Miami – We heart you! – Our Adventures

We have made it to Miami! Oh my, it is just as great as it was the last two times we’ve been here this year. I’ve already talked to friends, felt the local vibe and seen wonderful vistas. If it wasn’t so stinkin expensive to live here, we would love to.

I said I would never get those little DVD players to put in our vehicles. Wrong! When you are looking at a total of 12 hours of just driving one way without stops and two 2 year olds the potential crazy factor changes a mind quite quickly! We spent just at $200 getting a dual monitor system that buckles onto the front headrests along with cushy earphones designed for kids. Then we spent an additional $100 on classic Disney movies we didn’t own, but I wished we did to show the kids. They worked quite well. The Lion King was definitely not a good choice to show 2 year olds for the first time without parents sitting next to them to help them through the dramatic scenes. Lesson learned. Toy Story and Cinderella, however, were super well received. Finding Nemo was well loved by Blake and Maddie got bored {I think with movie time in general} about a third a way through.

All in all the drive down was great for such a long long drive. Guy did much of the drive though I felt we got to spend some good quality time together all the way down. We chatted, listened to talk radio, listened to music and helped the kids together. With him driving I was able to work my fingers to get some crochet work done to figure out how to adapt a couple patterns to my crochet gauge {so not the same as the pattern maker!}. I was able to complete a hat & scarf for Blake along with a hat and diaper cover for the photography business. Not bad.

We are all looking forward to seeing my mom when she flies in tomorrow! Madison has been talking about it most of all. She is so excited to see her grandma, dance with her, have a party and whatever else her mind has decided on. We decided to give in to the party suggestion since Madison has been convinced her grandma is having a party we give her for a couple weeks. We bought a few party novelties and a cake to surprise her with tomorrow. I can write about this since she will definitely not read it before her flight tomorrow morning! It’s about bedtime for her and an early flight to boot.

I’ll save our other surprises for when we have current images of those events to share. Let’s just say the kids will not be getting anything but hand me downs for Christmas with what we have spontaneously decided to spend on this trip! We are going to have so much fun!!!!

We had our big anatomy ultrasound this week as well. We confirmed our belief we are having a boy. There was no mistaking his little boy part! All of us are very happy. He measured right where he is supposed to and showed all normal function and form to all the organs, bones and systems they checked. Great news! Now it’s onto figuring out a list of top names to choose from when we meet him. Oh, and don’t forget to pray for him to be born nice and healthy on April 18th! lol Yes, I’m crazy and want all my kids to have the same birthday. His due date is April 21st so it’s a reasonable request. All is well sitting here with a small baby bump at 18 weeks pregnant.

Some recent images to share:

She pushed herself to go faster.

They loved pumping the water out.

Just after this Guy sprained his ankle badly falling the last couple steps down the stairs helping one of them slide down the banister. It still hurts him over a week later.