Hiking on High Knob

High Knob is one of my favorite places back home. I have such fond memories of going sledding with my family when I was younger and flying down the mountain and crashing into a snow bank. My sister and I used to go up there with friends and hang out, and now I love to take the boys up there to go for hikes and explore some of the caves. They had a great time hiking and exploring and it had been so long that they really didn't remember any of it, so it was like a whole new experience. There's a place there called Flag Rock and it's literally just this rock that is out by itself with a flag in it, the boys were so impressed and wanted to know how that flag got there. I've hiked to it several times in my younger years but hear that it's illegal to do it now...so I guess they'll never find out how it got there. ha! You do have to go through several scary caves and it's a tough hike for sure. Here are some pictures from our adventures.

Trip to Norton in July

We finally got to make another trip back to Norton to visit family. We flew into Roanoke, VA and drove the 3 hours in to Norton because fares were so much cheaper that way. We've been away from mountains for so long (I mean honestly, Orlando doesn't even have so much as a hill) that when we were landing the boys were in awe! With all the clouds that looked like snow Hunter thought we had taken a detour to the North Pole. ha! We were all very excited to get to town and see family...and turns out they put together a little family reunion while we were there as well. Not all my cousins made it but I did get to see a few. We had a really great time hanging out. Here are some pictures of me with my tiny baby brother Adam, me and Aleisha with dad, me with all my cousins that got to attend, and my Mamaw with all the great grand kids that were there.

Gator time at Lake Jessup

For Rick's birthday we went to The Black Hammack which is located on Lake Jessup. If you've never heard of Lake Jessup let me fill you in.....it's gator infested! There's more gators in that lake than all the others combined and when they find strays, that's where they bring them to live! So we ended up going on an air boat ride in search of them. I must say I wasn't half as fascinated by the gators as I was the speed of that boat and that thing could turn on a dime! I would do that again in a split second really and would strongly encourage you to be sure to do it if you're ever here for a visit. You go flying over the water and into these swampy coves and as soon as he turns the engine off and it's quiet, all these gators heads pop up out of the water....really freaky! We had so much fun though and afterwards we all got to go back and hold "Pork Chop" the baby gator. Hunter wanted to take him home I think....we had so much fun though and I can't wait to go back again sometime!

Island's of Adventure

Sean's cousin's daughter, Casey, was here visiting for a couple of weeks and so we decided to take a girl's day at a park. We ended up at Island's of Adventure and just as we got into the park it started pouring rain. Well, it's going to take a bit more than that to get us off the trill rides, I'll tell you that. So we rode EVERYTHING and figured since we were already wet, why not jump on all the water rides too. Well, little did we know that we could get much wetter than we already were. After the sun went down we got a bit chilly too. We ended up going to dinner after the park closed at Margaritaville and asked to sit outside just so we could try to warm up. We had a great time, but boy were we all exhausted....we even wore down the teenager!

My nephew's 3rd birthday

My nephew Carter was turning 3 and so we went to see Go Diego Live to celebrate. It was my sister, Keegan, Hunter, Carter and me. We don't have any pictures from the show because they didn't allow a camera but I do have a few pictures from his birthday party at Sliderz. I think all the kids really liked the show too, it's a great show really. I'll just hate when my kids outgrow these shows and I won't have an excuse anymore to go. Ha! The kids also had a wonderful time at the birthday party, Sliderz is a place that has inflatable slides, moon bounces and a dodge ball pit. I'm not going to lie and say that the adults don't have just as much fun, because we were racing up and down the slides with the best of them!

My favorite photos from Club Med...

We did so much on this vacation: golf, tennis, circus school, hip hop lessons, water aerobics, bocce ball, tether ball, playground, sailing, archery, golf, eat, drink....the only thing we really missed out on was sleep! We were so tired from our trip that we almost needed another vacation to recover. Every single night we would go back to the room and pick a lime from the tree....when we got home we were going to cut them and turns out....they were very unripened oranges...who knew! And we found a crab that we played with along the way, the kids named him "Mr. Crabs" very Spongebob original I know, but they wanted to bring him home....no chance we were picking that guy up, his claws were serious. But here are some of our favorite pictures from the trip including one of Mr. Crabs. We can't wait to go back again next year!

Pool time at the Resort

The pool was probably one of my favorite things at the resort....not often you get to relax on a float, tan and have a banana daiquiri and not worry about kids. Ahhh, the life! Of course Sean had to go off and do water aerobics, Sis and I just stayed on our rafts and laughed at him. I'll have to try to figure out how to post video because we taped some of it, he just looked so funny with all the girls doing water aerobics. And of course I needed the exercise and didn't participate.....guess that's the very reason why I need it still huh?

Belly up to the bar

The bar was the central gathering place for all at Club Med. The bartenders became close friends of all of ours, they sat with us at dinner, played with the kids and took great care of all of us! Our favorite one was Becca, she was awesome! She was like family, just one of those people you felt a connection with right away. The kids adored her, guess because she fed them sugar drinks with cherries all day long. ha! They did trivia, shows, games.....all sorts of activities here in this bar. It was a very family friendly place and the bar was no exception. They had a help yourself soda machine in there too, right next to the arcade no doubt. The arcade would have been fine but it had a crane game....my kids can't pass up a crane game, they don't care if their entire college savings goes into it, they're getting yet another stuffed animal. I think we came home with 9 different ones and we were only there for 4 days!

Circus School

Okay, so I know most of you think we're just a bunch of clowns but now we've officially gone to circus school so it's likely to be even worse! We're not only good at being total clowns but Matthew and I braved the trapeze. He did the "swing of death"....Hunter was in line but as soon as he heard the guy say "you'll do two forward rolls, then run with your hands up and take the "swing of death"....the daredevil sat right down! I guess I don't blame him, that probably would have scared me a bit too, but I was shocked that Matthew went on and did it because he takes things like that very literal too. I did the adult trapeze and the worst part was climbing up that tiny ladder with bare feet. I thought I'd never get to the top. The swing out wasn't bad but it did show me just how weak I am because it was a struggle to hold on. Then I had to flip my feet through and hang upside down and then I flipped off the trapeze to the net below for my dismount. I even had to do a flip off the net to the ground. It was really cool....I only wish I wouldn't have been wearing a dress! Granted, I did have my swim suit on under it, but still I'm sure those people below got way more of a view than what they bargained for.....oops! Ha!

The never ending golf game...

Either we're really bad golfers or we're very easily distracted, but I'm not kidding when I say it took Sean, Matt, Hunter and me almost 3 hours to play 9 holes! Between the photo breaks, the searches for balls out of the water and just being horrible golfers...I thought it would never end. We did have a GREAT time though, and it was like our own personal golf course. I think we only saw 2 other people out there in the entire 3 hours. We hit every pond and sand trap that we could find, I even hit the security guard stand with one of my balls....lucky there wasn't a car there. Ha!

Lookout, the kids are doing archery now

This was the highlight of the trip for Matthew. He has wanted to do archery for as long as I can remember so of course he wasn't going to pass this up. His class got to go to archery 2 times a day and he did it both days he was in the club. We went by to get some pictures. He actually did pretty well, I think as he gets a little bigger and stronger he might be onto something.

Our sailing adventure

We took the kids out of the club and talked them into going sailing with us because they wouldn't do it with the class for some reason. We figured this would be something they would all enjoy so we talked them into it with us. We all went through the sailing class together and then we got to go out on a boat. We had it going at a pretty good rate, and were off and about and the kids were loving sitting on the trampoline part and getting splashed with the water. But after a while the wind died down and we found out what they were talking about with the "DEAD ZONE". It literally took us like 30 minutes to get it all worked out again but finally Sean figured out what to do and found some wind again so we actually did make it back in to shore. The kids liked the "going fast" part better than being stuck....guess I don't blame them really. Ha! We all had a great time though. I felt bad because Keegan was sick so he really didn't get to much with us, next year he'll get in the game hopefully!

Club Med Vacation....

Okay, I'm not even sure where to start with this. We finally got to take a real, family vacation some place other than Orlando (since we live here now) and where did we go....FL! We went to a Club Med, all-inclusive resort though called Sandpiper at St. Lucie. It was the best vacation we've ever been on, and that's actually saying quite a bit because Sean and I used to take some really cool trips in our day. When I say "all-inclusive" I mean everything was included. We didn't pay for drinks, food, tips, activities....it was all in the cost of the resort. We got a great deal too by the way because we did the "last minute deal"....I know shocker that I, queen procrastinator would plan anything last minute right? See, putting things off has its benefits sometimes! Ha! Anyway, it was all so amazing....the kids got to go to kids club all day. You could drop them off at 9:00AM and pick them up at 5:30PM (just to get them ready for dinner), drop them back at 6:30PM and pick them up again around 8:00PM. The first day there we all just relaxed and hung out, didn't really do a ton because it was raining. The next day we decided to put the kids into the kid's club. Well they threw the biggest fit, and Matthew says "I thought you brought us on vacation to spend time with us, not to drop us off with complete strangers!" Ha! It was really funny because the entire time he was just sobbing! So we talked them into going and promised to pick them up by lunch. The kids club is broken out by ages all the way from tiny infants to teens. They take the groups on age appropriate activities and they get to choose from 2 different things every hour! So at lunch we went to pick up the kids and they totally blew us off...."oh, just come back later and get us." What a turn around huh? So we went back at 5:30 and they still didn't want to leave....but they had to at least for an hour. They got to do so many different things and it was so strange to just relax by a pool and not worry about the kids falling in or going under or whatever. Sean and I played tennis, volleyball, and he even worked in a little water aerobics...I have a video, it's a must see! I of course chose to float around on my raft while he was working out with the girls. Ha! Anyway, the next several posts are going to be broken up into our different activities....we were only there for 4 days but we covered a lot of ground and took loads of pictures of course! We can't wait to go back and would strongly encourage anyone that's looking for a great vacation spot to check it out! I must warn you, it's not total glam by no means but if you're just looking for a laid back fun place to go where you can have adult time and the kids are totally safe and amused....this would be it!

Sea World After Dark

So after our Disney debacle, we ended up at Sea World for their special "Summer After Dark" program. Turns out that we had a really great time! The kids got to ride all the kid rides and then we saw Shamu Rocks which was a cool show with a lot of lights, rock music and stunts. We also got to see a lot of other ski shows in the dark that we had never seen before....I think after a few minutes at Sea World the kids forgot all about missing out on Disney and Star Wars Days.

Star Wars Days at Disney

The boys have been counting down to "Star Wars Days at Disney" and my sister told me that we better go by 6/9 because that's when our passes are no longer valid for the summer with the FL Resident passes. Well, we went on Saturday 6/7 and the boys were so excited upon seeing all the Star Wars stuff set up along the way and we get to the gate and the tickets wouldn't work...turns out the blackout dates started 6/7....I felt TERRIBLE! The boys wanted to go in so bad because there were so many cool things set up that they could see from outside the gate but of course we went late in the day and I wasn't about to pay $400+ for us to go spend 5 hours at Disney with those kinds of crowds. So to make it up to them, we headed on down to SeaWorld After Dark which we had never been to so they were okay with that. Next year we'll plan a little better for Star Wars...but here are some pictures that we did get to take outside the gates. Ha!

Lord help me!

Seems that nothing is off limits when boys are involved. One night I hear laughing and go to investigate and I find two monkeys climbing on our kitchen appliances like it's a playground. They hold the handles of the fridge and climb to the top...of course that's where I USED TO keep the toys that got taken away for being bad....guess you never can outsmart the will of 2 boys! And of course I had to take pictures before putting them in time out. HA!