Hello 2009!

Wow, I can't believe it had been so long since I updated this site. I guess that's what having your hands in too much stuff will do! For any of you that actually read this site, if you really want to stay up to date, I would recommend joining facebook and adding Chris or myself as a friend. It's kind of addicting and you will probably waste a lot of time on there but you will be amazed at how many people from your past (and present) you'll find. It's really a lot of fun!

As for what's been going on since JUNE...of course Megan turned 4 in July and August took her into Pre-K, she had been enrolled in a public charter school but over the winter break Chris and I moved her back to her prior daycare to finish out the year there. We are now in the process of finding a school for her to start Kindergarten at and which will hopefully take her at least through 5th grade. We are exploring all of our options for now. Aside from that megan is...herself! She's quite the little drama queen at times and honestly that's what makes her so much fun, we get Oscar winning performances, on a somewhat daily basis!

Alison still has no hair...yes, nearly 2 years old and I can't even gather enough of what she has to put in a rubberband. She is very fond of hats and tiaras though so she's able to keep something up there! Ali has become quite the talker and is almost at the point of repeating everything you say, but her most favorite word of course is NO! She loves following her older sister around and I can tell both of them are plotting against me already!

Chris and I are doing well, we've both become officers on our neighborhood association. Hopefully this will lead to many good things in our efforts to make this a wonderful place to live for our girls and everyone else in our neighborhood. Chris is participating in a class that the city puts on which gives participants and in depth view of how the city works, it seems very interesting!

We are all looking forward to fun packed year! Hope to hear from you soon!

~ Christi

June already??

My how time flies! I can't believe we're nearly half way through 2008. This month ended Megan's swim lessons, for the summer at least. She's been doing very well on her own for some time now and she wanted to give gymnastics a try. So while she's doing gymnastics on Saturday mornings Ali and I are taking a mommy and me (or for some a daddy and me) swim class. Ali has been doing pretty good in the water, that is if she's not being distracted by everything else going on at the pool, can a one year-old have ADD??
Later this month we're heading over to Orlando for a couple of nights. We're gonna go check out Sea World, first time for the girls and first time for both Chris and I since I can't even remember when. We're looking forward to it!
In July we have a camping trip lined up, going to spend a few days at my mom's cousin's place a bit north of here. My brother has described it as one of the coolest places on earth, or at least of the places on earth he's been (not that he has been on any other planet). We're looking forward to that as well.
Late August will see us heading out west for an extended weekend. We're going to be making another trip to The Gorge to see DMB and OAR play a few nights. We are really looking forward to to the trip, our very good friends, Payne and Ian will be meeting us out there!
So as you can see we have a lot to look forward too!

Until next time....

Long Overdue.....Cruise Pics

Wow, it already seems like forever ago that we were on the cruise! We had a great time and Costa provided a great experience. We're not seasoned cruiser by any means, but we've been on a few and I would say Costa is right up there with Royal Carib and Carnival. I am sure both of the other lines would cater to kids more, not that Costa didn't have kid stuff, they did and Megan enjoyed all of it, but the kids programs are only for ages 3 and up. So if you go with a little one hopefully they'll be as chill as our Ali was!
We are going to try and plan a cruise for next summer, we're inviting all of our friends and family, so once we get some more plans finalized I'll post more info here.
Here are some of my favorite pics from the cruise....we went to San Juan, St. Thomas, La Ramona and Grand Turks!

Ali checking out the view!

Megan enjoying some time in the Squak Club!

Ali's favorite part of cruising....eating!!

Megan mid-dive!!

The family in San Juan!

Megan - overlooking Meagan's Bay, St. Thomas

St. Thomas (I could live there!)

Grand Turks

We have Steps!

Ali took TWO big steps this morning! I know it won't be long before she is walking all over the place. Hard to believe she is already at this stage! Time sure does fly by!
We are getting ready to go on our cruise! I have been looking forward to this since we booked it in Jan! I have already started packing for the girls. Somehow I have to figure out how to pack 7 days worth of kid stuff in one med size suitcase, for TWO kids! Thank goodness Megan is out of diapers, I think otherwise I would have one suitcase filled with diapers alone! I did check and the ship does offer laundry services, so worst case scenario we're sending off clothes to be washed. I am probably bring way too much stuff, but I would rather have stuff I don't use than to be without something I really need. So in just 6 days we'll be sailing away!! I'll post a review of our trip (first time on Costa Cruise Lines) when we return, with lots of pics!
In other news, the lone plant in my garden, the bell pepper, has peppers on it right now, they are still pretty small, but I have one that's at least 2 inches long! I have two lettuce plants that popped up too, not sure if they are romaine of buttercrunch, so we'll see how they do. When I get back from vacation I want to build another box and plant some more things, in the sun this time!
That's all for now!

It's been a while...

Wow, we're already well into 2008 and this is my first post since Nov.

The holidays were nice. We all went camping for Thanksgiving and despite a little rain we had a good time with the family. That trip was our 6th Turkey Day camping trip in a row and I think so far we have managed to go somewhere different each year! This year we went to Silver River State Park in Ocala, a really nice park with lots to do!

Christmas was rather low key this year. With it falling on a weekday it made any sort of travel kinda tough so we opted to stay home and enjoy Christmas morning alone with the girls.

So here we are in 2008! We are leaving in 23 days on a 7 night cruise, taking the girls along with us and my parents are joining as well. We got a Balcony Cabin so we are looking forward to that! I will try to be prompt once we return and post a review. This is our first time using this cruise line (Costa), but they offer a "kids sail free" program which most other lines don't so it was hard to pass up!

As for plans for the upcoming year we really don't have any as of yet. The house is always undergoing some sort of transformation and I think this year our concentration might be more on finishing up some landscaping and some painting inside (trim work, my favorite, not so much). I would also really like to get the carpet in the bedrooms replaced (the stuff that's down right now is the cheap-o stuff they put in here before we bought that feels like you're walking on napkins) and...well I will leave it at that, it will be a mission just to get any of that done!

So for now...that's all I've got! I am gonna put some pics below for you all to enjoy.....

Ali, such a happy baby!

another Publix employee in the family!

(this was at the "Publix" inside Great Explorations's Muesem)

checkin' out!

Our little fish!

Megan has been taking swim lessons for a while now, ever since the summer. We had her in a class at the city pool for 4 weeks and she didn't get much out of it. For the past 9 weeks she's been at a private center and has had much success! I got some video of her yesterday showing off some of her new tricks!!!

Is it Fall yet??

October was a busy month around here! I had a short trip to Charlotte, NC to visit a client, Chris stayed home with the girls! Megan started her 2nd session of swim lessons and is even swimming short distances on her own now! Ali is finally crawling and exploring her surroundings even more! Our garden is growing more and more everyday. I thought for sure by now we would have lettuce and maybe a tomato or bell pepper, but nothing has shown up yet. We're keeping a close watch though! We did save some seeds from our pumpkins we carved so I am hoping to get another box going next spring and have pumpkins ready for carving next Halloween and maybe lots of pumpkin bread!

We hope everyone is doing well!
our kitty cat

our little mouse