Lordy, Lordy - look who's FORTY!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURA!!!

Look what I found in my yard...

All you Northern'ers, be envious!   Spring is springing here in the glorious South!   We may not have tulips, yet, (Laura, forced tulips are really artificial tulips!!) but we sure do have some pretty color in our yards!

 

This first picture is for all of you up in the great white north! :) Spring is just around the corner.... well maybe not the first corner, but probably at least the second or third corner....

Since we don't really get a hard freeze, I had to force the tulips to bloom. One of the neighbor kids came over and was just amazed with the "strange flower" - had never seen a tulip before - go figure! :)




And this one is for Uncle Walter - these are the wolves that the girls were telling you about. Yes, they did get to pet wolves. The lady in the picture is part Choctaw and raises wolves to help educate people about her heritage and the connection between humans and wolves. Not sure I would raise wolves, but she was fascinating.

Happy Birthday Nicky!

We had a beautiful day for skiing today and spent the day just having fun on the slopes. At the end of the day, the girls decided they wanted to go tubing as well, so off we went....

This tubing run is nice because you get pulled up the hill rather than having to pull your tube up the hill.... Plus they have these big tubes that hold lots of people so we could all go down together. Here we are being pulled up the hill.







Here we are about to head down the hill. The pictures of us actually going down the hill didn't come out so well - just a big blur. It must be because the girls always wanted to spin going down the hill. Mom had enough after about 5 runs! :)

We are enjoying our ski trip. The weather hasn't been the greatest, but overall it has been a good trip.




I must say this is what I do miss about PA - besides being able to ski whenever we wanted, you really don't get scenery like this in Florida. And you certainly don't get picturesque little farms with stone houses and cool barns like you see in these pictures down in FL either....





















Katie loves to hit all the ski jumps - you can see she caught some good air on this one!

















After skiing, we found this very interesting science museum. Here you can see the girls doing a weather forecast - although it looks like "karate weather"?????




Here they are doing their best Jim Cantore out in the middle of a hurricane.

Got tired of seeing my kids in front of the big guitar on the blog, so we decided to set off on another adventure!

We started by spending the night at the Kreilings. Unfortunately, Uncle Walter wouldn't let his family join us on our adventures, but here is a picture of the cousins having fun together.








We then headed to Pennsylvania to enjoy some skiing. Monday was a beautiful day of skiing, but Tuesday brought rain, so we took a side trip to Gettysburg. Here are the girls at the Lincoln Speech Memorial and the Soldiers' National Monument. It is hard to imagine so much blood-shed in just three days...
















Back to the slopes tomorrow! Maddy and Katie are decked out in their ski outfits.

This post is for Nick.....

Yes, we did go back to Disney AGAIN.... The girls and I left on Thursday and Uncle Craig joined us for the weekend. On Tuesday, the girls wanted to go back to MGM to ride on the Rock-N-Roll Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror one more time and we were going to leave at lunch time.... BUT look what we got!!!!!! :)





We ended up staying until dinner time!

Happy birthday Amy!

Garfield for December 02 2007

I like this Garfield.  It is funny I think everyone should read it.  I get it everyday on my iGoogle account.  So I wanted to share one with you.      :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-)   :-) 

 

Some pictures and an amusing story.....

On the way to Jacksonville, Nana & GpaZ were lucky enough to get into Paula Deen's Restaurant. If any of you have ever tried, you have to stand in line to put your name in early in the morning - no reservations or anything. They just got lucky and a table was available on the day they stopped!

So here is a picture of them with a picture of Paula Deen - well hey - Paula can't be there cooking every day! :)













We finally found a place for Katie to start riding horses again. Doesn't she look at home on top of the horse??? Where did that gene come from????












I love horse riding lesson day because I get to go out to this great farm in the middle of nowhere Florida and sit, enjoying the great scenery. Plus Katie loves her new instructor and just loves being out at the farm with the cows, horses and pig....

Did I say pig???? This is Chuckie the Pig. He is enormous and just roams the farm. But he loves to eat.







He even loves to eat books.... I set down my book to help Katie get the horse hosed off and came back to find that Chuckie ate my library book. Imagine the look on the librarian's face when I told her - I was very sorry, but a pig ate my library book. I then had to point out the title "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" - she didn't seem very amused at the irony.

The book is a good read, but an even better one is The Omnivore's Dilemma. Although I must warn that if you are not into learning about the source of your food, don't read either.... You may never eat the same again. Maddy got us started on learning about the humane treatment of animals. Although I don't think she likes enough vegtables to go totally vegetarian, she is looking to have some land and raise her own chickens and a goat! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOEY!







We took Joey on an adventure to Disney. All the kids had fun on the roller coasters....


























Even these kids....












Minnie dropped by to give the birthday boy a hug...












And after having so much fun, Craig & Walter worked up quite an appetite!







We finished off the weekend with a round of golf. Nick looks like he has been doing this for years! :)













Joey - Thanks for coming and letting us celebrate your birthday with you!

A few pet photos

Doesn't Lucy look majestic?

  

Then you see her try to fit an entire log in her mouth - the illusion is shattered!  *grin*   Supposedly she's not all grown, yet.   But she is nine months old this month.  Nana & Grandpa Z will tell you that with a few exceptions, she's a good dog (if only she'd stop dragging that darn wood into the house!)

 

Here's Duke muggin' for the camera.  "They can't only take pictures of that annoying dog,"  Duke says.

And here's a great shot of Joey & Lucy - they are best pals.  Joey is very good with the puppy training - probably better than Mom & Dad!

Halloween in North Carolina

It's a tad late, but here are some pictures from our Halloween.  Remember that Nana & Grandpa Z were visiting us this year.  We all had a great time!

GPaZ led the way in pumpkin carving - his was the first pumpkin carved and he helped with all the others (except for Walter's - Walter's very possessive of his pumpkins!)

 

The boys scooped out their own pumpkins and used those cool carving tools to make their own designs.

 

They sort of look like their pumpkins, don't they?   Spooky!!!!

 

 

 

Look at all those spooky pumpkins!

 

 

 

 

 

Last, but not least, trick-or-treating!    Joey went as a knight while Nicky STAYED HOME and handed out candy to the kids.  Nana, Grandpa Z, Amy & Nicky also played cribbage while we waited for our trick-o-treaters.  What a grown-up evening for Nicky;  but Joey got all the candy!!!!

Some pictures of Nana and GpaZ's visit.

Nana and GpaZ planted themselves on the lanai and have been enjoying our good weather that arrived just for them....











They even enjoyed the pool and hot tub with the girls.














This one is for Amy who wanted to see the lanai area now that we have it all set up...













We took Nana and GpaZ to the airshow on Saturday. A fun time was had by all. It was a beautiful day - perfect for an airshow!

The gang's all here, but where is the Mystery Machine????