Florida! Part 1...

For Thanksgiving, we took a week-long trip to Florida! The 14 hours of travel in each direction were, of course, pretty strenuous, but the kids did a great job. We started with a visit to Papa and Nana's house to meet up with Cousin Stella, Aunt Amy, and Uncle Todd to celebrate Thanksgiving. Papa took us to a local outdoor play area so the kids could have some fun.

Our next outing was to Blue Spring to see the manatees! It was a beautiful day, and the quality of the sunlight and the fresh smell in the air gave me fond memories of growing up in Florida.

Yay - manatees!

"Really? We have to pose for a picture again?..."

Just beautiful...

We also enjoyed spending time with family at Papa and Nana's house in DeLand. The kids had a great time with Cousin Stella.

Ronan saw Stella wearing her glasses and decided he needed some. Unfortunately, the only ones he could find belonged to Mr. Potato Head. But somehow he managed to keep them on his face and went about his business with his little glasses on for the whole evening.

Papa and Nana's backyard opens up to a golf course. No one was playing during the holiday break, so the kids were able to enjoy running on the large, open fields. Papa was always there to watch them explore and play catch with Ronan.

At one point, Papa and Uncle Todd brought their golfing gear out and graciously let the kids "play" some golf.

Ronan figured the purpose of the game was to get the balls into the holes, so he ran around collecting the balls and tried to fit them all down into the nearest hole. He's such a helper.

The Thanksgiving meal was a glorious feast. Thank you to Nana for the wonderful work she did preparing the delicious food and beautifully decorating the tables. Our family had Tofurky, and luckily the kids still love it.

In the evening, the cousins decided to cuddle up together and watch "The Karate Kid". The adults hadn't seen it in a very long time, so it was fun to see it again.

It's a tradition that the day after Thanksgiving we celebrate early Christmas (since we don't see Papa and Nana during the actual holiday).

Papa and Nana gave the kids special Christmas jammies.

We also headed into downtown DeLand a couple times for meals. It's a really attractive, quaint town where you can walk to interesting shops and restaurants. I love this shot of Papa and Ronan.

On our way out of town, we stopped by a sky diving school to watch people jump out of planes.

Brielle was more interested in playing on the play equipment they had set up for little spectators. I told her, "Mommy knows how to fly like that," and she responded with an uninterested, "Yeah - I know that already." Well...at least maybe she won't be interested in dangerous sports like this!

There was a pretty steady flow of people dropping out of planes, so it was a cool stop. The funniest part was hearing speakers blasting Kenny Loggins' "Highway to the Danger Zone" as we approached the field.

We wanted to fit in three major visits during our week-long Florida trips, so each stop was a little brief. But it was wonderful seeing everyone and sharing two major holidays within a 2-day period. The next part of our vacation took us to Gainesville to visit Granddad and Sujata and to Disney World (next blog post).