Florida 2023: Part II

Wednesday morning the forecast was the best for Manasota Key Beach. We hadn't been there before so we drove on down! The kids had a blast and the beach was super clean (at other beaches there were lots of dead fish from the red tide, gross!). They even made friends with some other boys and played a little football. 

Football continued on the street when we got back.

Josh and I went for a walk and man my hair was a frizzy mess!

This year the boys graduated from sleeping on cots in our room to sleeping on the sofa in the living room. They loved it!

Annual trip to get ice cream. Pretty sure one or both of the boys will be taller than me next year!

We took it to the beach to watch the sunset, another first! It was such a gorgeous evening.

Friday was our last day and we decided on Venice Beach-we don't go to this one very often but we really had a great time there, very few people were there so the kids had the run of the place. 

And bonus, the waves were great so they got to boogie board finally. 

We went to Darrell's Restaurant for lunch. We went once a long time ago and Dave has said ever since they had the best sweet tea he's ever had. He decided it still is true after trying it again. Josh and Ike tried crawfish for the first time and the food was delicious. 

Alligator sighting. 

We always have such a fantastic time staying with Josh's grandparents! We love the park and the people there so much and it is just the most relaxing trip.

We drove the whole way home on Saturday and got back right around 11 pm. All in all not a bad drive and we were happy to have all day Sunday to recuperate!

 

Florida 2023 Part I

We took advantage of the kids having President's Day off this year and headed down to Florida towards the end of February. 

Leaving cold, dreary Indiana! We stopped for the night just south of Atlanta for the night then were on the road again bright and early the next morning.

One of our friends kept insisting we stop at a Buc-ee's so we finally made it to one. Dave got the brisket sandwich which was a real hit. 

Finally made it to Florida and of course had to immediately go jump in the community pool. 

Grandpa Dave provided us all with delicious breakfasts throughout our trip :) And Grandma Mary knocked it out of the park with dinners too!

We went to several different beaches this year-Caspersen a couple of times, Manasota Key, Venice, and the jetties. The red tide was really bad so we tried to check the forecast and see where it would be the least impactful each day. 

Lots and lots of bike rides. On this one we spotted the alligator.

Another day, another beach. I think this was at the Jetties. 

Back on Caspersen. Tuesday started out a little cloudy but cleared up and turned out beautiful. We had the best weather ever this year!

We took a picnic lunch and ate right by the beach. 

Grandma Mary made a cool dinner with taco bowls that she did homemade! 

Watching some basketball in the evenings and the kids got us to play charades several of the nights. It's become a tradition!

 

Winter Jam, Fancy Dinner, and Visit from Gamma and Justin

For Christmas Dad and Kyra gifted us passes to Winter Jam (Andy Mineo was there this year!), this was the first concert of the year for us so we were pretty excited!

While we were at our concert, Mom and Justin were driving up for the weekend to hang out. Dave had a percussion trio performing (they received a gold award!). They hung out with the kids on Saturday night so Josh and I could go to a super fancy dinner at Joseph Decuis. Man that was delicious and such a fun treat.

I also keep forgetting Josh had a beard there for several months ha!

Finally, Josh's grandparents always send the boys cards for holidays, which they love. Mostly because they contain gift cards to fast food restaurants but I'm sure they'd appreciate the gesture without the gift cards :)

 

January Happenings

I am going to dump all of January into one big post because none of it makes sense to group together! 

Starting off, Dave went to his very first dance (and went with a date, even though they didn't really do much date-wise!). So cute!

Ike and I went to workout after he left :)

The kids did lots of robot-ing in January. Here are some highlights!

The kids had Zac and Caleb up again for the weekend. They always have such a great time with the cousins! They played lots and lots of Uno Attack of course!

Finally got some good snow to play out in and the kids had a snow day/week! They ended up being off for three days!

And I forced the guys to help me make cute Valentine's decor. I think we all did a great job!