Normally this is against the house rules, but Blake desperately needs practice playing catch.  So Matt has decided that they need to play catch a few minutes every night.  I've tried to tell Matt that Blake isn't headed for baseball stardom, based on his lack of interest alone, but Matt's still trying to mold him into a ball player, at least for Little League purposes.  

Alexandria actually shows slightly more interest in playing catch than Blake does at this point.

Matt had a business trip to Fargo, ND a few weeks ago, and he was sweet enough to pack this giant treat home with him.

Blake, who is the most serious breakfast eater in our house, ate most of it.

And then he made a nice little menu of what we were offering for breakfast that morning.  I'm pretty sure Alexandria slept through the whole thing.  Girlfriend is serious about her sleeping in.

I have a ton of cousins, so I have been to my share of family weddings.  But I have to say that Geoff and Lauren's wedding was one of the most unique weddings I have attended.  You could tell how excited they were to start their life together, and that really made the day fun for everyone in attendance.

Before the wedding party came in they showed this neat video where they were interviewed about how they met, what they like most about each other and what they were most looking forward to as married folks.  It was adorable!

They wrote their own vows to each other, which were so very sweet, and then to top it all off, Geoff sang Randy Travis's My Love is Deeper to Lauren.

Lauren's younger sister, Alyssa (on the left) was married last May while we were in San Diego, and I am still so disappointed that we missed that wedding.

Aunt Lindy and Travis listening to the speeches.

Jackson being bashful and CUTE!

I LOVED the bridesmaids' hair bows.  They were all really great.

This girl loves cake!

And this is the part of the reception where Blake took over my camera...

And then I got it back...

And then Blake got it again...

And then I think Angela or Meaghan must have taken over because I had some business to take care of on the dance floor.

Blake really wanted to twirl me.

We were welcomed back to the Midwest with this. 

The kids were thrilled to come home to snow. 

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).