Hammock Beach

Amy had a work conference with FH Altamonte in which there was a physician retreat out at Hammock Beach.  She went out on Thursday and the family joined Friday afternoon.  Friday was all day meetings, with very good speakers that covered a wide variety of topics - and the kids arrived that evening and we attended the fiesta dinner.   The next day was devoted to playing in the sand and the pool, complete with a lazy river and a water slide.  Addison was brave enough to do the water slide, as long as she sat on Amy's lap!  Both Addison and Kaleb preferred the pool area to the beach, so we spent most of our time there.

The only time Addison was on the beach - first thing on Saturday morning.

Mommy needs a longer arm for selfies apparently!

The kids found all kinds of ways to entertain themselves on the lazy river - including building very tall towers to try and stay balanced in!

The Cochrans ended up renting a nearby house on the beach (completely by coincidence) for the weekend and came over to join us Saturday evening for supper, playtime and cake for Kieran and Addison.

The birthday kids!

Partial family - boys off playing somewhere!

Good-bye Hammock beach - we enjoyed the stay!

The next weekend we had a super fun day in which we had Touchards and Chobotars over for Sabbath - the kids had a blast playing all day and got along super well.  Ella E came over with the Touchards, and Addison latched on to her and Deanna as her favorite playmates for the day - telling Deanna that she liked her "new little sister!"  (Ella and Deanna are cousins).

Kaleb had a real treat on Sunday when he was able to go to Kieran's "golden birthday" (turned 8 or Aug 8!), which was held at the Zoom Air ropes course at Sanford Zoo.    He is becoming much more confident in his ropes course skills!

Speaking of gaining confidence, the kids finished their month of swim lessons.  The boys are in the highest level and are now the focus is on improving the various strokes and gaining distance.  Kaleb was quite an impressive little swimmer, and actually swam faster than Zachary did (which of course bothered competitive-natured Zachary, so it spurred him on to be better and faster as well!)  Addison enjoyed learning how to swim as well, and it is so cute!

Getting ready for the backstroke

Love this smile!

Taking a dive into the pool

Phrase of the week:  Addison was helping to water the grass at Grandma's house, and Karis overhead her encouraging the grass saying "drink up little grass - you need water to grow!"

Joys of Summer

As the summer draws to an end and the kids get ready to start their next year of school (slow down Father time!!), we thought that we would highlight some of our fun activities from the last few weeks to catch up a little.

Kaleb and Zachary both went to the RDV basketball camp - they had a good time, and learned a lot.  It was very well run and seemed to have excellent coaches.

The final hurrah of basketball camp!

No month is complete in our household without having people over, and we have immensely enjoyed having the Touchards living - we knew them from Andrews and our kids are close in age - and Addison just adores DeAnna their daughter - to where she says when DeAnna leaves "Mommy, I didn't have any fun, I wanted her to sleep over the whole night in my room (on the floor beside me!)" :)

The Touchards have also introduced us to rock climbing in Orlando - with no automatic belaying system which ended up causing Zachary have hate it last summer - but no such thing this summer - he loves it!  Kaleb continues to be a little mountain goat and does very well with it.  Zachary was overjoyed when there were these wooden bars that you had to grip and climb up the wall - similar to American Ninja Warrior challenges - he was in heaven!

All the way up at the top!

Just 'hanging' with John Mark!

Zachary tackles whether he can free climb across a ceiling - he shortly lost his grip and fell but good job!!

Zachary could manage to get himself all the way to the top of those wooden grips

Is this a vision of the future with Zachary lifting weights?

Our family was pampered when Jeff and Niesha came over as well, with the kids enjoying playing with them both - all the way from "pedaling bikes with each other's feet" to puzzles and of course no afternoon is complete without the pool!

We continued the celebrations for Addison at home - I'd say that she has a bit more candles than her age....but hey, blowing out candles is where all the fun is at right!?

And getting the birthday chair at Sabbath School!

                                          

Zachary had quite a treat when he was invited by his friend Blake to go to an Orlando soccer game - super duper fun as that is his favorite sport!

The church invited Ben Roy the science guy to come and give some fun experiments and Bible applications - and Kaleb was lucky enough to be chosen to try and break a balloon on a bed of nails...harder that it looks apparently!

He's pushing so hard his feet are coming up off the ground!

Afterwards they found a way to play duck duck goose in the foyer!

Random pictures:

She managed to sit very quietly with Elin and Erik at church even though she was out of arm's reach from mom.....good girl!

Reading as story with Grandma

Addison's first date night alone with mommy - Panera Bread!

Zachary had to reflect on his life and maintaining control over his emotions, so he took the opportunity to write out all of his complaints before Daddy made him write out the good things for his life!

At Target, a lady brought her two kids with all of their piggy bank money so that they could buy $58 worth of toys....the poor Target cashier had to hand-count $58 worth of coins...while everyone else waited.  WHAT?!?  Go to a coin machine!!

At Lowes....Zachary will find anywhere to sit down and read his Kindle!

One last summer field trip with Miss Jennifer to the skeleton museum!

Happy Birthday to You!

Okay - the Utah trip took so many weeks to fully write about that now we have lots to catch up on!  Addison's 4th birthday has come and gone!  In typical Z fashion, we do love to par-tay so we had a combined birthday at the Science Center with Devin, Erik, Elin and Addison in July and then we of course had smaller celebrations around the actual day (August 7) - and still a family birthday to come!  We did the "dino-dig" theme as the little kids love to dig in the "dirt" upstairs, so everyone had fun - and we had a small turtle friend come to the party to let the little kids touch.

At the Science Center for her birthday

With her pink cake!  

A 3-year old, 2 four-year olds and a 5-year old!

A special bond between these two!

Not afraid to touch this turtle!  It matches her 4 year birthday turtle shirt!

As a part of the event, they did a few experiments which the kids enjoyed - it is always fun!

And then the blowing out of her birthday candles!  We sang happy birthday four times....each child of course deserves their own birthday song! :)

With our precious little one!  Don't grow up too fast!

Let the digging begin!

The boys had their hockey lessons this summer, and enjoyed getting more skills.  They got to be very fast as they'd skate across the ice from one end to the other!  they are in the orange jerseys in the picture below...

As it is the blazing summer here in Orlando, we have gone to the beach several times over the summer and thoroughly enjoyed each one.  Thankfully only once were we rained out, although we questioned it a few other times.

Vasti was even brave enough once to take the boys on her own.....goodness gracious - but they did have a grand time!

Addison of course continues on her usual antics - and the picture below is how she is showing us how she can get her own "tired teddy" to help her sleep - opening the cap to the CHILD PROOF bottle.  Umm, what part of this doesn't make sense??

Easy-peasy!

Phrase of the week: As Addison took swimming lessons this summer, she said to Amy "Mommy, you can't cry underwater, it is too hard!" I guess so....

With several weeks to catch up on, it will take a bit....so this will be the first installment of our catch up!  The weekends seem to be so busy now that keeping up with the blog as routinely as we should has not been happening, but we will persevere!