How Much Can Crazy Z's Fit into One Weekend - Camping and Legoland!

Two weeks ago, Amy flew to Dallas on Thursday and Friday when she returned we packed into the van and headed out to Clearwater Lake Recreation Area where we camped (first maiden camping voyage) with 7 other families.  The other families participating in the event were Bergerms, Biris, Cochrans, Deiningers, Isidros, Grodacks, and Vargas'.  The only glitch is that the weather that night was 44 degrees.  FREEZING.  

Group shot but unfortunately taken after the Vargas' had already left for the day

So with the frigid temperatures, we crawled into our tent (all set up for us when we arrived - what customer service from our dear friend William!).  Zachary first noticed that he could see the light at the campfire, and of course could hear talking from the other campsites.  It was a difficult effort to get the boys asleep with the excitement but tucked snugly into their sleeping bags with tuques firmly tied on their heads, they finally fell asleep.  Karis soon joined them in dreamland while Amy desperately laid there, wanting to go to sleep!!!  Alas, Amy couldn’t get warm to save her life, and at 1A after laying awake looking at the ceiling, she decided that perhaps the fact that she needed a bathroom visit was the reason for the lack of sleep…….so imagine her running through the woods to the nearest bathroom (a good 5 minute walk away!) and along the road with her flashlight bouncing all around and her teeth literally chattering to visit the loo.  Not recommended - why can't women pee as easily in the woods as men can!!? :)

She climbed back into bed, but frankly every time she moved, her tuque (which didn't have ties!) would shimmy up, exposing more and more skin, so the cold continued.  She longed for a scarf at this moment, but it was not to be.  She finally fell into a brief respite only to have Zachary cough around 3 and the boys woke up around 4:30 indicating that they too were cold, so climbed into our sleeping bags for a while before deciding that wasn’t going to cut it either…..so we all laid awake counting the minutes until it would be morning.  Needless to say, as soon as they heard other voices from our friends' nearby tents they were up like a lightning bolt!

Other than the frigid temperatures, it was a fun experience with everyone.  We had  a Sabbath School in the morning complete with Sabbath School songs, a story by Uncle William and with Aunt Lisa calling out a game of Bible bingo.  After that concluded, we then walked down to the lake for the kids to play with the football.  Allan brought PVC pipe cut up into small pieces and showed the kids how to make a marshmallow shooter (huge hit as you can imagine!!).  We then ate lunch and then headed off for a walk around the lake (after an unsuccessful attempt to get Kaleb to nap) where Aunt Lisa created a scavenger hunt of special shaped leaves, moss, feathers, acorns, small pebble, bark etc (with the special rule that everything had to be found already laying loose on the ground and not attached to a living plant).  The bear droppings discovered along the way confirmed the park ranger's words of advice as we arrived (keep ALL food and toothpaste in your cars as there are bears here!!)

Trying to warm up the next morning by the fire!

Sabbath School

Trying out the marshmallow shooter

Hiding behind Daddy so that he can EAT the marshmallows!

What walk is complete with swinging between Daddy and Uncle William!

Complete fascination with the fire - thank you Angels for making sure that he didn't fall in!

Filthy and happy eating a smore!

Just to keep our lives a bit crazy, we packed up Saturday night and headed home for a sound night of sleep (that was the sane part of our weekend!) before getting once again into the van and heading off to the Legoland (2nd time in 2 weeks!) with a group of friends.  There were about 7 families, but we hung around with the Hilliards for the day as Madison and Kaleb were the smaller kids and thus were both limited in being able to do all of the rides.  Oddly enough, the day was a Sunday and the weather was PERFECT and there were NO LINES – unlike the Friday that we had gone with the Gruias where the weather was terrible.  Very strange.  We literally waited for no longer than 5 minutes for any of the rides.  Our boys have continued their love of roller coasters – going on four of them multiple times! :)

All the kids waiting to get into Legoland!

This Lego "man" was sleeping and snoring - Daddy teased that it reminded him of Papa Z, so the boys had to get their picture taken on Papa Z's lap! :)

That weekend marked the fourth weekend in a row that Karis has been away from our house on the weekend – so we’re looking forward to some quiet time to regroup and get some things done around the house.  Although, we’re not sure when that will happen as the holidays are always crammed with too much to do in too little time! 

This Sunday we actually had the FH Gala, at which Bill Cosby was the star entertainer.  Always fun to get dressed up, and this year we saved a bit of money and Amy just wore a dress from one of our early galas - gotta love the ability to recycle!

Phrase of the week:  Zachary upon seeing Karis in his tuxedo, complete with bowtie, looks inquisitively up at him and says "Why does Daddy have a hairbow like a girl?"  Ha ha!  Kaleb's is a sound..."slurp, slurp....slurp, slurp"  This is the sound of Kaleb eating a yummy Vitamin C (one of Amy's childhood and adulthood favorites as well!) as he savors the vitamin without actually chewing it - it makes his mouth water so there is a lot of slurping! :)

Saying Good-bye

Still in the process of catching up on our missed blog posts! :)  Here is the 2nd "catch-up"!

Karis and Amy, along with Jeff and Niesha, flew up to Canada to pay our respects to Amy’s Dad.  The memorial was held on November 5th.   Kaleb managed to get croup the night before we left – the boys seem to sense when we’re leaving town!  But, Amy had some leftover medication from the last time that this happened so she did what ever good parent should NOT do and she self-medicated him.  Thankfully it worked like a charm so Amy’s mom didn’t have any problems while we were up in Canada.

The family all arrived Friday and left on Sunday, so it was a quick trip to enjoy each other’s company.  It was great fun, especially as we hadn’t seen Amy’s cousin Kim for a long time.  The funeral was a mixture of course of tears and some chuckles – but it was a nice tribute to Dad’s life.  Brad made a great collage and video of pictures from Dad's life, and it was really special to see all of those.   The church was full to the brim, with probably 100-120 people in attendance - many from our Portage days, so that was a real blessing to talk with everyone.    The family had a time of remembering Dad that afternoon, and talking about the faith that he had and the hope of heaven - it was really special to talk about Dad with loved ones and remember the highlights.

Brad, Amy, Grandma, Cam, Kim, Scott and Jeff on the floor in front.

That Sunday we took Jeff and Niesha to the airport and then headed out to Portage to take some pictures of where Amy grew up – as it may be a while before we’re back (although we plan to take the boys on a road trip some day to see some of these places).  We had a very fun lunch with Nicole and her husband Todd, where we caught up on everything.  We ended the night with Norma James, and a surprise game of Scrabble with Dorothy Wollman and Pastor Jamieson and his wife.

The house where Amy grew up - it used to be yellow!  It recently was sold to a new owner, and they were in the process of doing a lot of renovations on it.

Tiny church where Amy grew up - what fun memories though!

Childhood & Adulthood! friend Nicole

Grandma Norma!

 The farewell "gift" of the trip was that as we got up Monday morning to leave, we were treated with 2 special events - one was the first snow of the seaon for Winnipeg as we woke up to a white world!  The second was hitting the Roots outlet store as we walked in, asked where the kids clothes with the Canadian flags were, and then proceeded to have the fastest spending spree ever as we were on a tight time crunch to get ourselves back to the airport on time for our flights! :)  We do love to wear Canadian gear though!

Anna Maria Island - Beach Living at Its Best

The last month has been a bit crazy, hence the lack of faithful posts.  Our apologies to the faithful readers, we’ll promise to try and do better so that you don’t abandon us! :)  But, we'll try and catch it all up here in a few posts - all in one fell swoop!

The last post of course was the news of the passing of Amy’s Dad.  That weekend, Amy’s highschool roommate and dear friend, Carmen Gruia and her family flew from Portland, Oregon to enjoy some warm weather at the beach.  Carmen has three children – Anique (8), Ava (6) and Andon (2).  Karis had to fly up to Chicago that weekend for a continuing education class, so we hung around Orlando that weekend until he returned on Sunday night before heading out to the beach.  We had a lovely time in Orlando though – and took the kids to the zoo on Sunday where they had these cool air balls that the kids would be zipped into and could “run”/flip/crawl around inside the ball to get it to move around on a shallow pool of water.  The kids thought that it was a blast!

A little older, hopefully wiser, but still the best of friends!

Monday morning we loaded the van and car and headed off to Anna Maria Island, where we had rented a 6 bedroom house.  It was awesome , about 1.5 blocks from the beach down a very quiet street, heated pool, pool table and lots of room for all of us to spread out.  The beach was pretty quiet, with the water being pretty shallow so the kids could go and play.  Unfortunately the water was a little chillier than we would have desired but after the initial “brisk”reaction it was just fine to get into the water and play. On Thursday the wind kicked up a little bit and the kids were actually able to boogie-board. Zachary managed to figure out how to handle his board all by himself because the waves were pretty small and broke close to shore – so he confidently informed his father that he would NOT be needing assistance in the future. Good luck Zachary when we take you back to the Daytona side of Florida where the waves are bigger, faster and crest much farther out where you would have to be in much deeper water trying to get on the board! But, we’ll let the dream live a little longer…..



Doesn't this house just exude "beach"!? It was just around the corner from Publix (as well as the beach) - it was PERFECT!

Hurrah for being buried! - Zachary, Kaleb and Ava enjoyed the sand

Three beach babes - Ava, Carmen and Anique

Boogie Boarding School! :)

On Friday we packed up and headed to Legoland.  The fact that it was a Friday and RAINING made us think that it would be relatively deserted.  No such luck – 45 to 80 minute waits for rides.  Ouch.  But, we had fun anyway and enjoyed trekking around the park. 

Sabbath we ended our week and on the way back to Orlando we stopped at the Clearwater Aquarium where the famous dolphin “Winter” who lost part of her tail lived.  It was pretty neat to see the documentary on how they made the prosthetic tail for her.  The bad part of the trip was that the aquarium is tiny and they don’t have room to handle all of the visitors now that they have become famous – so cars had to park on a gravel dirt lot.  As Amy was walking into the aquarium she went to put her smartphone into her backpack and dropped it – only to have it drop face first down on a protruding rock.  You guessed it – smashed to smithereens.  It still worked but it was a cool $100 to get it fixed.  Thanks for nothing!  Oh well, could have been worse.

We were sad to see the week end with our visit with the Gruias.  We had such fun – we’ll want to do it again soon!  The boys actually played perfectly together with the girls – we weren’t sure as sometimes our kids can be little wild Indians, but they were on their best behavior all week and they had a blast playing together.  Interestingly enough, they kind of switched who they played with throughout the week,  but it seemed like Zachary and Anique gravitated toward each other and Ava and Kaleb paired off – even though Zachary and Ava are the same age.  It's apparently a love of older women! :)

Uncle Ervin was "playing" the children's feet like a piano - to which they were of course laughing hysterically!

One of the first nights at the beach, we headed down to a nearby playground that was housed on the beach itself.  While there, one of the trip's highlights was the fact that a dolphin was visible just off the shore as he swam around the water - coming up periodically and of course giving us much excitement!

Ervin and Andon on the walk back after the dolphin excitement!

Chasing the sea gulls while we waited for the dolphin to surface

Phrase of the week:  Zachary's was his comment that weekend prior to leaving for Anna Maria Islando when he solemnly asked Amy "Mommy, can one of my girlfriend's ride in the car with me to the beach?"  There truly is no question that Zachary loves his "girlfriends!" :)  Lately, Kaleb has been very "Daddy-centric" and all roads lead to Daddy, so this week's phrase is devoted to Daddy. "No, I want to be with Daddy.  No, I want to snuggle with Daddy.  I want to ride in the car with Daddy.  I want to sit on Daddy's lap.  I want Daddy to hold me.....DADDY!"