More Daytona

We're still in Florida. Our original plan was to leave this morning and get home tomorrow night. But we had the condo for another night and all decided that we could use another day to relax and enjoy the pool and beach, so here we are. Hopefully one day between arriving home and going back to work will be enough for me.

So the past few days have been spent visiting with my family, playing in the pools and brief trips to the beach.

Here are some pictures, with some quick commentary.

Here are Taipan and Taisim in the kids' pool at our condo. We visited this just about every day of our trip, except for one or two days that were a bit overcast and rainy. They love this pool, and it's my all-time favorite for the kids too, and the main reason we choose to stay at the Oceanwalk:

On Sunday my sister was kind enough to host my mom, dad, stepmom, brother and us for dinner. My nephew, Jason, is a month shy of 8, and he and Taipan have a common interest of weapons. Taipan was excited to see Jason's swords, guns and other battle gear. Here they are standing still for a quick picture:

And here they are executing an attack:

Elyse, my niece, and Taisim got along famously. Among other things, they ran a makeover shop (I got nails, hair, and makeup done!), pretended to be horses, hosted a carnival, and had a dance recital. In this picture they are doing a puppet show - Elyse drew characters on their hands, though they're not visible in this picture. Taisim *loves* her cousin!

Monday was an overcast day, and we spent most of the afternoon in the condo, though Taipan and I spent some time on the beach and at the pool (it was drizzling and windy). When the rain was gone, we took a walk and visited some gift shops. We got some cool sparkly key chains as souvenirs.

We spent the evening at my mom's house - more rain, and the kids enjoyed her umbrella for a bit in the back yard, and they loved playing with Grammy's dog, Rosie, and looking for her cats, which thankfully made an appearance before the end of the evening.

Tuesday was another condo day, and I don't have any pictures from Tuesday or early Wednesday because I forgot my camera at my mom's house. But I got my camera back on Wednesday afternoon when we went to my sister's house again.

This is a silly picture of the cousins - I was trying to get a non-silly one, and tried to loosen them up and get Taipan's cooperation by doing silly faces first. Silly faces were no problem. I think this is fun, though not what I think my mom would've hoped for in a framed picture of her grandkids :-)

Next stop was my dad's house. During each visit Taipan was fascinated with and loved playing with all the pets. My sister, mom and dad each have a dog, and at least one cat. He was mostly sweet and loving and gentle with them. He spent a lot of time looking for and loving on them.

Here he is carrying one of my dad's cats, Velvet:

Simi and Grandma playing Operation:

Taipan playing in Grandpa's pool:

Group shot!! Taipan agreed to be in the picture since the dog, Sugar, would be on his lap:

And my (baby) brother stopped by to visit with us too:

This has been a great trip, and we can't wait to do it again, though it will likely not be for 2-3 years, since we'll likely drive again and want the baby to be old enough to enjoy the drive.

Thanks to my entire family for being so flexible and generous during our visit!

Daytona - Friday, April 16

We made it to Daytona! The drive was pretty great - we left home around 11am on Thursday, and stopped in Columbia, SC around 8:30/9pm, then left Columbia around 10:00 Friday morning. The kids did amazing on the trip - Yuta and I had stocked up on some new and exciting games and DVDs, which I think were largely responsible for how smoothly things went, and also our willingness to take a nice long break each day. We got to our condo around 5:00, checked in, did some quick settling in, got our bathing suits on, and immediately hit the beach.

Taipan liked running around in the (cold) water, and Simi and I built a sandcastle. Then we went up to the pool for an hour or so before my dad & stepmom came to have dinner with us.

Here are some quick shots of the beach. More to come later I'm sure. Tonight the kids and I wil have dinner with my mom while Yuta is out with his best Orlando buddy, and then tomorrow we get to go see my brother, sister and her kids. So far, we're having a great time.

Happy New Year

Ok, so it's not really the new year, but this is my first post of 2010, so it's a new blogging year.

The year has happily moved along for us. I'm 34 weeks pregnant, so things will change pretty drastically here in the next couple of months. The kids are excited and can't wait to meet the baby, and neither can I. I think we're about as prepared as we're going to be - the only thing we're missing is a name. No doubt we'll have one before his birthday though.

Today I came here to post Easter pictures. I resisted the urge to post them on Facebook instead - the ease of posting there is great, but sometimes I like to rattle on a bit.

Taipan and I had a very early start to our day - he woke up around 7:30, which is 3-4 hours earlier than his normal wake up time. He was very excited to check out his basket and hunt for eggs. Unfortunately he woke up so early that things weren't quite ready yet. Luckily he was distracted for a bit and baskets got ready and eggs got hidden pretty quickly.

Baskets this year had garden tools (gloves, spade, rake & watering can) and a Crayola glow in the dark package that they've seen commercials for and have wanted to try for a while now.

After Taipan found his eggs we gardened for a bit, did glow in the dark drawings (drew at the kitchen table, then took to the bathroom to check out in the dark), all the while Taipan was wanting very badly to wake up Yuta and Simi. Around 10:30 or so we gently woke them up with Easter greetings, then re-hid Taipan's eggs so that Simi could have a partner in her egg hunt.

Pics from the morning:

Our afternoon consisted of making the annual bunny cake, baking a ham, a quick visit from my in-laws, and a walk down the street. Once it got dark we did the crayola glow in the dark again.

All in all a nice spring day!

I leave you with a picture of the bunny cake: