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.

Baba & Dido

We were SO happy that Baba & Dido (George's parents) flew all the way across the country to visit us in Florida! We had a fantastic week with them, and packed in a lot of good times and fun memories.

We got to the beach a couple of times, but the weather didn't cooperate very well. It was breezy and chilly (by FL standards), but still enjoyable.

Pelican party in the Atlantic

On the way to the beach we passed palm trees up in flames - turns out it was a controlled burn. Still odd to see such a green/lush area up in flames.

Jack driving with Sawyer as a passenger. Oh geez - I can only imagine when they are teenagers. Heaven help us!

Our ward (what we call our local church congregation) recently got a lot of new members. There was a temple trip planned for all of them and extra help was needed, so George and Bill volunteered. Natalie and I got to go in before them to do some initiatory work while they watched the boys, then we swapped. It was great  to get to go to the temple since it is hard to do very often with little ones. If you're curious about temples, you can click here to read about them.

While George was off during the weekend, we took a 5 hour drive up to Tallahassee to visit Aunt Connie. She is one of Bill's younger sisters. She lives out in the 'country' and it was a pleasant get-away, and very nice to meet more of the Bates' side of the family. Below are some of the pictures we took on our weekend getaway.

Yet another diaper change on the go...the boys are getting pretty good at road trips!

Bill #2 and Connie #4 out of 11 children

A definite highlight was visiting Wakulla State Park, home to the largest fresh water spring in the country. Connie treated us to a boat ride along the spring where we saw manatees, alligators, turtles, mullet (you should have seen them leaping out of the water!), and lots of birds (anhinga, ibes, moorhen, heron, egret, cormorant, osprey and more)!

"Did you see that alligator, mom?"

There were 6 turtles lined up on this log and they kept plopping in the water one at a time as our boat got closer.

Great Aunt Connie & Jack - he kept us all busy on the boat ride.

Neat shot of the vultures and spanish moss.

An alligator so relaxed he is about ready to slip off the log. I can relate, sunshine will do that to you.

Anhinga - they have no oil on their feathers to wick off water so they spread their wings out like the above photo to dry off.

There is a manatee, aka gentle giant. You can see some white scars on its back. Most likely that is from getting hit by a boat. Pretty much all of the manatees have scars like that. They are endangered, and the biggest problem is boats hitting them.

A game of chess with papa.

Connie, Baba, & Jack's turn now.

Natalie was also able to see her youngest brother, Teddy who happened to be down in FL at the same time. He normally lives in New Hampshire.

Back at the home front, Bill and Natalie took a trip out to the Astronaut Hall of Fame while the boys got in a nap at home. Sad that the shuttles are all 'parked' now.

A star fruit tree! Sawyer and Jack love this fruit. And I found out the juice from them stains terribly. We'll see if oxi-clean works its normal magic or not...

Three generations of boys playing :)

Baba and Jackers

Sawyer serving up a delicious seashell sand sandwich for a snack - try saying that ten times in a row!

Sawyer can catch the lizards around here no problem!

Sawyer cruising around the yard on his balance bike.

Watering my garden baby...a bird got my first ripe cherry tomato :( Nature's taxes I guess. Here's to hoping for a big return!

Jack has been doing all sorts of free standing (for a couple months now) and he even took a couple steps with a lot of urging. It won't be too long until I'm in big trouble.

 Palmetto frond - FL state tree. Baba really liked them.

A week flew by, and seemed much too short. We had a great visit and Sawyer and Jack really loved getting to know their grandparents. Sawyer keeps asking, "Where did Baba and Dido go?" Thank you for all your help with the van, pressure washer and other projects Grandpa. And thank you for all your help with the boys, cooking, and cleaning Grandma. We were spoiled and had a wonderful visit!  Hopefully it won't be too long until we get to see you again. We love you and miss you Baba & Dido!