After arriving home from Hawaii, two days later our niece Kaylie came down to stay for 3.5 weeks with us -- much to our delight. We had so much fun last summer with her that we all had our fingers crossed that she'd be able to come down again - 10 out of 10 for amazing, fun, family memories. Kaylie is a joy to have in the house - having a fourth kid would be perfect with another like her! Her parents have done a great job in raising her - thanks for sharing her with us
She had a few things that she wanted to this summer, and we managed to get them all in!
Amy had accompanied Addison on a field trip earlier in the school year to i-Fly, an indoor skydiving place and had extra tickets, so that was one of our outings for Addison, Kaleb and Kaylie. It was fun to watch them fly. Addison and Kaleb have now done is about 3-4 times each, so they are catching on now to some of the nuances of how to do it, and both of them were allowed to fly without the instructor holding on to them for short periods of time, so that was kind of exciting for them. After the i-fly, we hit the Florida Mall for a bit which was fun as we haven't been down there in probably 10 years!
 |
| Look ma, no hands! |
 |
| And no hands for Addison as well |
 |
| And then each kid got to do a "high fly" all the way to the top of the tube with the instructor. This is Kaylie doing high with the instructor. |
We decided that she needed a real "Floridian" experience -- an air boat ride in the swamps to search for alligators! We went on a nice one that had some nicer seats, headphones, and a canopy to keep a little bit of the scorching sun off of us. We did indeed see alligators, so mission accomplished!
We also headed out to the beach to join Springs Meadows church group, see several baptisms, and enjoy some boogie boarding while she was here. She didn't have a chance to do that much last summer, so we took the opportunity for her to enjoy the water as well as meet some other young people from Orlando. Kaylie is outgoing and friendly, so it was fun to introduce her to others and see her enjoying it!
 |
| cool picture of a storm rolling in |
 |
| And Amy was happy to see her high school bestie Carmen (on the left) and a new friend Kim (Carmen's friend from Ohio) on the right there as well! |
Zachary's favorite soccer team is Manchester City, and they came to play Orlando City during July, so we took the whole gang to watch the soccer game. It rained and was hot and muggy, so wasn't the most comfortable experience ever but we were thankfully under an overhang so missed the most of the rain. It was fun to see Haaland play which is a favorite for Zach.
Kaylie's birthday is at the end of July, and her birthday wish was to go to Busch Gardens as we didn't do that last summer. All 6 of us went, which always makes it even more fun to have the whole family! We decided to get the QuickQueue, which made the day AMAZING - totally worth it, we got on every single ride and some of them multiple times. Super fun and made our time go very smoothly and be able to do all of the roller coasters that the kids wanted to do.
 |
| Kaylie loves flamingos so we had to stop and get this picture! |
For her birthday dinner, we headed out to Texas Roadhouse which she remembered enjoying very much with her family during their Arizona trip a few years ago.
Kaylie wanted red velvet cake or carrot cake, so we splurged and went to Nothing Bundt Cakes and got both kinds for her, along with a variety of other bite-size cakes in their key flavors. Yummy!
Last summer, we went to Disney's Magic Kingdom but Kaylie wasn't able to do one of her favorite things -- see Belle -- from her childhood so we headed back there this summer to knock that off the bucket list - this time we were successful!
 |
| It's Belle! |
 |
| It's a small world, such a great ride in the cool air conditioning! |
 |
| Little Addi-cakes was pooped by the end of the day! |
 |
| We rode Tron this year, which always was missed last year - very fun! |
Kaylie enjoys boating a lot, so Karis took the kids out on the lake a lot while she was here. One weekend we had Carmen and her family over for the boating experience as well.
 |
| 33 years of friendship with this classy lady! |
 |
| The whole gang of kids out on the tubes! |
And in other fun things that we did, we went out to see the Twisters movie - a remake of a movie from back when Amy was in college. All agreed that it was indeed a fun movie even though they were doubtful to begin with.
And a fun thing for Amy was the fact that Kaylie is a senior, and will need a formal graduation dress and wanted to go about browsing (no intention of buying, just looking for ideas) - so we hit up a couple stores looking for dresses to try on. Here are a few:
 |
| Teal is a color she likes, so we tried this one on - the feathers were a bit much though! 😂 |
 |
| And she tried this one because it is her high school colors - black and gold! |
And in a random picture - Karis made custom orthotics for Kaylie to hopefully help her feet hurt less - only time will tell! Amy was convinced after this, as she suffers from hurting knees/feet as well when she is travelling and walking a lot. Karis is hired!
Addison went to the OJA Edible Education cooking camp in July - she always learns new skills which is great - this year was the knife skills which she proudly shared with Mama.
 |
| The last day the parents are allowed to come and observe the final cooking efforts. |
