We made it!

Well, we survived the road trip!

(We're in St. Pete Beach, FL. My dad has a conference each year down here at the Island Grand Tradewinds Resort and Mom & Dad treat us to a trip! This is our fourth year here. Robert had to work, so he stayed home this year. He knows how much we love it, so he's happy for us to come.)

Back to the road trip...It took us 9 hours on Saturday and then 4 more on Sunday...the shortest amount of time we've done yet! The kids did really well during the ride. Mattie didn't nap Friday, amazingly enough, but she was remarkably happy still! She and Jacob were soooo excited to get to jump on hotel beds 'till their hearts' content! (What else are hotel beds for???) By Sunday, the kids were definitely tired of the car, but survived. Jacob just asked, "How many more minutes, Grampa?" a couple of hundred times.

Mom got an Eric Carle DVD with several stories we did with school recently. We read some of Elmer and the Dragon. And we worked 1/3 of the way through Jacob's maps/charts/graphs book, so it will go down as a day of school!

We've spent many hours in the pool already! The kids are old enough now that I don't have to be holding on to them in the kiddie pool, so I can actually just sit next to them and enjoy watching. Jacob is doing great in the big pool with his lifevest and Mattie was floating alone with water wings today! And both of them were jumping off the edge too! (Mattie is happy to go under and Jacob is just surviving the splash, but that's major progress for him!) Mattie will go to the edge and say, "Two, two, two!" when she wants to jump.

And I brought our North American Wildlife book too...we've seen Rock Dove's (pigeons), lizards, fish and flowers to name!! It's been fun to carry on our Creation study! The birds are very used to people around here. Yesterday there was one about 6 feet from Mattie near the pool. She walked in his direction and he squawked at her quite loudly. Needless to say she was not very happy about it!

Last night we went to dinner and got Alaskan King Crab...very yummy! Normally Robert peels all my seafood for me, so I was on my own last night since he's not here. Amazingly enough, I had both kids around me and peeled and ate my crab to finish first!! The kids both ate some, but it cost way too much to share with someone who doesn't appreciate it! And, hey, why feed Mattie King Crab when there are saltines to dip in ketchup??