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.

MINI Me

I love the MINI!!

As soon as we pay off the truck we are totally getting one. Its going to have the works, with the racing stripes and all. I'll be practicing my English accent til then.

Easter Egg Hunt

Even though Isabel is 3 years old this was her first Easter Egg hunt. I couldn't have picked a more beautiful place for the Egg hunt. There is a place just 15 minutes north of our place called the Calloway Gardens. Its a huge, maybe 60 acres of gardens, hiking trails, beaches, and a butterfly arboretum. They were having their annual Easter Egg Hunt that I thought Isabel would like to go to. Turned out to be real fun. Of course I had to put the bunny ears on Ian.

So, here you are, enjoy.

By the way, does anyone else think of the movie "Steel Magnolia" when
Easter comes around. I do every year, its weird.

"Come in CQ,...CQ are you there?"

Shaun had a four day weekend coming up so we decided to take advantage of the beach being only 4 hours away. It may seem a lot to some of you but to us its a vast difference from El Paso with the nearest beach being 12 hours away. We had 3 choices, Savannah, Panama City, or Pensacola. Savannah would have been my top choice, but this was all last minute and I wanted to look more into the things we could do while there and not miss out on anything. I looked up Panama City, which was only 3 hours away but the more I read about it the more it turned out to be a party town. So Pensacola it was.

We stayed on mainland Pensacola, and had to drive over two long bridges to get to Pensacola Beach which bordered the Gulf. That was where the white sand beaches where.
Isabel was super excited. She kept asking a few days prior if it was time to go to the beach yet. Lately she has been doing this new thing when she knows that we are going somewhere fun, like Monkey Joe's, gymnastics, or the beach she'll tell who ever is driving "Drive faster please! Go Faster, Faster"! Our response at the time she said this was that we were stuck behind a very slow car and we couldn't go any faster. At the time we were driving by some construction workers who were building more roads on the other side. The road we were on was only two lanes, one for each direction of traffic. Isabel saw the dirt road that they were working on and told Daddy "Look Daddy you can drive on that road over there, nobody is on it". We just laughed and told her we are almost there.


She went running up and down the beach just loving the sand, water, and sun.

You can't be at the beach without burying each other, can ya?
Shaun loved the construction of the Pier underneath. He thought it would make a great picture.
This is the only fishing Pier on the Pensacola Beach. It was privately owned, and you had to pay $1 a person to walk on. The guy in the food stand behind me said he gets a few jumpers every year which lands them in jail with a $500 dollar fine.
Just as we were walking by this fisherman he started to pull up on his line, so I told Izzy to come look at what the fisherman caught. Turned out to be a little baby shark!! It kept twisting and turning, and ended up being completely wrapped around in the fishing line. Shaun offered to help and ended up holding the little guy. I got my nerves up to touch it because Shaun once told me sharks feel like sandpaper and I was curious to experience that. The first touch freaked me out and then I gave it another go. It was awesome. The poor little shark was pushing blood out its gills by the time Shaun threw him back into the water.

This is my favorite picture.
Panoramic view of the beach on the Pier. We tried to stay out till it was dark enough to see those aquatic life that give off a fluorescent glow in the water when you run your hands through, but we were tired and hungry so we didn't quite make it. Maybe next time.



DAY 2
Isabel found a friend to play in the sand with. Some boy that looked to be just a year older maybe. It kept her occupied for quite awhile. She was wild and crazy just like in this picture.
We stopped by the store to get snorkeling gear, and a skim board! I would have loved to get a surfboard, but they are expensive!! So we got a skim board instead. I thought the waves were great! Shaun, being the guy he his, thought they were okay, and wished they were bigger. Silly boy! By the way, Pensacola is not a good snorkeling place what so ever.
Here is the start of the hole that Shaun needed to dig. Something about boys and digging holes, you just can't have one without the other.

The finished project. Shaun's words "I'm not going to stop digging until I hit water" My words "Whatever, there is no way you'll get water this far out from the waves". He proved me wrong.
Shaun wanted to bury me in the deep pit and see if I could get out, and I would have let him except Ian wasn't in the mood to let me put him down so Shaun had the honors. He said it felt like sandpaper scraping his legs on his way out the hole. FYI, his legs were sunburned so image the pain he was going through.
My little beach boy.
Beautiful Isabel, and her matching ocean blue eyes.
Last thing we did before heading back to the hotel was go for a swim. We called a day with Isabel freezing and tired, and Shaun and I completely burned on our legs, face, and shoulders. At least Ian escaped unscathed. I kept him under the towel the entire two days so not a bit of sun was on him. Isabel just got a little burn on the shoulders where Shaun missed a spot. I will have to say though, that it was well worth it to experience being on the beach once again. We absolutely loved it.