More Spring

About a week ago, Kate and I went out to take some pictures. I let her use my smaller, point and shoot camera. After a few glitches in the works, here are 3 of her pictures. I love this first one with her toes in it. I think it's kind of neat how it is only exposed properly in her shadow. I guess it's kind of a self portrait!
This rock is our "thinking spot." Tyler named it that when he was little and into Winnie the Pooh. It has kept the name, even though it has been moved and Winnie the Pooh has been trumped by Star Wars.
Kate took quite a few of this bunny.

Forsythia and apple blossoms

Forsythia

These geese were honking mad at us even though we really weren't close to them at all. They ended up jumping in the water.

Here's something you probably didn't know about me-I like clouds. Or maybe it is really the sky. I am not quite sure as I really just became aware of this myself. It dawned on me the other day that I often am compelled to grab my camera because of some cloud formation in the sky. Then as I looked through some of my pictures, I saw how many times I actually have grabbed my camera just to take pictures of the sky.
So I began to ponder the reason why, and immediately I knew. It is God who draws my eyes heavenward; to fix my gaze on the heavens; to look past the circumstances of this world and look to my true home.

Psalm 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God,and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."

SPRING!

Though it isn't exactly warm yet, the first signs of Spring are showing. Every year I am newly inspired to take my camera out and photograph Spring. Usually I end up taking the same pictures year after year. I attempted to at least try to capture the same things in different ways this year. Here are a few of the resulting images.

We passed these sheep on the way to BB's grocery store. I had to stop to take pictures when I saw this little lamb standing on still wobbly legs.

Kate was so excited that OUR daffodils were starting to bloom. I guess we must be just high enough on the hill that usually all of our plants are a few days to a week behind even our neighbors in blooming! I like it though because I can enjoy the blooms for that much longer!

Star Wars and Princesses

Tyler at breakfast, looking over the map of that days destination.

The boys riding the whatever it is from Star Wars.

Danny and Ty about to be squished by a Star Wars walker.

There was a lot of rain this day, though we got wet, it didn't dampen our enthusiasm. The boys rode the Star Wars ride at least 5 times! Kate and I got to see several shows starring the princesses.

A little out of order. This was the end of the day, somewhere around 9:30 or so.

These 2 are from the Beauty and the Beast show which Kate and I went to.

And the highlight for Kate..... We had dinner with the princesses that night. She met Belle at the entrance, and then all of the other princesses came over to our table as we ate dinner. Kate was beaming with excitement! She just kept hugging them and chattering away to them.

Vacation Part 3 Epcot

Danny in space

Kids catching the jumping streams of water.

Danny, Tyler, Richard, Michelle & Kate outside the Finding Nemo ride. I love Danny's expression.

Tyler took this picture as we entered the park.

Carrot-nose-Katie

Saying goodbye to our friends.

A reminder of who is most important.

A different perspective of the Epcot ball.

This was another fun day. The highlights were the ride Soarin where you fly in a hang glider over the ocean and pine forests etc. and you can actually smell them as you fly over. The fireworks over the water at the end of the day were pretty neat as well. The kids got to build there own toy robot, and push lots of buttons that simulated extreme testing they do on products such as tv screens and vacuum cleaners. The Finding Nemo ride was pretty neat. You ride in clam shell cars and can see the Nemo characters "swimming" around in a large aquarium which is filled with real fish. They somehow project the images so the characters look like they are in with the real fish.

Disney Magic Kingdom

Yesterday Kate and Danny drew this on the driveway. It's hard to make out but it says "our Vacation" Then there are several pictures of the things we saw and did.
This is the crowd of people watching the fireworks over the Cinderella castle.
We didn't have dinner until almost 9:00 this night. This is the sundae that Tyler ordered for dessert. He has polished off some of it at this point. It was surrounded by cotton candy and had M&m's and a chocolate Mickey Mouse on top! I couldn't resist my inner Mickey and I have to admit that I ordered one too!
This is Kate on Rick's shoulders enthralled by the fireworks over the castle. They even had some desperate college student dressed as Tinkerbell "fly" from the top of the castle with lights flashing.
We waited in line for 45 minutes to get on the Dumbo ride. The plan was for Danny to ride with our new friend Richard and Kate, Michelle and I would ride together. It didn't work out that way. You can see Danny's reaction at having to ride with a girl!
Of course we had to get a picture of our little princess in front of the castle.
Here are all of the kids. The 2 who aren't ours, are Richard and Michelle. Their father, Richard works for Carnival and stayed with us for a couple months 1 summer. He brought his family up to share 2 days of our vacation with us. The kids were fast friends and had a great time together.
More in another day or so.

Florida Vacation Part 1

I guess it is about time that I post something about our vacation seeing as it was a month and a half ago! There are just too many pictures to choose from so I will just have to post a few every couple of days or so.
As you can see from the first 2 pics we were up at 2:30 AM to get to the airport in time. The kids were real troopers! They were awake from 2:30 am until about 2 in the afternoon when we finally got settled in our rental van. We went from the Tampa airport to our first hotel in Orlando, checked in and then went over to Downtown Disney which is where the other pictures are taken. Yes, Tyler did make it to Florida too, he just didn't want to be in many of the pictures.
Kate saw her first, although not real glimpse of the princesses. She was so excited even if it was just a statue.
Danny is standing beside a dog made completely of Legos! They had a whole "family" with the dogs as well as a large sea serpent (probably about 30 feet tall) in the water in front of the store. The kids were thrilled with the Lego store and probably could have stayed there all night long.

The last couple of pictures are of them playing in the water. Where else would Danny be? We do call him the WB for water bug. They have the water timed to music so it sprays up in preplanned intervals. I don't think the kids realized that though-to them it was completely random and they (well Dan and Kate anyway) had fun trying to dodge the water jets. I think they had more fun when they misjudged!
Our next day was at the Magic Kingdom-more on that later.

We had such a wonderful time on this vacation. What a blessing it was to be together for such an extended time. I am so thankful for the opportunity that we had to do this. Thank you Rick for your hard work which made it possible to have this time together. It is fun to see the kids already reminiscing about the fun that we had.