Shawn's birthday weekend at Omni & Amelia Island Tennis

This weekend we went up to Amelia Island as a family to spend the weekend playing some tennis and having some family fun together. Andrea and I have been a few times, but it's the first time we brought the kids with us. We got up fairly early on Saturday morning and drove up and went straight to the tennis courts. The kids relaxed on a blanket while Andrea and I did a couple tennis clinics and then we had lunch.

After lunch at Marche Burette deli, we had a little time before the family tennis clinic, so we went to the nature center on property. We were expecting it to be fairly small and didn't have very high expectations. We were surprised it was actually fairly well stocked with all kinds of local creatures including snakes, turtles, fish, and a beautiful parrot named Buddy. The kids fed some of the turtles in the nearby pond.

In the afternoon, we all did a family tennis clinic. It turned out we were the only family signed up, so Andrea and I did a bunch of high intensity drills on one court while Paige and Connor worked on tennis strokes on another court.

After tennis we were pretty exhausted and we went to our courtside tennis villa to relax. We washed up, then got dressed and ate at the Marche Burette restaurant again, where they were grilling delicious steaks for dinner.

After dinner we went and made some S'mores by a firepit.

Mini-golf was a lot of fun, especially watching the kids. Connor has an expectation that he'll get a hole-in-one or maybe two at the most per hole. He gets very frustrated if he doesn't hit a perfect shot, and we still don't keep score, or he'll get upset. Paige is a good sport and it's a cardio activity for her. She runs around each hole and smacks her ball at least a dozen times. I took one video of Paige golfing and we all cracked up when she hit her ball way too hard and bonked poor Connor in the head. Thankfully it didn't hit him very hard and thankfully not in the eyeball!



On Sunday, we were planning to do more tennis, but a storm blew through and we just relaxed and then ate lunch before heading home. It was a fun weekend, and I'm thankful Andrea thought to plan it for me!

Halloween 2015

This year we were lucky that Halloween fell on a Saturday. In the morning, Andrea and I participated in a Halloween tennis mixer at PVIC, then we had lunch at Cantina Laredo and relaxed until around 5. Before we put the costumes on the kids, we took a pic of them with the Halloween decorations on the front porch.

Connor went as an "Evil Minion" this year. Andrea and I came across a really cute Pterodactyl costume at Pottery Barn Kids, and it looked cute on Connor, however it was maybe a little bit of a little kid costume and Connor really wanted to pick one out this year himself. We took him to a Halloween store and he really liked the purple Minion costume. We found it online for sale for $10. It was a little sad that we weren't able to dress up our little man this year the way we wanted, but we were happy he got to express himself with a costume he picked, and it was nice that it was definitely cheaper than the Pterodactyl costume as well.

Paige went as a kitty cat this year. We found her costume at Pottery Barn kids, and it was super cute on her. Thankfully she didn't have any other ideas for a costume and was more than happy to be a kitty. She was cute posing with her hand out like a cat claw in some of the pics.

Grandma and Grandpa came by and met up with us before we set out on our trick-or-treating.

We all went over to Gina and Mark's house beforehand and the kids got to play with their friends for a while as everyone arrived.

Before we set off trick-or-treating, Mark tried to wrangle all the kids together for a group photo. It kind of worked, but most of the kids aren't good at looking at cameras. Thankfully Connor and Paige are used to it and always cooperate.

Grandpa Rick took a pic of the kids and a few of the adults as well.

Once we set off, it was an insane mad dash as the kids sprinted between houses. It was almost impossible to keep up and before we knew it, we were stuck with a bunch of children and almost no other parents.

The kids were having a great time until Paige tripped in the grass and landed on a concrete slab. She scraped up one knee and her hands. Thankfully she didn't hit her face on it. We cleaned her up and then continued on.

We stopped at the elaborately decorated house across from Anna's house on the way down the boulevard and took some pics with the scary decorations.

We ran in to a bunch of people we knew and Paige was very happy to pose with a couple of her classmates Ava and Kennedy.

Eventually it got pretty dark and we crossed the boulevard and then headed back to Anna and Kevin's house.

At Anna's house, they rented a cotton candy machine and had already gone through a couple hundred sticks. Thankfully they found a few more and the kids and Andrea all enjoyed some yummy cotton candy.

We eventually went back to Gina and Mark's house and caught up with a bunch of our friends we hadn't seen in a long time. It was awesome to have Halloween on a Saturday night and we stayed up very late and the kids enjoyed playing with their friends.

It was a great night! Happy Halloween!

Kindergartner Community Helper Parade - Paige

On Friday, the day before Halloween, the Kindergartners all came to school dressed as community helpers. Paige went as a veterinarian. Andrea got Paige a set of pink scrubs, a pink stethoscope, and Paige brought a little stuffed wolf with her. The LPA mascot is a wolf, and Paige thought to bring the wolf herself.

We got a cute picture of Paige in the morning before school and went to her school to see her in the parade.

Vocabulary Parade for Connor

They don't allow the kids to wear Halloween costumes at his school, but they decided that the 3rd graders would create outfits based on vocabulary words they'd been working on. The words were terribly abstract and kind of ridiculous in our opinion. It was interesting to see the outfits children (their parents really) put together for words like "subtraction", "narrator", "cardinal directions", "island", etc.

When Connor signed up for his words we tried to pick concrete words and he was assigned "oceans". Andrea had the idea to buy a blue shirt and then decorate it. Connor helped to color some ocean pictures, and then we cut out a bunch of stuff and used a glue gun to attach everything to the shirt.

It turned out pretty well, I would say his was somewhere in the middle of the costumes. Some of the outfits were pretty elaborate and others were much less work than Connor's.

The 3rd graders did the parade for the parents after the Kindergartners and Connor was pretty nervous and unexcited about doing it. He was a good sport about it and although I had to ask him to, he smiled for a couple pictures.

Dressup outside with Olivia

It's finally starting to cool off in the evenings and the kids have started to play outside again. Paige and Olivia are so funny about how they play outside. They spend most of their time apart, one of them outside waiting for the other to change outfits. Then they will fuss over how pretty the new dress is, then the other will go inside to change. 

Paige's artwork improves

Paige has been very diligent in working on her art. Every day she gets out her art supplies and will draw and color for hours. She spent some time watching some YouTube videos where a daddy draws along with his daughter. Paige liked those, and afterwards I could see a marked improvement in her own designs.

I also love how colorful all of her pictures are. The other day she drew a princess with a fancy dress, holding a red mask in her hand. It was on a huge piece of paper, almost as big as Paige! So much detail in the picture! Arms, hands, feet, legs, rabbit ears and more. Nice work Paigie Pie!

Spirit week at LPA

The kids had spirit week at school. Each day they had a different theme like "Disney day", "Hat day", and "Twin day". Andrea took pics of them at the bus stop before school on a few of the days.

Paige and her neighbor Olivia had the same shirt, so they both wore it on twin day.