Roadtrippin' & Memory Makin'

I (heart) Florida - it took a bit for me to get warmed up to the Good Ol' Sunshine State but, as Hubby would say, I've got "a warm and fuzzy."  I'm sure you can recall my Florida Woes here and here, but it's growing on me and now it's just plain fantabulous.

Let me begin by saying we live close to everywhere. Everywhere? Yes. Everywhere. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are all right here, and then there the rest of Florida, which is like the only state anyone needs if they had to just pick ONE state to live in the rest of your life. Seriously.

Being that we live so close to everything, Friday, I picked up my cubs from school and we went to surprise Daddy with an overnight visit. He's in a different state but still only a few hours away (Thank you FL for you're amazing locale) and he came to visit us some weekends ago so I thought it'd be fun to return the favor. We're packed and ready to roll and not even out of our city when Owen asked, "How many more hours do we have?" 

Are we there yet?

"Dude. Don't ask me that." Was a phrase I used about 10 times from the start of the trip to the end. In all honesty, they did amazingly well. The were each armed with a bag of kid-friendly goodies to keep them busy, they even swapped and trapped goodies like champs, "I'll give you my camera if I can use your Itouch and book." 

Being good during our drive - THANK HEAVENS

A plastic baggie of dried cereal spilled on the floorboard and ZERO bathroom breaks later, we arrived at our destination. With the help of a friend Hubby and I graduated/commissioned with, the kids and I made our way up to Love's room, knocked on the door and SURPRISE!!!!! We got 'im - and he's not an easy one to get. Both The Hubbs and I have a lot to do this weekend so we only stayed for a day but it was the best day in weeks.

Peek-a-boo

So, my road dogs and I arrived safely back home this evening and decided to make our time-capsules that we've been meaning to make for the past week or so but have had no time in our busy schedule.

The amazingly pretty clouds/sun on our way back to Florida this evening

Back to the time-capsules; I thought it'd be a fun idea to let the gang see how much they grow in a year. Like, really SEE for themselves. So we started by drawing the best picture we could and that was going to be used to cover our capsule (which was simply an empty papertowel roll) Then, I had the kids each fill out a questionnaire that I had written for them asking them things like, "What is you favorite color?, Who is your best friend? What do you want to be when you grow up?" I took a picture of each of them to put in their time-capsule. They added a "mystery item" to see if they could remember what it is in a year. We measured their height with a piece of string and added that too. I sealed their capsule and we tucked them away in a special cabinet - not to be touched until the summer of 2011.

Question: What is your favorite subject in school?
Ana's Answer? "Lunch"
She is, officially, her mother's daughter

"Eating" the string we used to measure his height

Could not, for the life of me, get them all to cooperate for a final photo of
them with their finished products.

Now that I'm officially worn out and I'm FINALLY getting heavy-eyed, I'm going to attempt to get some much needed sleep because I promised a day of baking, cooking, games and lighthouse tours tomorrow. Pray for me. Ha!