Recent events!

 It's been a fun few months around here!

Back to school photos! Caroline and Thomas switched schools this year, and they have acclimated so well. They are both loving everything about it and making lots of friends.

They let Thomas be a safety patrol at the new school, and he was so excited. 

And our big 8th grader! How can this be?

Still finding time for forts after school is back in session. Caroline is the most patient with Ana and Ana adores her.

They also love playing doctor and dentist. It gets pretty realistic sometimes.

Caroline loves mothering all of the little preschoolers in her life.

It's great to be 8! We had a Wicked party, and it was so fun to plan and decorate for. We had to incorporate some water activities and swimming because it's still summer in Florida! Caroline's friend's mom described her as a ray of sunshine, and she truly is. She is always so joyful, loves people, and not much gets her down. She is cartwheeling her way through life right now (literally, hundreds of cartwheels per day) and aspires to be a teenage girl. :)

We got my dad tickets to the Rays for a belated Father's Day gift, and it was fun to go with him and my boys! It was a close game and fun to watch, even for this non-baseball-loving mom.

We had to stop by our friend's Crumbl stand inside the stadium!

Lots of attempts made to get on the jumbotron, to no avail!

Sunday dinner with our other grandparents and cousins.

Caroline's actual birthday! Crepes for breakfast of course.

The most used birthday gift we've probably ever given any of our kids, except maybe Russell's 3D printer.

Left school a little early to embark on our road trip to Georgia for camping!

It's a long drive to northern Georgia, but worth it for this amazing campsite Ricardo found a few years ago. We spent a few days on the water,, and it was a dream.

Kids hanging out in the warm!!! water from sunup to sundown.

Plus so much fun boating in these clear waters!

 

We celebrated our 17th anniversary on the trip! Ricardo ran to Walmart to get me a fern so I could have a fern-in-nature (furniture is the traditional 17th anniversary gift!). 

Ana loved the tube and had a blast!

Russell skied and wakeboarded and did amazing! 

Even I was able to wakeboard after so many years! (And Ricardo too, not pictured)

Catching frogs wherever he can!

The teens

Two of the dads took a few hours on Saturday to make the little drive to the Atlanta temple with these three. We were teasing them about this COVID-era photo- 6 feet apart 😅

Who wore the overalls best? Cast your votes.

Collecting rocks with her little friend. 

Some of the best moments were just stopping in these little coves and playing around.

And just paddleboarding around from our camp.

Until next year, Red Top!

The next weekend was also a busy one! Friday was my birthday. My sweet friend threw me a brunch! 

After school, we headed off on another road trip, a bit shorter drive to Tallahassee for our ward temple trip. Ricardo found a really fun restaurant along the way in Gainesville for dinner. The best part was enjoying the live music after dinner and watching Ana dance. It is one of the cutest things in life to see her moves. If you haven't seen it, you're really missing out!

The other best part of my birthday was receiving Ana's gifts for me. Ricardo had taken her shopping at the outlet mall, and she picked out some rocks and seashells in the parking lot to give me. And also this snail shell that she was treasuring from our camping trip the weekend before. So sweet.

Saturday was a great day being at the temple with some of my primary kids! 

On Sunday our Caroline was baptized! It was such a beautiful meeting with great talks by her aunt Michelle and Grandma Sherrie. The kids did a beautiful musical number and Caroline was so overjoyed she was jumping up and down as she prepared to walk down into the baptismal font. 

On Labor Day weekend we headed down to Orlando so we could meet up with Ricardo's good friend from childhood at Universal Studios. We enjoyed some time Friday night with my parents and then headed over to the park Saturday morning. It was surprisingly not too busy for a holiday weekend and we were so grateful!

Oops Russell wasn't ready for the photo, too busy grabbing snacks!

My sister used to work at this ride in high school so we had to get the photo op for her. We all got so soaked; bad call to do this ride at 7 pm!

A memory for our family for laughs in the future: Thomas started feeling sick on the short Uber ride to Luis' hotel when we left that night. He *almost* made it but unfortunately started throwing up about one minute from our destination. We had a bag on us that we used to contain it, but we did still incur the Uber bodily fluids fee. Fun times. Too much candy and roller coasters because he was totally fine the next day.

Labor Day was a fun-filled day, especially for Caroline. She cashed in one of her birthday gifts from a friend and went to the trampoline park. 

The rest of us had lunch at one friend's house and then picked up Caroline to have dinner at another.

Other fun times in September...cousin's birthday party, also Wicked themed.

Finally having a moment to deep clean our garage after all of our summer house projects and our busy August.

Rare moments of peace between these two. 

Catching lots of frogs and tadpoles with our rainy weather lately.

Visiting our Tampa temple site!

More birthday outings with friends for Caroline. Spa night!

So pleased with our plumeria that was on the brink of death last January with our cold spell. We almost pulled it up, and actually Ricardo did rip out our other plumeria plant and then noticed it growing back just lying there in our yard and replanted it. It's doing pretty well too!

Between all the fun, I've been working a solid amount, and Ana has been having a blast with her two fun babysitters when she's not in school.

Service project for the kids at church: assembling care packages for underprivileged kids near us.

Ana worked so hard!

One more fun set of visitors in September! Our good friends from dental school. We love this family and had so much fun with them for a small piece of their Florida trip.

Weeki Wachee is always a fun, true Florida activity!

The kids linked all the kayaks togther for awhile and annoyed several other people on the water with that-haha.

Fun times at the mermaid show.

We saw a manatee at the swimming hole! The kids got super close to it.

Pretty cold spring water for this Florida baby.

I love how all ages will come together to build a sand castle.

They left for Disney on Saturday morning and we headed to this fun little beach for Russell's friend's 13th birthday!

It was a beautiful day. The kids enjoyed lots of soccer on the beach.

And paddling out to see a family of dolphins-you can kind of see their fins towards the left side of the photo.

I'll leave you with this cute photo of Ana in primary. She knows most of the words to all the songs and wants to listen to her church songs all the time in the car. Or sometimes she does ask for "Demon hunters." Life is a balance. :)

Happy Fall!