Pictures say it all

I finally got the cord for our camera back after leaving it behind in Florida, so although there are a thousand things I should be doing right now to get ready to leave again, I'm going to post a bunch of pictures from the last couple weeks.  You just figure out what's going on here:

Life of Lux

This afternoon while Savannah napped, Travis was hard at work on the house.  Meanwhile, I was hard at work on my tan.... 

Do I have it easy, or what?

In and Out again

So, you might have been following my daily Florida blog and realized that it ended at day 3 or 4.  I got all caught up in all the fun there, then when we got home I found that I left my camera cord behind and so, have no new pictures, and thus, nothing to base my blogs off of.  More pictures and Florida blogs coming someday......

Since getting back last week it's been a whirl wind! We arrived home on Wednesday, in enough time to get Savannah a 45 minute nap, and head out to the church for our regular Wednesday night activities.  Thursday was spent catching up on Laundry, taking back Library movies and books, and getting our grounding.  Friday I planned and shopped for a retreat we had coming up with our Panama team.  Saturday Travis and I were gone all day on the Panama retreat.  Sunday we did take some time to hang out with my parents and lay around.  Much needed!  Monday started a new week of hanging out with students and leaders, going into the office (for me), painting our house, and getting everything in order for us to take 22 people to Panama this coming Wednesday!  Travis has been working constantly on the house and on planning the teaching stuff for Panama and I have been going from meeting to meeting to the computer, to paper work, and back!  Tonight I finally cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and living room for the first time all week.  Before we know it, we'll be off again!
Highlights:
- Savannah loves "the mermaid show" (the little mermaid) and "the donkey show" (shrek 2).  We got her a Mermaid Barbie yesterday from Amazon. She's LOVING it!

- We're painting our house these colors: "Smoke House", "Rice Patty" and "Emerald Gold".  I love picking out paint colors!  There are so many good ones out there!  And of course we're getting all our paint where the pros get it - Sherwin Williams.

- Temptations (the candy shop on Main Street) is open until 8pm on Thursdays and has ice cream for $1.  It's our Thursday night family tradition this summer.  Recommended.

4: This is vacation

I'm starting today with a picture from the night before that I didn't put up.  We went to eat dinner at this whole in the wall sea food place (I had a burger) and while we were waiting, some boats went by.  It was so fun to show them to Savannah.  She just loves all things water.  Did I mention she's also into mermaids these days?

Savannah got up at 6am ready to rock, so by 8:30 we were at the beach.  She actually likes the pool better right now.  Travis thinks it's because she's in control in the pool and not so much in the strong waves at the beach.  But Travis likes the beach better so we did that first.

Then we hit up the pool.  They have 3 pools right by the beach, but of course Savannah likes the kiddie pool best.  We like it too cause we can just lay back while she plays!  We did this for about an hour, then back to the beach, then back to the pool.  We were out playing from 8:30 until noon.  Savannah ate so much at lunch, then slept for 4 hours.  She really needed it by then!

A clown and a couple dancers from a Cerq show came by.  We thought they would put on a show or something, but they just awkwardly handed out sun block. 

So Savannah took a nap, I went and laid out by the beach, then Travis went running. Yeah, he's been working out every day we've been on vacation.  He's pretty into it!  

After nap time we had dinner, then headed to this super fun place with fountains, a play area, and a live band.  It was really fun. 

That's my brave Savannah.  Just runs face first into the water.  

I thought I should probably have a picture at some point of the twins! I dont think I've ever called them that!  Well here they are.  They look less alike as they get older I think.

And Family picture of the day.  It was hard enough to get her to sit still for one, no time to take a second one where EVERYONE was smiling.

Annnd we made it - to the beach.

can you see Savannah running out ahead of everyone in her little pink suit?  This was her first time to the beach. 

We crammed Savannah's car seat into the mini van with Lani and Maggie.  Greg said Sav's car seat is like a throne.  It IS.  I didn't realize how huge it was until we got it here.  It's kinda funny.

We went to the beach twice today.  Once in the morning for a couple hours, then later Savannah and I went for an hour while Travis played Basket ball with his Brother.  Do you think Savannah likes it?

Savannah really liked running into the waves, then running away from the waves was her favorite I think.  She's pretty tough so she really doesn't even mind when she gets plowed over by a big one.  Photo not included - but Travis loves body surfing.  He was so funny.  He kept running back up to us saying "I went SOooo far!  Did you see it? Watch me!"

I love how maggie is going down in this picture.  As hard as you try, doing things with toddlers is always a little bit chaos.

And this one to prove that I am in fact in Florida with my family.  It seems like moms never make it into the pictures unless they work for it :)

As for oil - here's what is looks like here.  It's in the sand about 6 inches from my foot.  Can you even see it?  There are small spots around the beach.  If you step in it it just looks like a brown smudge on your foot.  There are brushes and wipes at the beach to use for wiping it off.  It's really not a big deal.

Florida Day 2

Last night did not go so well.  Savannah woke up about about 1:30am crying "owie mommy".  I know she wasn't hurt.  It was just a ploy for us to get her out of her pack and play.  It worked though since we didn't want her to wake up everyone in the place.  So we put her between us (in the King size bed) and she spent the next 2 hours rolling round and keeping all of us awake.  When my alarm went off at 5:15am it was not pretty.

We got up and got all ready and rode the Hotel shuttle to the airport, arriving there at 6:20am, only to find out at check in that our check bag was 10lbs over weight.  I am pretty bad at packing.... I get this from my mom. I'm always thinking  "what if it's too hot, or too cold, or we need extra socks, or 4 kinds of sunscreen".  Since we didn't have our car there, the only option was to find stuff to pull out of our bag to carry on.  So out came the toiletries (pretty heavy and easy to pull) and our tennis shoes (yes, we sat at the counter and changed shoes) and a couple other things.  There - we still weighed in at 52lbs!  The lady was getting ready to go on vacation herself (we caught that from her side convo with a fellow worker) so she let us by with a warning for next time.  Whew!  Next we hit up the security check point and OH NO!  I forgot about the "3oz liquids in a plastic baggy" rule!  And here we are with our toiletry bags - razors, nail clippers, over sized shampoo bottles and all.  So while we waited in line I QUICKLY went through everything.  I threw away so much stuff.  I was all sweaty and tense too.  Then we got through the security check point with only the "FLARP putty" holding us up.  

FINALLY, at 7:45am, we boarded plane number 1.  Just before we boarded Savannah and I each took a children's benadryl.  Savannah was really excited about the plane ride.  She bounced around on the seat, and off the seat.  Looked out the windows.... all the fun stuff.  We took off and she looked out the window in awe.  Then about 3 minutes after we hit the air she fell asleep in my arms.  It was nice.  She hasn't done that in over  year.  She slept about an hour and a half.  Then we played.  She was super good.  We landed in Atlanta and had about 40 minutes to get some food and get to another terminal.  Someone told me to bring a stroller for the airport - good advice!  It made that quick haul much easier!  We boarded flight number 2 - Savannah discovered the overhead lights.  The flight was only about 30 minutes so we just played and looked out the window the whole time.  

Once in Florida, Greg and Lani picked us up at the airport.  It was fun to see Savannah so excited to see them.  We drove about 2 hours to the place that Greg and Shannon are staying this summer.  It rained here all day, but we were all pretty tired so it was okay.  Tonight we went out to see some of the student ministry that Greg works with.  It was pretty cool.  It was a lot like Salt Company back home.  Travis put Savannah to sleep tonight in the pack and play in the closet of the room we're staying in.  Hope she sleeps well tonight!  I'm WIPPED!

Florida Day 1

So, Day 1 isn't officially Florida yet.  We're staying at a Hotel in Minneapolis because our flight takes off tomorrow morning at 7:45am.  We left Ames around 2 this afternoon and drove straight up here.  We had planned on Savannah sleeping on the way up, but that didn't happen.  She was pretty quiet most of the ride. She watched the Little Mermaid twice.  Travis loves that I know the lyrics to all the songs - actually, he loves how serious I take myself when I sing the songs.  We went right to the Mall of America when we got to town.  Got some hot deals on some jeans, shirts, and a tutu.  Then we tried to hit up Ikea for dinner, but it turns out we were 30 seconds too late!  So forget Ikea (until we fly back into Minneapolis anyway) and we had dinner at Subway.  I had forgotten to print off our itinerary from Expedia so I didn't even know where we were staying tonight. Totally unlike me.  But luckily I got ahold of Jasey who did some quick work on the computer and found it for me.  We got here, spent about 30 minutes settling in, and put Savannah to bed in her pack and play.  This is our first Hotel stay with Savannah.  I sat in the bathroom while Travis sang and read to her. She whined a little when he put her down but went out pretty fast.  Then we came out into the hall way (where I am right now) and messed around on the computer for about an hour.  So.... Day 1 down.  Sweet Jesus, just get us to Florida already!