helping Matt with the heavy lifting on that.  The kids were a really big help too taking boxes of things to the basement.  We had way more stuff in the office than I realized (always the way with a room).

I don't have any "after" pictures yet, but our office looks WAY bigger now that we have all of the big furniture out of it.  And our basement looks quite a bit different too.  Making a note now to get pictures of all the rooms that have been switched up.  Baby's room is far from done, but I do have the dresser/changer, bassinet, swing, bouncy seat and various other baby items in the room.  And I have some motivation to start painting the baby furniture that we currently have.  I'm excited to see how it all turns out. 

After all of that work, someone needed a rest (someone besides me).

Since we were spoiled with such nice weather during our break, we celebrated by taking Angela to the zoo with us. 

The highlight of the day for Alexandria was seeing baby Kenzi, the newest elephant at our zoo.

As far as elephants go, she was pretty cute.

Working hard at the children's zoo.

I was especially glad to have Angela along because otherwise my pregnant self would have been sliding down this tube slide with Alexandria....real cute.

On the carousel.

These guys were putting on quite a show for us, and splashed us a few times.

Everyone's favorite part of the zoo--the train.

Angela pointed out that Blake was sitting like Uncle Dace does, so we had to capture that.  I've noticed it him doing it several times since then too. 

Fun times!

We LOVED just about every single minute of our holiday break week together.  Matt took off on Monday and Friday, so it was nice to have him around for a few extra days.  The kids and I had the perfect mix of days where we wore our PJs and played all day and days where we actually had plans and left the house. 

On December 27 we had a perfect snow day.  We woke up to snow on the ground that lasted for about three hours and then melted away, just enough time for sledding and then the mess was gone. 

Blake was thrilled to wake up to snow.  He went outside right away for some sledding.

 

 

 

 

 

Still loves to shovel.  He even went over and shovled our neighbor's driveway.

Once Alexandria finally woke up (10 a.m. was her break week wake up time), she loved playing outside too.

So excited to see the neighbors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent some time trying out our new Kinect games too!

And the kids put on several plays for us during this week too, at least one every night.

Thanks to Blake even the play house got some festive decoration during the holidays.

   

 

 

 

 

And I may have suffered the kids through a photo shoot or two as well.

Just getting some work done.

The present piles, the night before.

Blake's stash.

Alexandria's goodies.

 

We sort of rushed through presents on Xmas morning, headed to church, and then went to Dad and Mom's house for the afternoon, where there were even more gifts!

Blake and Alexandria had to follow a series of clues to find their gifts that were hidden throughout the house.

 

Lots of gloves at this Xmas celebration.

Angela got some boots to wear in the forest.

Dane got a fire extinguisher, just in case his car catches on fire again on his way back to KC.

 

After church that night we came back to our place and played some more games and laughed a whole bunch.  I have a greater appreciation for my siblings and their humor the older we get.  We must be getting funnier.

Let the record show that the team of Angela, Matt and Kelly was the superior CatchPhrase team.  I expect a rematch at some point.

What used to be an annual gathering has now turned into an every other year gathering due to the big Hartman family vacation that we've been taking every other winter.  So we were happy to host the whole gang for a fun afternoon of snacks and games.

After we ate, we played a snack game that Kathy T. had organized.  The kids really loved it!  Everyone had brought and wrapped their own favorite snack, and then we played Rob Your Neighbor's snack.

 

 

 

 

After the snack game played out I had a few Minute to Win It games that I stole from someone on Pinterest.   The first game was to throw marshmallows through a wreath and into a basket.  Most marshmallows in the basket at the end of the minute was the winner.  Drew and Angela were the big winners of this game!

 

 

Then there was the ever embarrassing Cookie Face game, where each player tries to get a cookie from his/her forehead into his/her mouth without the use of their hands.

I think Brian won this game in 7 short seconds!

 

 

 

 

The cup stacking game was up next.  Jessie and Tiffany took away the WIN on this game.

 

 

 

 

 

After most of the guests had gone homel, Blake and Drew had some WrestleMania time.

 

And then we tested out some of Matt's new presents, new Kinect Sports games.

And worked on some Legos too.

Not sure how this started...

Blake was just sure that he could dip me...I was slightly less confident in his dipping-a-pregnant-woman skills.

 

CATCHPHRASE time!

 

Finally, we got the kids settled all snug in their beds.

 

WHEW!  What a fun day!