Sunshine, Joy and God’s Wonders! Days 2 & 3

I really should have taken better notes on what we did each day, but I’ll try to make the best of it all!  :)

Thursday:  Cris and Christina brought some of their “new favorite” board games, and after a breakfast of French Toast (homemade French Bread makes the best!), we played Welcome to the Dungeon over coffee.  I normally am not a fan of games with “creepy names”, lol.  But this game was fun, and you had to be really strategic in your moves and thought process… besides I won the two games we played, so I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Morning coffee and game spot…

 At that point we split up and ran some errands… Christina and I headed to Ron Jons in Cocoa Beach and did the girl thing… looking at suits and souvenirs.  The guys headed to West Marine to gather a few last minute things for the Keys trip.

We met up for a late lunch at The Burger Joint in Downtown Melbourne and pretty much enjoyed some yummy burgers!

The Burger Joint – Downtown Melbourne…

 That evening, back at home we played with the pups, just chilled together and had something yummy for dinner.. I have no memory of what it was! lol 

Sunset from the front yard…

Momma’s always want to kiss their babies! …

 

Friday:  Boating with the Pups!!!  I had been wanting to do this for such a long time!  We love taking Stormie out on the river, finding a nice little sandbar play area and letting her splash around.  Ever since we knew that Lyra would be coming, I had wanted to take them both out and see how much fun they would have together.

More so, Christina has never seen our area by boat, and I was looking forward to sharing so much with her about where we live. :)

The forecast said rain….sigh… but we don’t usually let that take us down… rain is expected, and not so bad … usually, lol.  It’s the lightening you want to avoid. ;)  We got pretty lucky and skirted most of the storms, but we did get one cold hard rain that passed over eventually, and ended up having such a fun time!

We were not disappointed with sights to see… we saw dolphins frolicking, a manatee, and a blowfish that we were able to observe for a few minutes in a Frisbee. ;)

We wanted to walk around Sampson’s Island, but the mosquitoes ran us off quickly!  …

Let’s get out of here! …

Smiling through a hard rain storm…

  

Beautiful Christina! …

Lyra got adventurous and stood next to Stormie on the ships bow… ;)

My precious husband and me. :) …

After we were plenty worn out, we headed to Tijuana Flats for dinner, as Cris was really craving it and they just don’t have ‘em over in Texas!

Sunshine, Joy and God’s Wonders! DAY 1

I’ll readily admit that we are a spoiled bunch down here in Florida, and I feel very blessed to live in this tropical paradise.  The cherry on top is when you get to share the treasures of home with the ones you love most, and last month that is exactly what we were able to do. 

Almost every year, we take our little camper (whichever we have at the time) and head south to our favorite place, a beautiful state park snuggled right in the middle of the Florida Keys, surrounded by the beautiful blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf off Mexico. 

For a year in advance we plan and plot out all the details, getting more and more excited as each day passes.  This year was especially exciting, as my Momma’s heart was jumping with joy… our son Cris and our lovely daughter-in-love, Christina, would be joining us.  Not only for the week in the Keys, but also for a few days just hanging out at home.  Vacations are wonderful, and this one was AMAZING… but hanging out at home with the ones who are closest to your heart is such a huge blessing too!

Last month the much anticipated visit took place and what added to the excitement of all the wonderful things we did and saw was that for Christina many, or most, of these things were “firsts”… I just loved seeing her joy each time a “first” took place.

… so let’s go back to the 2nd week of June where the fun began….

After visiting Christina’s Grandmother for a few days on the West Coast, CnC arrived on a Wednesday afternoon.  It’s so hard to live far away from them, but the joy that fills our hearts when we get together is out of this world!  As a special treat, their precious Boxer came as well.  We weren’t all the certain how our Stormie would react to this.  After all, Cris is HER boy, and we wondered if there would be some jealousy issues. 

  

After Stormie went crazy over seeing her “boy”, the two dogs met, and to our amazement they were happy to see eachother.  Lyra is much younger than Stormie and was just excited to have another dog around… Stormie has the tendancy to be a grouchy old lady at times, but she seemed to get the “vibe’” that we were all just one big happy family…. as long as Lyra did what she said. ;)

We spent the rest of the day chilling at home.  The “boys” played with their quad copters, the dogs got use to eachother and we sat and chatted about what we’d like to do the next couple of days.  That night we dined on homemade pizza and watched our very first “Keys” home video.  We wanted Christina to see where we were going… besides what wife doesn’t want to see her husband when he was an adorable 9 year old discovering the underwater world for the first time?