Grandma & Grandpa Lewis

We had a memorable visit with Grandma & Grandpa Lewis. They braved staying with us for two whole weeks. It was great to have them here :) I was laying on the spare bed a few days ago and Sawyer said, "Get off mama, that is Grandpa's." He knows what's up.

Fact about me: I am really good at removing splinters. Boom. Just like that. I'm good. Haha. Grandpa had a splinter in his finger that had been bothering him for a few days. I had him soak his finger in epsom salt before the big removal. Sawyer of course needed to soak his finger as well.

We got in play time at the park.

Jack bear crawling his way to the park.

Sawyer's new puzzle - complete with magnetic catcher 'net'. Very entertaining, thank you Grandma & Grandpa!

Papa is going to try to do some work in the garage? Wait, hold me!

Sawyer & Grandpa planting the loquat tree together. Luckily it survived the frost a few nights ago.

Strawberries!!!

Gotta have your binoculars :)

We love the roseate spoonbills! Do you see their flashy pink above?

Exploring Merritt Island National Refuge

Sawyer and Grandpa relaxing on the beach.

So this is where Sawyer put the sun visor down on the stroller where my camera was resting. It went over the balcony and amazingly enough, not into the water. None of us saw him do it and he kept saying 'Jack's shoes, Jack's shoes'. Luckily we made the connection that Sawyer thought he'd dropped Jack's shoes, when it was actually my camera. Apparently this wasn't the first time something like this has happened because the park rangers had a long 'hand' tool to reach over the edge and safely rescue my camera. Whew!

Playing on the boardwalk.

Grandma got to see her friend, Helen. She is one of my mom's childhood friend's mom. It had been almost 50 years since they'd seen each other!

Sawyer's parking garage under the couch. He parked them lined-up so neatly.

Grandpa J & Baby J looking good!

Can you see the radish in my mouth? Got down to 32F a few nights ago - brrrr! We covered everything and I don't think we lost anything, although the tomatoes and potatoes look somewhat 'shocked'.

Rehydrating! This was an epic trip that Grandma took the boys on. I was home cleaning/organizing the desk (which I'd been putting off for months!). Meanwhile Grandma was pulling the chariot through sand trails along a power line and hefting it over fences among other things. Good work out and everyone came back happy!

Grandma trying to get everyone to smile and look at the camera. Hehe. We love you Grandma and Grandpa! It was so fun to have you here in our home. Thank you for all your help. You'll probably need a vacation from your vacation! Everyday I would see them serving me or my family in some way. We appreciated it so much! I wish we didn't live so far away. We toyed with the idea of 'running' down to the Everglades to explore, but we all decided that we'd just stay here and relax instead. We all felt like we'd been 'on the go' for a couple of months. It was nice to just relax. Well as much relaxing that happens with a 27-month-old and a 10-month-old :)


Thank you for coming to play with us :) We love you Grandma & Grandpa!!!

Vitamin C

We've pin pointed our favorite fruit stand out on Merritt Island. Last week we were lucky enough to meet the owner of the beautiful property and fruit stand. He is a friendly old farmer that loves eating and growing good food. It was delightful to talk with him and he showed us around his property, giving us bites and sniffs of so many wonderful things! He even gave me a loquat tree to plant in my yard. Off the top of my head, some of the fun things he showed us: curry(!), bay tree, passion fruit, bananas, lemon grass, allspice, orchid, mango, papaya, fig, and loquat (japanese plum). And all of the fruit in the photo below came from his groves.

Pictured from left to right: white grapefruit, caribbean papaya, persian limes, carambola (starfruit), palmelo, meyers lemons, and ORANGES (the green ones are even ripe - color depends on variety, among other things). Thanks Grandma for washing all this fruit!

Did you know some of those bright orange oranges you buy in the grocery store are actually 'gassed' with ethylene gas in 100% humidity or dyed with coloring to get them to look that orange? Ugh, the food industry in our country is so messed up. Needless to say, the juice squeezed from these local oranges is ethereal. I'd been avoiding getting a juicer since they are spendy, but my mom had the genius idea to get the citrus juicer attachment for the kitchen aid. It was much cheaper and we have one less appliance taking up space in the kitchen, yes! We're getting lazy around here, and drinking more juice at the same time, ha!

Have you seen these before? Genius! It's called the citra-sipper. You simply jam it down into the orange and sip out the juice.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We hope all our loved ones have a lovely day :)

We dropped Grandma & Grandpa Lewis off at the airport this morning. We were so sad to see them go. Florida is too, because it's cried all day long since they left, and we haven't had rain like this in months! I hope the garden likes it. During our snack today (totally unprompted) Sawyer said, "I miss Grandma and Grandpa, too." I said, "I miss Grandma and Grandpa, too." Then he said, "I love Grandma and Grandpa." And of course I said, "I love Grandma and Grandpa too." We sure are blessed to have such wonderful people love and visit us. Thank you both for all your help and patience, we sure appreciate you!

We spent the day making sugar cookies. Well not the whole day, but the whole process took us from about 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. That was from scratch all the way to the neighbor's door. (I'm still learning to get over doing anything from start to finish without interruption.) Sawyer loved getting in on all the action.

I rolled the dough out onto powdered sugar. Sawyer discovered this and spent the majority of his time licking the palms of his hands covered in powdered sugar saying, "Mmmm, delicious mama!"

Sawyer was so proud of his heart and happy to share cookies with Mrs. Gayle across the street.

Sprinkle time!
Believe me, Sawyer did not hold back!
We put our helicopters and airplane cookie cutters to good use.

Where was Jack during all of this? In the kitchen cupboards of course!

Grandma was such a great help with our library outings. She took Sawyer to the special valentine's day craft. He made this cute owl mailbox. I made him a heart shaped valentine and he carried it around much of the day and kept saying, "I love Sawyer." Haha, he's so cute. I love that children enjoy the simple things.

My youngest Valentine made his walking status official on February 13th...just over 10-months-old, same age as when his big brother started walking. Watch out world, we're cruising now!

Love to all!

Jack 10 Months

Stats are in for Thing 2 - at his 10-month appointment yesterday here is where our Jack baby stands:

23 lbs. 7 oz. - gained 2 lbs exactly since his 7 mo. check up

29 1/2 in. - same height as 7 month appt - growing out not up, uh-oh :)

46 cm head

And since the nurse wrote these down too:

125 pulse

99% Oxygen

97.2 F temp

He is climbing and LOVES it. He continues to do a lot of free standing with steps here and there, but main mode of transportation is a speedy crawl. His favorite is when we leave the bathroom door open, dishwasher door down, or fridge open. He beelines for those 'good times', ha! He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth and has eaten his share of books. He is so smiley, happy, and good natured. He loves Sawyer, even though Sawyer steals toys from him all the time. He likes to feed himself and he likes texture to his food (pureed anything isn't his thing). He threw his first 'fit' a couple nights ago in the tub when he wanted to hold the wash cloth and I wouldn't give him the used one and he had to wait .5 seconds for me to grab a clean one. He can usually be found in the kitchen cupboards, especially if mom is making dinner. He doesn't mind loud noises. In fact, when I turn on the vacuum he comes racing towards it wanting to investigate. He does the cutest gasp/giggle combo, and we love to make him laugh. He's such a fun, easy-going little guy and we're so happy he is part of our family!

And I thought the play room was safe. Sheesh Jack!

In the cupboard...again.

Looking chubs with Grandma Lewis :)

"Why you do this to me?"

Straight from a nap into the strawberry field!

One happy, content lil' feller.