Sorry I haven't been keeping up with this blog. Here are some photos to show what we've been doing since moving here. First a huge moving truck pulled up and delivered our furniture and a ton of boxes.
We're actually still working on unpacking the boxes. We thought it would go more quickly, but we're actually only through about half of them. We've gotten busy with other things, like change of address, change of utilities, registering the kids for school, buying basics, and of course doing fun things so that the kids will enjoy the rest of their summer before school starts in a couple of days.
A main attraction, of course, has been our pool. The temperature has been perfect for just walking into it to cool off a little but still remain comfortable. We're so happy that we made a screened-in pool a necessity while looking for a house. The kids have been extremely motivated about swimming in the pool and have managed to basically become swimmers within the first week! We still need to be out there with them to make sure they're safe, but we're really impressed with their drive to improve because they love the pool so much. (We do too!)
We've also visited our local beach. Since we're located on the south end of Anastasia Island, where the island becomes thin, we're close to both the intercoastal side (where the pier is) as well as the beach (probably about half a mile away). For our first visit, we drove and parked at the entrance of our neighborhood then walked to the beach from there. Once the kids learn how to ride their new bikes (Thanks, Granddad!), we'll be able to bike there pretty easily.
The kids were really excited to wade in the water and play in the waves. Oregon beaches are beautiful, but the water is freezing. This was really the first time they got to enjoy actually playing in the water.
They bent their knees and held out their arms to pretend they were surfing in the waves.
We also showed the kids Old Town St. Augustine, with its beautiful architecture and historic roads for walking and exploring the local shops.
We ate at one of our favorite local restaurants, The Columbia.
Ronan felt very cool in his sunglasses and asked me to take pictures of him at various locations.
Today we tried out one of the local mini-golf places. This one was very impressive, with beautiful waterfalls and water features throughout, as well as a pirate ship and other attractions.
We were happy that the place was pretty empty so that we could take our time on the course without feeling pressured to rush through. Maybe it was because the sun was really intense, so no one in their right mind would actually go out there during that time. But we used a bunch of sunblock and had a great time. The kids are actually really good. Ronan made a hole-in-one on the first course!
And perhaps we were out there alone because the experienced Floridians knew that a mid-afternoon thunderstorm was going to happen. We made it half-way through, then had to take shelter. Luckily they were selling slushies. We waited for a while for it to clear up, but eventually had to take a rain check to finish the rest of the course.
Finally, while we've been unpacking, Brielle has been enjoying learning PhotoShop on my computer. She's always been into special effects, so it was exciting to see her learning about how to manipulate photographs to create new images. On this one, she combined two photos - one of her looking out from the pier and one of Ronan running along the beach - she managed to carefully cut out and paste his image onto the marsh.
And, um...she also created this one from two combined photographs. She took a photo I had taken of Ronan swimming with her head suddenly appearing in the foreground...and added a photo of Ronan jumping into the pool and...peeing on her head. Pretty gross, but I'm still really impressed with her special effects talent!
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