Connor's fourth soccer game - Five goals!!

Today was Connor's fourth soccer game with his team: Giant Alligators. Connor has been doing great at all his games and has been more aggressive, getting in and shooting the ball when he gets every opportunity. Connor scored five goals today and you could tell his team had a lot of fun. They all get along great and there are some really good players on his team.

This was also our week to bring snacks. Andrea is actually the official "Team Mom" and she'd set up the snack schedule. For this week, Andrea packed sliced apples for halftime snack and fudge rounds and Capri Suns for after the game. Connor liked giving them out to everyone. 

It was fun, as always to watch our little guy play. He tries hard and is such a good boy. We are so lucky!

I put together a cute video highlighting Connor's goals.

 Sissy and Mommy love cheering for Connor!

Grandma and Grandpa Anders visit

Grandpa and Grandma stayed through until Thursday this past week with us. We had such a great visit with them, we really appreciate them coming down to Florida to see us. Andrea got to show them around St. Augustine, Genie got to play tennis with Andrea, and the kids got to spend a lot of time with their grandparents.

Grandma and Grandpa got Connor a neat motorcycle toy and we got some cute pictures and a video of Grandpa showing Connor how it works.

Grandma got Paige a cute accessory set for her birthday. Paige loves taking care of her babies and the accessories and goodies are the perfect gift.

Paige looked sassy as ever sporting her new gear!

Thanks for visiting Grandma and Grandpa! We love you!

Grandma Genie and Grandpa Garry come to Connor's soccer practice on Tuesday

Connor had soccer practice on Tuesday, as he does each week. The kids both had a refresher ISR swimming lesson and then we went to soccer.

The Saturday before, he'd had his third soccer game and he had a great game and scored five goals. Unfortunately, Grandpa Garry was not feeling well so Grandma and Grandpa Anders couldn't go. Also, unfortunately, Daddy goofed up and deleted all the pictures and videos of the game. It was nice for Grandma and Grandpa to at least see his soccer practice, and Connor did very well at practice.

At the end of practice, they did a relay race and Connor got to show off his speed. He was so intent on beating the other little boy when it was his turn that he nearly ran full speed in to a goal post. Thankfully he stopped in time. He's got such a great stride, it's so much fun to watch him run.

Thanks for coming to Soccer Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandpa and Grandma Anders visit

 We are very happy to have more out of town visitors!!

Grandma Genie and Grandpa Garry came in to town this past weekend and are staying in Florida for a week to visit. Their visit isn't even halfway over, but we've already had some fun adventures.

On Friday we went out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

Today we went to Mickler's beach which is right down the road from our house. It's only about a 20 minute drive and it's convenient too since they have bathrooms and showers as well as free parking. The parking lot filled up early, but we found a spot to park and a nice spot on the beach. The beach wasn't too crowded and it was cool out even though it was sunny. The water was cold!

Connor had fun with Daddy out in the ocean. He kept begging me to go out deeper and deeper and deeper. The waves were cresting above his head and he'd get swamped and cold, but never wanted to give up. He had so much fun.

Some of the time he held on to Daddy and we jumped in the waves.

Towards the end of the day, he'd jump in them all by himself.

Paige mostly just wanted to play in the sand and get grubby and filthy. She loved to grab handfuls of sand and throw them and dig around in it.

Connor also liked digging in the dirt. We were going to build a sandcastle, but Sissy thought it would be fun to smash it. Instead, we dug for buried treasure and Connor found three dollars buried in the sand! I believe it may have been buried by the infamous Pirate Genie long long ago...

Paige tried going out in to the ocean a few times but there were a lot of seashells on the beach that hurt her feet and the water was too cold. She didn't really enjoy the water much today.

She liked playing with Ga though! Cheese!

House update - FRAMED!

This past week there was very exciting progress on the house. We stopped by every day and there was a lot of activity. The workers got most of the outside completely framed by Friday. Throughout the week, the house really took shape and by the weekend you could see the overall shape and size of it.

I got a picture of the back at the halfway point.

Finally, by this weekend the outside was fairly complete. There's still a lot to do inside and a lot of wood left to go, but it's still very exciting! 

I also got a picture of the inside from one angle. It's in the Family room, with the big sliding door area to the left of me. It's actually 4 pictures stitched together and it's still impossible to see much.

Fun around the neighborhood

The weather's been great lately, so we've been playing outside quite a bit. Earlier this week we checked up on the house and stopped by at Virginia and Tony's house to feed the fish. The kids loved the Koi pond in Virginia's house and both got little cups of food to throw in for the fish. Connor said he wants a fish pet now.

We've also been practicing bike riding with Connor. He's getting pretty good at it and we took a pretty long walk with the kids yesterday. Connor did really well pedaling his bike, but sometimes when his foot was at the top of the stroke he'd push backwards instead of forwards, which would stop the bike. he'd get frustrated and would yell "Stop it Patrick!". Andrea asked him who Patrick was and Connor said that it Patrick was the pedals and was crazying him.

Paige kept up really well on the Lightning McQueen Powerwheel. She kicks her feet along and gets moving pretty fast. She's a hoot on it and never gets tired. We probably went a mile and a half when we quit and she wasn't ready to stop. She threw a fit when we had to go inside, lots of energy!

Great Grandpa and Great Grandma visit us in St. Augustine

This weekend, Great Grandma Delores and Great Grandpa Roger came to our house to visit. They're going back to Chicago soon, so we may not see them again for a while!

After Connor's soccer game on Saturday, we met them in St. Augustine and we toured the area with them in one of the trolleys that drive around the town.

It was beautiful outside and the trolley was a great way to get to know the area better. Connor liked sitting with Daddy and talking about all the pirate stuff.

Paige sat pretty well for the first half of the tour, but wanted to stand up and jump around after a while. Not recommended in a moving trolley.

We ate together at Sonny's for dinner, great BBQ, cornbread and sweet tea!

It was a great visit and lots of fun for the kids. They were entertaining as usual, Paige was a character and was her usual wild self.

Connor was happy to be around the house for the weekend and he showed off his cool new Power Rangers mask and some of his cool moves.

Thanks for coming to visit Grandpa and Grandma! Love you!

Connor's second soccer game

Connor had his second soccer game this week. He did really well as usual and had some good opportunities to score and took them. He really seems to enjoy his soccer and we love the new soccer league since the practices are separate from the games. He really gets to run a lot and works hard. We could tell he was getting a little tired by the end of the game.



Connor did great on offense and defense and scored 3 goals total. I only posted videos of the first two since the third one was kind of bizarre. For some reason the other team's coach told the kids to stop playing right when Connor was kicking the ball in the goal. 

Goal 1 video

Goal 2 video

He even ate some of the orange at half time snack. First time we've seen him eat orange!

I thought this was a cute picture of him kicking the ball in.

Connor gets along with the guys on his team, even on the bench he has fun.

Go Giant Alligators!!!

House update - Slab and cinder blocks

Lots of exciting progress on our house this past week!

We're officially farther than we ever have been before. Hopefully they won't be tearing all this up and starting over again!

We've been checking up every day and it's been exciting to see the progress. The slab was poured last week and it looked pretty darn good to our untrained eyes.

I put together a 360 degree panorama of the view from the middle of the slab.

This is the same pictures, stitched together, a little more confusing seeing it this way. 

On Tuesday through Friday they worked on the lower level of the house. They hauled a bunch of cinder blocks on to the slab and spent a lot of time putting them all in place. The house is taking shape and when you walk through it you can really picture where the rooms will be and how everything will be arranged.

You can really envision how tall the ceilings will be when I'm standing next to the walls.

I put together another 360 degree panorama from the middle of the house with the cinder blocks in place.

Again, the stitched together photos below.

The wood has been delivered and is sitting on the lot next door. Lots of wood!

On Friday, they'd sealed up all the holes at the bottoms of the walls and put some hardware in place at the top of the walls where they'll be attaching all the upstairs bracing and material.

Connor's first soccer game with Creeks Athletic Association

This Saturday was Connor's first soccer game with Creeks Athletic Association.

It was cold by Florida standards, in the 60's and a little windy. Connor was excited for the game and all the kids looked very cute in their official team uniforms. The team they were playing against had been playing for a number of years and were very good. That said, Connor's team, which only had one practice, competed very well.

There are 6 kids on Connor's team and they played 3 at a time so Connor sat out half the time. He was paired up with Reid and another boy and Reid was definitely the stand out star of the day. Connor's very good, but was a little tentative today. He would do a great job turning the ball towards the goal and would start his approach when Reid would swoop in, take the ball and score. Connor never seemed phased by it and was excited that his team would score, which was great. He's a great team player. Unfortunately, he never scored a goal himself. I took a bunch of videos, but they're all pretty similar, I uploaded a typical play where Connor gets the ball going towards the goal and then Reid scores.


Connor was cute at the beginning of the plays, he'd get into a football stance.

Amanda and Ryan got up early to watch the game!

Andrea is the official "Team Mom" and sat on the bench with the kids while they were sitting out.

You could tell that Connor had a blast playing. We really like Coach Joe and his team is fun and they're all so cute. They get along great so far and we're looking forwards to watching our little man play.

After the game, the kids finally decided on their team name and settled for the "Giant Alligators"! Go Giant Alligators!!