Our Own Fantasia Moment

Last Friday Calloway Garden hosted a free admission Symphony to honor those who served in the military. It was an outdoor event on the beach. Shaun got detained at work so I went ahead and decided to give it a go. I am so glad I went because it was marvelous! I've never experienced listening to a live orchestra while watching the sunset and nature being accompanied by the beautiful music. It was like my own personal Fantasia. Another great thing about it was the kids could play on the beach to their hearts content.

You can see the orchestra in the background.
Enjoying the beautiful sunset and beach.

Two pictures using different flash so you can get a better idea.

"Spring, Spring, Spring"

As they sing in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, "All at once one day it's spring". I actually put these up about a month ago, than thought why not blog about something different for a change. So the thought behind these decorations was to bring something fun and spring like into Izzy's room. turned out great I thought, and best part was that it was all under $15 at Hobby Lobby.

Chuck E. Jesus

Liz took Isabel to Chuck E. Cheese's the other day for the first time. After Gymnastics today, she asked if we could all go to "Chuck E. Jesus". How thoughtfull of her, pizza and salvation. Good looking out Izzy!

My growing boy

For those who have them know how sweet boys can be at this age. Just want to gobble him up! Its been awhile since I've shown a video of Ian so I thought I'd treat you all to what a wonderful little boy I have. As a mother I have every right to gloat over my children. By the way there is no sound because the camera was dropped in the water a long time ago, and it still works but no sound. I was trying to get him to crawl towards me since he is getting so close to doing it, but no luck. He also loves to talk with me. Whenever I go "ba ba, or ma ma" he does it right back as if we are having a conversation. I tried to show his two front teeth as well, but that didn't work out either. Anyway, enjoy.

Sweet Home Georgia

I figured its about time to show ya'll what our new home looks like. We've been here since mid February, yet it seems like longer. Our place is called the Hamilton Station, has two pools, a lighted tennis court, workout room with a tanning bed, a fishing lake with a track around it, a putting green, and two playgrounds. It may seem a little expensive, but we are still paying less than what we paid a month on our house in El Paso. Our new place has convinced us to never buy a house again unless we know for sure we'll be there for at least 10 years. The hassle of dealing with the house compared to living in a apartment with tons of amenities, it's just not worth it. So for now on Shaun and I will be living in the lap of luxury for the next 15 years or so.

There are trees everywhere! With such a variety of other plants too! You can see our truck, and up the stairs, then to your right is our place. That's our screened in porch on the top right.
This is the pool that's closest to our apartment. The other one is a three tiered waterfall pool at the clubhouse. We've already been swimming a couple times since the weather has been so warm and perfect.
Playground conveniently outside our apartment. Isabel loves to play here but not for long. She really only plays for a long period of time if she has someone to play with. Mum is not very good about crawling in the tubes and squeezing herself down the slides so we don't play here very often.
View of our apartment from the other side of the lake. We are in the building in the middle, facing the street unfortunately. Which is fine because they charge you extra for lake view apartments, can you believe that?! Either way we love to go for walks around the lake anytime we can. Especially on Sundays.

Coming Soon

Inside look on ShaunandLiz's Crib

Six Flags Over Georgia

We, again, are really enjoying everything that Georgia has to offer. On this particular trip, we went to Six Flags Over Georgia. Shaun heard about it at work and thought it would be a much better alternative than driving the 6 hours to Orlando, FL for Disney World. So we decided to try it out this last Saturday and it was awesome!! The park had more roller coaster than I could remember, and the theme was cute too. For those who don't know, this particular Six Flag's theme was the Looney Tune characters, such as Bugs Bunny, and Tweety Bird. They also had the original comic book characters as well, like Superman, The Flash, Batman, and others. It was a lot of fun and the weather was perfect. Unfortunately we couldn't go on any rides as a family because the kids are too little. We are going to try to find some couples to go with us next time so we can take turns watching each others kids.

The entrance had the roller coasters going outside of the park because it was such a huge ride!
Izzy and I are in the booth getting ready to tear our shirts off and be....Supergirls!
This was the Superman ride that Shaun picked as his ride to go on. We both got to ride one roller coaster, while the other person entertained the kids during the hour long line. Shaun said that it was really cool. You sit down and then hydraulics lift you up so that you are laying flat facing the ground, then you blast off just like superman.
These next couple rides where all for Izzy. I had the honors of riding them with her, since Shaun was feeling a little sick.
I was getting sick myself after this one.
We didn't say a word to Isabel. She stood there with her arms just like the martian (can't remember his name) for the picture. She is so smart and cute!
She really liked this Tweety bird ride.
She kept looking behind her for some reason. I forgot to ask her why.

This was the character for the picture hour. She later saw Bugs Bunny and for the life of me I can't remember who the other one was. I think it was the cat, what's his name? I would have taken pictures then too, but once again the batteries went dead.
Shaun insisted.
Whooo hooo!!!
Shaun felt better and wanted to ride some rides with Izzy so he tried to squeeze himself into the truck. Didn't work. So he took her on a different ride that made him sick all over again. This was the last picture of the day before the batteries died. So I'll have to tell you with words instead of pictures. After this ride Shaun took her on the log ride to get a little wet. Actually, Shaun got soaking wet, and Izzy got a little wet because he covered her before they hit the water. Such a good father (sigh) :) Just love that man. Then Shaun did the Superman while I had Izzy do the games. She won a Bugs Bunny doll! Then we rode the kid rides again. After Shaun was done, I wanted to see if he could do the game where you climb up a horizontal rope ladder without it tipping you off. He almost got it, he was at the last rung, but he fell off. I tried myself, and it was a lot harder than I thought. Of course I fell off half way. On the way out I got to do my roller coaster ride on the Scorcher. It was fun.
So that was our trip. On the way back to the truck, I had a very overwhelming sensation. I realized that 20 years ago my Mom and Dad did the same thing for me. Taking me to an amusement park, then when we were exhausted they would carry us back to the truck at night and we would be asleep the rest of the way home. It was a very defining moment in my life as a parent. It made me feel old, but at the same time very peaceful and happy knowing that it is my turn to give my wonderful children wonderful memories of there own.

There is beauty everywhere..

I love the South! There is so much beauty everywhere. Its so lush, and green, with different flowers blooming one after another. Its so much like Washington, yet very different at the same time. For example, the weather is a lot like El Paso but not as hot. You get the best of both parts, warm weather, with green, GREEN, GREEN. You really do step right into the movie "Gone with the Wind". The desert in El Paso had its own kind of beauty, but I prefer the green kind. The people here really do live up to the Southern Hospitality that I've been hearing about. I love hearing the southern drawl when they talk. It's just so funny how my life has progressed from living in Washington, that was rich in artistic culture and green, to El Paso, a completely different environment. El Paso made us appreciate what we took for granted before, and also gave us a neat experience with a whole new different culture. As we traveled further East, we became more and more excited to venture into this next part of our lives. Below are a few pictures that I took during a trip to the Calaway Gardens for a bike ride. It took four hours to finish the bike trail, and we loved every minute of it.

Again, beautiful, gorgeous, wish you were here!
Getting ready for the ride of our lives.

I think they are a little skeptical on how fun this is going to be.
Mommy had the honors of pulling the kids through the entire bike ride.
Safety first.
I felt so horrible when I turned around to see how the kids where doing and saw that Ian was covered in water and dirt from the puddles I drove through. I thought the kids would love it. I didn't think they'd get drenched by it. Ian got most of the dirt because he was right behind the wheel, poor guy.
Part of the trail, and also the last picture. I was trying to set it up on self-timer so I could run and be in it, but as I pushed the button the camera turned off because it was out of batteries. Rotten luck! I really wanted to take more pictures. We'll be going back for plenty more bike rides, so expect more pictures in the future.

My little Izzy is three going on four, and I constantly am having to keep up with her. She an absolute sweetheart most the time, with intelligence thrown in there for good measure. But at times she could try even the most patient of people. Here is a post dedicated just to her.

Isabel's hair is a conundrum. It is such a beautiful blonde color, but thin and scraggly. After waiting patiently for it to grow out even and long, like most girls her age, I just gave up and decided to cut it short. I am so glad I did, and wished I had done it sooner. It turned out so adorable! Its much easier to manage too.

I gave Izzy a bag of magnets to put on the refrigerator. I just expected her to pull them out and plop them on, but nope, not Izzy. She carefully dumped them all out on the floor and one by one picked out all the same colors of each group and put them up in a line. I never said a word to her, she did this all on her own. She loves to organize pretty much anything by color. Does anybody else's kid do this?







One of her favorite things to do is to take off the pillowcases and use them to hide, jump around in, or as sleeping bags. This was during general conference on Sunday, when we were laying down on the floor, the four of us, and watching Conference. Izzy kept saying something, I don't know what because I was trying to read the closed caption and not miss out on the talks, but after awhile she was quite and I looked over and she had curled up next to Shaun's legs and fast asleep in her pillowcase. It was just precious, especially for us since Izzy doesn't take naps anymore. Children always look like little angels when they are sleeping, don't they?

Wild Safari Park

Up north, about 45 min drive, is a place called The Wild Safari Park. I found it online when looking up things to do during our time here in Georgia. We thought we'd check it out, because according to the website, you get to be up close and personal with the wildlife. We had no idea just how close and personal it was going to get.

All the animals are in a 9 acre gated property. There were different kinds ranging from cattle, to emus, to pigs, and more. You can drive through with your own vehicle or one of the Safari's vehicle. Afterwards, we wished we had used the Safari's because our truck was covered in slime, and yucky stuff all down the windows and side.
They knew that we had food, which you could buy at the ticket counter. It was just these hard pellets of food in a bag, but they craved it like candy!
This giraffe was in its own little gated pen, but still managed to stick its long neck over the fence, and into our truck to get at the treat. It was so AWESOME getting that up close to an actual live giraffe!
This poor guy's horn was curving down and around his head, poor thing.
This was the only time Izzy was willing to feed the animals. She was terrified of them and refused to let us roll down her window.
Shaun got to feed the Zebras, which was fine by me because the brochure said that the emus, and zebras will bite if you are not careful.
This poor camel's face was torn up by the fence I think. It's skin was flopping around abnormally.
Shaun, being who he is, held on to the food to get the ostrich closer. So guess what happens? It closed its entire beak over Shaun's hand up to his knuckles and bit hard! Took Shaun by complete surprise. I had to say that I told him he was going to get hurt doing that.




After the Safari ride, there was a small walk in zoo you could go through.

I felt so bad for this Monkey. I don't know if it was a tumor or just natural to its species, either way it looked extremely painful!
I am such a bad mom sometimes! I forgot the sunscreen, so I bought Ian this little cute hat at the gift shop. It was the only thing they had that would fit. Turned out it just made him look cuter!
Can you believe this crocodile is 75 years old! You can't tell by the picture, but up close this guy was HUGE!
Its been awhile since I've been up close to a peacock, and I have to say their feathers are amazing. One of the peacocks kept going up to a hen thinking it was one of its own and ruffling his feathers at her. Of course she paid no attention to such behavior.
I would have added one more picture of the world's only Liger. That's right, this park had about four Ligers, an offspring of a tiger and a lion,...Liger. I just was just wondering why anyone would want to do that and completely forgot to take pictures. Don't worry, Shaun got us a year membership so I'll dedicate a post just to Ligers.

Tumble, tumble, tumble

Izzy started gymnastics a few weeks ago. I take her every Tuesday and Thursday night for 45 minutes. She loves it so much that when its time to go so starts crying and yells "I don't want to go! I'm not done yet!" I love taking her and watching her have fun, but I so dread the leaving part when I have to take a sad, crying girl away from something she loves. She picks up on how to do bars, balance beams and rolling really well. I'm not just saying it because I'm her mother, but she is a natural at it. Another mom was giving her daughter a first time trial and she asked if Isabel has been going for a year or so. I just simply said "No, she's only been here a few weeks", she looked at me completely surprised and thought Isabel does very well for so little time :)

I can see being a gymnast in Ian's future.