Surprise Delight!

We had a lovely last minute surprise when our dear friends Kevin and Rhonda Hicks came down to Orlando to see their son Erick who is stationed in Jacksonville as part of the Navy - studying to be a nuclear engineer.  They came down to see his apartment and spend time while he was in port, and came down to Orlando for the Sabbath.  We were super excited to be able to see them - they just are so fun and easy to reconnect with - we love you guys!

Erick, Erick holding his phone with Kayley on it, Rhonda, Kevin and the Zs

Phyllis was leaving that week, so we took the opportunity to get together with her one last time with Erika - what a lovely evening!

And this month appears to be the month of bathing Aria - she seemed to be really itchy, so we bought some oatmeal shampoo & conditioner to try and help calm down the scratching.  We took her to the Pet Supermarket metal tubs, and she did quite well!

And after that, we tried doing it again at home in the bathtub - both seemed to be doable as she is pretty relaxed and loves the water - especially if Addison is with her!

That's a wrap for this week!

Deer Valley Resort

This year's CFO conference found us back at Deer Valley, which was a delight after being away now for several years.  We were in the new East Village this time, and we stayed in an amazing home just across the highway from the Grand Hyatt where the meetings were.  The Js were with us as always, with the Cs heading over to Thailand (lucky ducks!).

We skiied at Deer Valley on Sunday, Brighton on Monday and then Deer Valley the rest of the week.  The snow was great the first few days (so great that even Amy didn't want to go inside one day!) with a blizzard coming through on one day (maybe Tuesday?) (yuck, not so much fun).  It is always a breath of relief when we finish the week with no injuries!

The group at Brighton on a beautiful day!

The Zs

We love Cafe Zuppas so we always make a point of going there to eat.  The chocolate strawberries were HUGE this year!  Yum!

The East Village had some great new lifts, complete with hoods and heated seats - but with the sun baking that side, the snow was often slushy so we quickly went up the mountain and skiied over to the central area where we have always skiied in the past.

Group picture at Deer Valley - a bit overcast that day.

Wednesday afternoon we went over to the tubing hill, and had a blast FLYING down the tubing runs - this was one of the fastest it has been now in a few  years, so that made for some really fun laughs as we spun down the run and had snow spraying in our faces.  Zach decided to stay at home, he missed out!

Ready, set, we're ready to go!

And we had the fun opportunity to enjoy having the Reiners over for supper one night, and then the Azevedos on Wednesday.  It is always fun to catch up with friends outside of Orlando somehow!

Speaking of catching up with friends, we were able to ski with Olesea on Thursday afternoon and came across this super cute little snowman on one of the runs!

Amy, Olesea and Kelli

And on our very last run, we connected with Erika!

Erika, Amy and Olesea

This was definitely the nicest house that we have ever stayed at - three floors, four bedrooms, hot tub, super nice inside complete with a pool table.  We enjoyed being so close to the meetings and all of the niceties that we could imagine!

Always great family memories - we are blessed to be able to go skiing, and not to have any injuries.  Here are some random pictures that of course Amy enjoys catching of our "together" time!

Amy, Addi and Karis

A rare moment with the boys - they ski way too hard of runs for Amy, so this isn't that often to be together!  Kaleb was Zachary's leader - Zach prefers to have Kaleb decide where to go on the mountain so Kaleb had free rein to determine where they would ski.

One day Addi wasn't feeling great, so we headed back in early.  The lovely Jordanelle reserve is behind us on the horizon

Amy and Kelli ski together a lot as we're happy on the blues and greens, whereas the kids love the trees and harder runs!

A quiet moment on the ski lift.  Zach was on another chair with the Js

Golf Senior Ceremony

During the high school senior year, there is always a ceremony in which they talk about each Senior player.  This year, the golf team's ceremony was during their annual fundraiser, which happened to be the Friday that we flew out to Utah for the ski trip.  Amy wasn't thinking that we could originally attend the actual ceremony, but Zachary signed up for the fundraiser golf outing, and we eventually realized that it was going to be possible for him to attend - yay!  However, Amy realized that there would be this ceremony with no parent to actually be there to cheer for him, so she went into OT and through lots of logistics figured out how to get off early and drove down to the event -- thanks for Jennifer for driving her car back so that Amy could go straight to the airport with Karis and the family afterwards.  Wow, it all worked out!

Zachary, Erick, Drew and Michael

Blake also golfed during the event, so it was fun to get a picture of them together

Zach and Erick golfed together

Each senior had a gift and a little stand with their picture on it.

The program

The room set-up for all of the golfers who attended the fundraiser

In a surprise note, the tables all had student athletes tent cards on them with various questions etc from all high school grades - here was Kaleb's (soccer)!

That week, Amy had the joy of being able to visit with Phyllis - her old work EA - such a lovely lady - always a blessing to be able to catch up for a dinner when she is in town.

And in a fun random picture - Amy's market is building a new hospital out in Minneola, and we were able to go out for a tour of it - so cool to watch a brand new hospital going up!

This gentleman - Tim - has been a longtime friend of ours - he actually was the emcee at our wedding reception!

Aunt Ev & Three Men & a Truck - "We'll Fit it In"

 At the beginning of that week, we had a lovely time visiting with Aunt Evelyn who was here to visit Jeff, Niesha and of course Sadie!  Have family in town is a blessing indeed that we get to see so many of our loved ones more frequently than would otherwise be possible!

Uh oh, Addi has been growing like a proverbial weed this year after getting off of gluten, and now is taller than Aunt Ev!

Sadie, Kaleb and Addison played outside on the 360 Razors, racing and just having a grand time.  Makes a mama's heart so happy!

Kaleb doesn't fit so well on these anymore!

They look like turtles on their backs 😂

The next day on Sunday the five of us got up early and headed up to load the moving van.  Lots of friends showed up to help, so we finished packing the house while the men played "tetris" and tried to fit everything into the moving van.  They ended up having to also get a small trailer to haul behind the trailer and we kept a few things for them in our workshop as it just wasn't all going to fit.  Karis, Eric and Alex by the end of the day were joking about starting a moving company with the tag line "We'll Fit it In!".  Thankfully everything made it up to Kettering safe and sound.  

Hard at work!  Thanks kiddos for your loving hearts.  Zach was there too, just not in this particular picture.

The women hard at work inside (plus Theresa who was a packing master in the morning!)

Mid-week, there was an impromptu opportunity to go out to visit one more time with Carmen before she headed back to Ohio - up at an Indian place in Lake Mary.  So wonderful to soak up every chance to be with her in person!

Tracy, Amy, Carmen, Kayleith and Alex in the front.

It was a flurry of a week for sure - there was also the AdventHealth CFD annual resident networking event, held at the Solar Bears game at the Kia Center.  After the game and food, we were able to go out onto the actual ice and take a picture with the whole group.  This is definitely not the whole group, but as we left the ice we stopped and took a selfie of just a few of us.

Kent, Amy, Danny Myers, Stacy Shepherd (Amy's Mom's Husband Lyle Litzenberger's daughter - how about that for a tad convoluted 😀) and her husband Adrian.

Farewell & Sleepover

Amy's high school bestie Carmen had moved down with her family from Kettering last summer, but through a lot of life twists and turns, Carmen found herself moving back to Kettering.  With that in mind, we hosted a farewell luncheon with the folks who have befriended her from Orlando.  In addition, we finally celebrated our combined 50th birthday with a "sleepover" at her house, with some of our high school memories - such a fun time!

The crew came over in shifts, so we didn't get a picture of everyone, but it was still a lovely afternoon.

Zs, Hollands, Tkachucks, Touchards, Pastor Alex

And then Kim was able to pop over!

We enjoyed talking with our feet in the hot tub

While we were visiting, Addison and Blaek were having a grand time coming up with all kinds of fun - including this tower - poor Blake was on the bottom (although they did switch afterwards)!

That evening, Amy headed over to Carmen's house and we enjoyed a long evening of chatting, and then on Sunday we went to the Winter Park boat ride along the chain of lakes after popping over to a little bakery for a bite to eat.

High school memories - Kraft Mac & Cheese (only with no milk, no butter, just the powder cheese and water), plus McCains chocolate cake!

What a beautiful pink tree - we couldn't resist taking a picture in front ot it

Super fun boat ride