Our New Digs

 Hotel living is really fun at first... however, it makes you appreciate your house... especially when you have a toddler who is as active as Lilly :) :) We were fortunate to have a suite and our busy little bee made use of every square inch of it! 

When we got all settled in and unpacked we christened the room by jumping on the bed and having a pillow fight! Ryleigh decided to sit this one out... ;)

 Our future home (well at least for the next 15 months)

 I think I can gets used to this...

 Jax Beach - aka Lilly's first ocean experience!

 Me and my amazing mamma!

 Saint Augustine in October is also a time for hundreds of bikers to enjoy the A1A during Bike-tober-fest :) My dad was extremely jealous!

 Saint Augustine was absolutely beautiful! It was full of history amazing sites.

 Beach at Ponte Vedra - we had to see the ocean just once more before our flight home.

Little known fact. I have not one child, not even two children... I have three children (Derek being the biggest kid of them all) 

Winery Picnic

Missouri has some amazing wineries. And if you're not a wine drinker, no problem - most of them sell beer and ale, plus food. I mean who doesn't like food?? Food and wine, I'm there.

I'm not a lush, but going to the wineries is one of my favorite things to do.

Take today for example... we went to one off of  HWY 94, a two lane road made beautiful with all of the changing leaf colors. It's a road that almost demands that you drive a motorcycle or convertible.

The winery we went to was Balducci Vineyards. Family owned since 1987 and very family oriented. You can bring your own picnic lunch, grab a nice bottle of Sonata (a semi sweet I highly recommend), and watch your kids run, play, and take turns rolling down the "big hill."

And in October, there are different bands that play on the weekends.

Yesterday we not only enjoyed Balducci's, but we also said farewell to some dear people.

A small back story...

Derek's parents moved to the midwest from southern California right before he was born. They left their families and friends because his dad was offered a job here. Through their church they met some great families and they've all stuck together creating their own 

unique "family" they call, the Round Table 10. (ten families) ;)

They are sad to see us move, but happy for the adventure that awaits us.

Lilly taking a few bites before running off to play. She occupied herself for awhile with the holly bushes. She said that the berries were food for her party. "Just pretend, Mommy..." she told me. We're working on not sticking things in our mouth...

Ryleigh was there with us, but there are no pictures of her. She was all bundled up sleeping, and enjoying the experienced arms of many eager grandma's. Ahhh, the life of a newborn!

Plus the rain held off until we got home! :)

Thank you God for your little miracles! They are greatly appreciated, especially by one little girl in particular who love love loves to be outside.

Clover Lake

Instead of doing this long winded "catching up" chat with you I'll just cut to the meat of it.

1) My husband, Derek, got transferred from our beautiful city of St. Louis, MO to sunny Jacksonville, FL. To be quite honest I was less than thrilled... Really, I thought that Florida was the place where people went to retire. And by retire, I mean live until they are on the other side of the pearly gates... It didn't seem like a place where a young family would have much in common with the locals. After much prayer and a trip down there this past April I'm warming to the idea. It will be hard to leave my family in the midwest, but it is what it is.

2) We have to sell our home - while I am pregnant with our second little girl. Not fun, but we managed with a lot of help from family and friends.

3) Move in with my parents until Ryleigh is born. We've now lived with my folks for a month and a half, which has gone better than what I expected. Ryleigh 3 weeks ago :-) But we don't officially move down to Florida until November.... so we've got about another month and a half to go.

See - now you're in the loop.

Ok so yesterday I was getting antsy and so was Lilly, aka Bean, my oldest daughter who's 3. I ended up taking her a small lake besides my parent's house, called Clover Lake. I used to go there with my brothers when we were kids. I remember it being a lot bigger... lol

 Bean loves going on nature walks and collecting various "treasures." She loved the lake! Her uncle Jimmy had taken her there last week and they had a blast. She's sort of a free spirit... and her biggest joy of self expression is singing. 

Singing what? Anything and everything. Made up things. Silly things. Loud things.

 

The weather was perfect and pine cones a plenty. :-)

  

She ventured as far as I would let her on the dock. It's seen better days! I remember playing on it, but of course that was close to twenty years ago... She didn't mind though.

 You might notice that I don't post pictures of the kid's faces (unless they are covered with sunglasses, scarves, etc.) It's a quirk I know... but I figure that when they are old enough to have their own facebook /or whatever pages then they can decide if they want their faces out there. For know, this goofy mamma if really fond of their cute mugs being private ;-)