Some happiness in November

Even though this November brought with it horrible sadness, it also had some happy times. Getting a chance for the kids to see their cousins was a much needed treat. My sister Robin had the idea, that once we started to head back to Pensacola, they would drive along with us and maybe we could take a detour through Savannah and Orlando. These pictures are totally out of sequence, but here are some of the highlights of the trip south. At a Mexican Restaurant a balloon man made Adeline a princess crown. Here we are starting the 7 hour trip back home from Disney.

While Robin was able to get free media tickets for her and Mark to Disney for one day, we used our military ID's to get 4 tickets to SeaWorld instead. So, we split off for the day and had fun as a family seeing Shamu, letting him soak us at the 12:00 show with icy cold water and then sitting in wet jeans for the car ride home to Pensacola. No one wanted to sit in the "Soak Zone" since why would they?, it's November and it's cold. But, they were awesome seats and we lived a little.

The man controlling the carousel was an old crotchety man who yelled at me for taking pictures and then forced me to wear MY seatbelt on the ride so I wouldn't fall off and break my head open. Then the woman behind me got up while the ride was slowing down, so he came over the loud speaker yelling at her to SIT DOWN or he'd kick her off.

In Savannah at one of the many city squares. The 2 cousins crammed together for a ride since their little legs were so tired. Marjorie was almost bit by a homeless man's dog and I saw a Kevin Spacey lookalike from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The Polar Express Arctic Experience. It smelled like pine trees in this room, the next room smelled like sugar cookies.

We stopped at Lady and Sons in Savannah, that is Paula Deen's signature restaurant. We needed 10 people in our party to make a reservation, so we lied and said we had 10. Then just as we checked in at 2pm, we snagged a mother and son from Indiana that were looking for a seat, to sit at the end of our table and join us. Here is Marjorie and Mark

We got her buffet and boy was the fried chicken and squash casserole good. Then we all got the gooey butter cakes for dessert.

Our newst niece little Vivian

Robin's last day in Pensacola, I bought Marjorie and Adeline( 1 year apart) matching dresses and fixed their hair the same. We went to the beach, since the nieces have never been to the ocean yet and made sandcastles.

Red Flag

Category 2 Hurricane Ida is heading to the beach, so what better way to spend the afternoon after church then to pack a lunch and see how big the waves are. From the beautiful blue sky you would never think the following day a tropical storm would blow through. Here is a classic Adeline silly face, she makes her eyes slits and smiles

Reece spent the afternoon making sandcastles in the shapes of DisneyWorld rides. I was going to break down and pay the $12 for one of these wind blocks you see those people sitting under, but since we only stayed about an hour, we just faced our backs into the wind and hunkered down.

Emma couldn't get over how BIG the waves were

The Sea Gods were angry that day and had churned the serene picturescape into a grey, frothy, soup of whitecaps topped with brown swirls of dark sand brought up from the bottom and spit out on top.

Windy day, nature walk

Sunday we took the kids to the sand dune where the rope swing is, only this time we didn't arrive by boat. The breeze off the water was cool, but the kids still had fun swinging

Adeline found a cozy spot with Daddy up on the tree roots

We climbed up this small sand dune from the backside and reached the highest point, only to find a man with no shirt on sketching in a journal right there with us at the top. He's not in the picture

The coldest Halloween in 6 years

This year Emma decided to be one of her favorite characters Pippi Longstocking. She loves that little swedish girl. I took the little ones to Barnes and Nobles Halloween storytime and Emma was the only one brave enough to stand by this "scary"pooh bear

On Halloween Day we went to the Naval Air museum's Halloween Spooktacular

Here is Emma in a F-14

Reece in the backseat( Goose, talk to me Goose)

Here is Reece and his best friend Jake at the Halloween party that evening, hot dogs for the kids and chili for the adults

Adeline dressed in layers, the night before it was 75 degrees out at 10pm, but this night it was 50.

Adeline and her best friend Abigail were both 2 yr old Cinderella's. I was Cleopatra and Rick went as one of the Northwest airline pilots who fell asleep. Thanks for the great idea Robin

Who wants to blow the whistle?

Wales West Railway in Silverhill, Alabama- out in the pumpkin patch

You board the train which is a real coal burning steam engine, like Thomas the Train.

This engine called Dame Ann is from Wales and was used as a working engine, it is one of only 20 in the United States still running regularly

Then you pick a train car, covered in cobwebs, and little witches, they covered us with blankets, since the weather was in the mid 50's. We rode the train along past a graveyard, robots, a Welsh looking Bavarian building and then past a small pond.

You arrive 7 minutes later at a small haunted house in a barn and a pumpkin patch with tiny pumpkins for the kids to choose from. Emma was in search of the tiniest pumpkin, while Reece wanted a perfectly round one with a twisty stem. Adeline was scared and nervous the entire train ride and never cracked a smile, until they gave us juice and molasses cookies at the rides end.

Once you found your pumpkin they had decorating table with pom poms, feathers and bone ABC letters.

While eating our cookies they had this cool car rail, big enough for tons of kids to play on

When we got off of the train, the conductor asked " Who wants to blow the whistle?"

Since we were in the first car behind the engine, Emma jumped at the chance.

Pensacola Seafood Festival

Every September the seafood festival is a huge draw for crowds of people coming to try coconut shrimp that are as large as your fist, jambalaya in bread bowls and alligator on a stick. They have a giant pool of water for water dogs, where the sporting type get a running start and leap as far as they can for trophies. The kids activity area is where we spend a lot of our time. This year they had balloon kite races for every age group. Reece missed the 4/5 year old group, so he raced with the 6/7 year olds. Needless to say he was trampled and got his kite hung up on the half way marker. He thought he had won, poor little guy.

Emma was ready to go and even jumped the gun

Adeline thought she wanted to participate, but then realized that she missed mommy and didn't want to run with an inflated strawberry

Here Emma is painting a dead frozen mullet fish, then using gloves you lay it on the paper and ta da, artwork from dead animals

We made sand necklace art, here Adeline is pouring the pink sand herself

Reece chose to use every color and ran out of space in his dolphin necklace, before he was half around the table. It was very hot that day, around 90 degrees, and it brought back the memory of Hurricane Ivan wiping out the seafood festival 5 years earlier. It took 2 years for them to bring it back.

Yee Haw Go West Young Man

I tried in vain to upload the video of Emma singing about 10 different times and failed, so here is the still photos of her first performance at her new school. She will be in 2 productions this year. This was the finale, where the classes all came together and sang, Home on the Range and Buffalo Gals. Emma is in the 3rd row from the top.

Here were the audience members waiting for the show to start( mostly anxious siblings, excited to see big brother or sister sing)

Emma finally saw me in the audience right before the show ended and have me a smile. Her class sang, Don't fence me in, and did a line dance to Cotton Eyed Joe. I was proud of my little cowpoke. The next show will be a Christmas performance( which won't include her class) then one in the spring.