The Holiday Whirlwind!

We were quite the festive group this year during the holidays. There were school plays and performances and Emily even participated in a small town, local parade with her 4H goat club!

And once we recovered (kind of) from the chaos that was Christmas morning with 4 kiddos (note the “before” and “after” photos), we made the best of the kid’s school break by taking some nice day trips!

Of course the first priority was to try out some of the kid’s new stuff! And so we loaded up the new bikes, Brandon’s new soccer ball & goal and Anabelle’s new camera! Nothing like a little good ‘ol friendly competition :)

We fit in one of our favorites - a trip to the beach - likely M’s first trip to the beach! And she loved it!! Brandon “turned into a bubble”, Sophie didn’t mind one bit turning into a bubble, and the girls took to their boogie boards (despite the water being SO cold!).

Brandon, in particular, was exceptionally excited about Christmas this year! He sang Christmas songs constantly, talked about Santa and elves and he insisted on wearing only the most festive attire all around town!

We kayaked (Brandon got his own this year!), had “sleepovers” in the living room, watched Christmas movies, drank hot cocoa, ate snowman shaped pancakes and even fit in a visit to Sea World - where Anabelle convinced Daddy to ride all the HUGE roller coasters, Emily got to enjoy all the cool critters, and M and Brandon were huge fans of the Sesame Street Parade!

To wind down the kid’s break, we took the boat out to Crystal River where we saw so much wildlife; including lots of manatees, monkeys, SO many fish, turtles and birds! We even fished off the boat the all the kids caught tons of blue gills and even bass! We finished off the 2 weeks with an outing to see Frozen 2!

Whew! I’d say we made the best of our time “off”! And now, we’ve reluctantly returned to whirlwind of reality!