Summertime Part II

We've been staying busy, having fun and soaking up the relaxing days of summer! 

This is one of the kids' favorite summer activities... water balloons!

Cruz wanted to throw one at me, so I said that he could in exchange for a picture.

Our rule is that if you don't want water balloons thrown at you, you cannot throw them at others. Cora wasn't a huge fan of this rule at first. She loved throwing balloons but wasn't a big fun of her brothers getting her wet.

This is her "sneaking up" on me. Her face cracks me up! 

We went to go see the new Disney movie, Finding Dory. 

We got a membership to the children's museum in Tampa from my Aunt Jill for Christmas so we made our first few visits there. It is such a cool museum. The kids loved it.

Rowan docking a cruise ship.

Learning about water as energy.

Broadcasting the weather

Coco waiting for Cruz to talk to her from across the room

Coco loved the stage to put on shows. She did a little pirate show with some of the other kids. The boys worked the sound booth in the back.

Coco was a fan of the flower garden as well.

The boys practiced lifting things with this crane.

The imagination area was by far the hit. There was a grocery store, fire station, restaurant and vet's office for the kids to pretend in. Cora could have stayed and played vet all day.

We finished off the trip with a climb through the water cycle play ground. Such a fun place. We can't wait to go back.

Cora absolutely adores dresses that twirl. The first thing she does after we get dressed is check out the twirl factor of the dress she has on. This one was pretty good! 

One day the kids' and I headed to our favorite beach, Siesta Key.

Cruz and Rowan built a big sandcastle.

Cora and I built our own. We spent a lot of time swimming as well. The water in the Gulf is so warm and nice in the summertime! 

There are so many cute ice cream shops in Siesta Key so we ended our fun day trying out the Orange Octopus.

We had a couple not so fun items on our agenda as well. Cruz visited his new eye doctor. We really liked him, thankfully. Cruz's old eye doctor was a resident of his new doctor when they were in medical school. It was fun that he knew her. Cruz is still slightly far sighted so he's still a slight risk for his eye to turn again but as of right now, no glasses and no further treatment for another six months.

Rowan's recent dental x-rays revealed extreme crowding of his adult teeth so he had his first visit to the orthodontist. She said that since his baby teeth are falling out so slowly it's giving his mouth time to grow and catch up to where it needs to be. She plans to monitor him for another six months before deciding on the next step.

Our family dealt with our first cavities among our kiddos. Cruz actually had three small ones. It was unfortunate that it happened to him and not one of the other kids because Cruz is terrified of the dentist... like hyperventilating terrified. We ended up deciding to use IV sedation so that the dentist could easily and safely fill the cavities. 

Cora finished up her second round of swimming lessons! She did such an amazing job. I am so proud of her for overcoming some of her hesitancies in the water.

It was so hot and humid watching her lessons so the boys would find the smallest patch of shade to play their games.

We've spent our far share of reading and watching movies from the library as well. Rowan has become a lot more interested in reading this summer which is so fun to see! 

These crazy boys have a three day baseball mini camp this week. Of course they've loved it. It makes my heart happy that they can do these sports camps together. They're truly not only brothers but best friends. 

So there's our last few weeks in a nutshell (kind of)! 

Happy Father's Day!!!

Rog says thank you for the sweet cards and gifts! 

Saturday night started out our celebration of our favorite daddy with a trip to the mall to eat at Cheesecake Factory and do some playing on the mall playground.

We are so thankful for this awesome daddy! I am always amazed at his energy and ability to run around and play with the kids for hours. He loves to teach them things and share experiences with them. He is an amazing example at saying "I'm sorry" and asking for forgiveness when he makes a mistake. Our kids have gotten so much better at through watching his example. These kids know how much they're loved by their daddy because he shows it every single day through the gift of his time, his words and his snuggles. 

Cora wanted Daddy to pick out her outfit and how to do her hair on Sunday. I love that her daddy cares enough to have an opinion on this.

We just got a Portillo's up in Tampa so we drove there for lunch after church! It was so so busy. After that we planned to go to Top Golf and play for awhile but apparently, many other families had the same idea. Since the wait was over two hours, we ended up just going home. 

Hope you had a Happy Father's Day, babe!! We love and appreciate you more than you'll ever know!


Happy Father's Day to our two great dads as well! We love you guys so much!

Summertime!

Summer has been so so so relaxing thus far. The kiddos wake up and play quietly upstairs in the mornings so that I can sleep! I've slept in until about 8 every morning and oh my goodness, what a difference! I have so much more energy for everything. Whenever my heart gets sad that we won't have any more babies my head says, "yes, but you get to sleep." That helps. :)

Rowan and Cora are my early risers. They are both up between 6:00 and 6:15 most mornings. Sweet Cruz loves his sleep and will sleep in until almost 8. He reminds me so much of his daddy when I have to wake him up for school or an activity. Neither of them like to be woken up and both are very challenging to wake up. 

We started out our break with a visit to Chuck E Cheese at the request of Cruz. This is huge for him because he's previously refused the idea of going there due to his fear of characters.

This is a huge first for him. The last time we went to Chuck E Cheese was at Christmas and he was hiding under the table when Chuck was out.

He still didn't want to get in the picture but he wasn't crying so I'll take it!

We've gone to the $1 movies in downtown Sarasota

and made our first trip to our new dentist where we found that someone (Cruz) had a cavity. 

We've been eating our share of ice cream this break too.... and brushing our teeth EXTRA well afterwards.

Thanks Grandma for the Coldstone gift card!

Swimming is a daily (and sometimes two or three times daily) occurrence. 

We enjoyed a visit to the South Florida museum. The manatees and planetarium were two of the kids' favorites. 

Rowan enjoyed asking the trainer lots of questions about the manatees.

The poop exihibit may have been the highlight of the entire museum though. We spent far too long looking at it. ;)

Afterwards we got ice cream at this cute little shop on the river.

We finally have a church home after about 5 months of visiting around. The church we chose is the first church we visited out here. It made me laugh that we came back around to that one. We still desperately miss our AZ church though. I think over time, this one will become home though. 

This week my sweet boys have golf camp in the mornings. When they got in the car yesterday, Rowan said, "Mom, we learned so much today that if we keep going at this rate, we'll be as good as Daddy by the end of the week." Haha. And yes, he did say "at this rate." Roger is so beyond thrilled that they are interested in golf. I know that he can't wait for the day when the three of them can go out and play together. 

Coco and I are missing Brothers (as she calls them) this week but we've kept busy running errands, returning our mountains of library books and movies and snuggling at home.

So there's our first few weeks of summer break. It took a few days for everyone to get adjusted to being home and together non stop but after we got over that, the days have been so much fun. I love having all my babies home.