Fun

A few nights ago (Friday night) we went down to the greyhound track. That is one thing I miss about living in Florida... greyhound racing. It's not the gambling (up north they have casinos and horse racing), it's the being outside by the track, the cool/warm night air, and the lazy fun feeling of it. I like the dogs, they are fun to watch. It's fun to pick a dog and to bet on him (whether or not "for real"). But it's most fun just being there.

For the record, we watched 6 races.. bet on 4.. and won on 2 :)


I neglected to bring my real camera, and my phone couldn't get a picture of the track too great... so I squeezed us into a self-portrait. :)


Aislyn wants to be in the middle of everything, all the time. As evidenced by the way she leans and stretches and does everything she can to look around her carseat canopy to look at me in the front seat.


She gets into trouble, too. Look at those wires! My, my Aislyn. Gotta be watching you every second already.

The Story of Pufferfish

ArtFest Ft Myers was today. I thought it started yesterday, so we went down there yesterday morning and walked around and watched the artists setting up shop. We were a little bummed that it wasn't actually in progress, but we saw a few neat things and decided we'd go back today. One thing in particular I saw was some blown glass type pufferfish. Really awesome!

So today, we loaded up again. It took us about 30 minutes to find a parking spot. They get about 100,000+ people and I think they were all mostly looking for a parking spot at the same time we were. So it took a while. (Don't forget, the only vehicle we have is a massive Megacab diesel truck. Yep.)

But we found a parking spot. And it was only about a mile away. Woo! So we loaded the little girl into the stroller and got the boy out of the truck and ready to go. And off we went!

Now, this place. This place was busy. This place was so busy you couldn't really look at much of the artists because there were too many people.

But, we did find our pufferfish guy. He was the only person selling anything. He had a line! Everyone loves a pufferfish.

Shane had sold a woodspirit earlier that day, and even though the pufferfish were overpriced (of course!) he bought me one. And I loved it.



We got home, and Zane immediately (IMMEDIATELY) dropped the pufferfish and it shattered on our concrete slab outside our trailer.

Immediately.

Mama: not happy. Papa: not happy. Zaner: not happy. Aislyn: indifferent.

I plop down to eat my chick fil a in relative gloom (hey, it's chick fil a) and Shane goes outside -- to carve, I assume. I hear his truck start and assume he is going around the other side of the park to pay our rent (which we tried to do this morning but the guy wasn't in the office).

He is gone an unusually long time, but if you know Shane, you know he is a talker. He will sit and talk with someone long past the point you think there's no possible way he is sitting around talking to someone.

After a while he comes in with a bag. "Where did you go?" I ask suspiciously.

"The grocery store" he replies with a grin.

After which he pulls out two new pufferfish from the bag!

Mama: super excited and happy! Papa: all grins. Zaner: "I feel really happy now!" Aislyn: indifferent.

Thursday

Thursdays are family days.

Oh, who am I kidding, every day is partly family day. But I designated Thursday "family day" and it made absolutely no difference to any other day.

But I will still call it family day.

On family day, yesterday, we went out and looked at houses for my mom. Then we went to Pine Island. Nice place. For fun, Shane called the realtor on a vacant lot that was waterfront on two sides. They only want $487 grand for it. Not too bad.

Ha. I smile when he says, "Ok, I'll talk to my wife about it and call you back if we're interested."

Last night, I decided I wanted to buy Zane a bike. At home, our road is poorly paved and is not conducive to learning to ride a bike. Here, we have nice paved roads and a quiet park. So, why not?

I was looking on Craigslist, but Shane wouldn't call any of the people. Sometimes it's hard to get him to do anything. And I don't make phone calls.

Late last night I had to have a sweet tea. So we drove to Chick Fil A.. which is in the Walmart parking lot. Shane decided he had to have fire ant killer. Aislyn was awake. So we all went into Walmart. We passed the bike section. Shane had Zane try out a scooter. Zane said it was too tricky. I had him try a bike. He really liked it. I frowned at the price. I hemmed and hawed. Shane was already letting him ride it up to the register.

This morning the first thing he wanted to do was ride his bike. And that's all he's wanted all day.

For some reason, I think it's important for kids to ride bikes. It seems old-fashioned somehow.



By the time I got out this morning, after my shower and getting Aislyn to sleep, they had already been riding for a while. Shane said Zane fell twice. But he didn't care.

He loves his bike. And he is so proud of himself.

I have no idea how long it will take for the training wheels to come off. But probably a little while.

Shane Photos

Recently, I bought an external hard drive. I did this because my poor aged computer is getting gummed up with pictures. Thousands and thousands of pictures. Nearly 100 gigs.

Today, I was switching pictures over from my computer onto this new external hard drive. In the process, Shane handed me his Palm Pre (phone) and asked me to take the photos off of it and put them on my hard drive. So I did. It was so fun to look through all his pictures.


Zane out carving with his papa. This was only a few nights ago.


We eat out way too much.


I remember Shane taking this photo, showing it to me, and asking Zane if he is fruity. Zane is, and freely admits it.


Zane in Papa's tree stand.


Zane and Abria swimming in a lake.


I miss my hair.


I like this picture. It reminds me of how untired I am compared to how tired I was.


This picture, of my sweet baby girl.


This picture, of my sweet baby girl.

Today we went to a park on the water, and I have those pictures in my camera, waiting for a dull moment tomorrow.

I believe Aislyn has reached a point where she is competing with Zane for title of the kid with the most toys possible.

So Glad To Be In Florida

Today was a beautiful day. Really, it was probably about as close to perfect as they typically get for us. The weather was lovely. It was about 72 this morning when we got up, but no cold breeze like usual. Shane had a meeting (webinar) so we tried to make ourselves scarce by taking a walk. We walked around the park with the double stroller and Zane running back and forth. It was a perfect morning. Then, we decided we would go to the beach for the afternoon. Shane had to go to the tool shop for a tool, and there was a K-mart next door, so we went in and got a few beach supplies while Shane was getting the tool fixed. On to the beach! By this time it was almost 3 pm. But it was 78 and so so beautiful. There is always a huge long line of traffic going to the beach, because it's actually just an island and there appears to be one road in and one road out. Tiresome. But there is a park at one end of the beach that is fairly secluded and really woodsy and nice. Shane likes to fish there and there's lots of nice uncluttered sand to play in. I parked the kids in the sand while Shane fished for a bit, then we all just kind of strolled together. We were only there about an hour but it was so nice.

Mama was trying to take a picture of us together while the boys were out in the woods, but Aislyn wanted to grab the camera instead. Plus, mama looks a little rough; I was under the impression we were staying home today and then didn't bother to change my appearance when I found out we were going beachward. Oh well!

Aislyn very typically generates quite a bit of attention wherever she goes, I think for two main reasons: 1) She is so chubby. In a baby, it's rather appealing. 2) She has awesome huge blue eyes. However, today, I noticed something else. When you stick a bow in her hair, the amount of attention she receives about triples.

It was rather cute.

While we were trying to find the perfect place to stop and park the stroller, Zane & I found a horseshoe crab shell on the beach. Then, later, Shane came up with another lovely find -- a starfish! It was still alive but had washed ashore, so we played with it a few minutes then tossed her back out to sea.

You may notice that Zane is in a long sleeved shirt. I am not really sure why this is, except that when we left home I asked him if he wanted to change shirts and he said no, and for some reason I left it at that.

Aislyn liked the sand. She wasn't really too sure about that bright sun, and the sand probably didn't taste so great (so why did she keep eating it?), but the shovel and the pails, those were great.

This is as close as we got to a family shot today. Papa's boots are in the corner. Mama is behind the camera (not shown here).

Overall, I was really happy about today. I hope it finishes off along the same lines.

A Tale of Two Kids

In this picture, she is clearly the queen with her sceptre.

And here, she offers the sceptre to me.

She's really a generous one, that Aislyn.

The only thing more fascinating than her eyes is possibly her legs. Do you see them things? (How can you not?)

Zane has quite beautiful eyes, too. But sometimes his dimples like to steal the show.

Dimples and crooked smiles. I know exactly what I'm in for.

I don't mind too much. My Z and my A. The end and the beginning of everything.