Mini Golf

The weather here has been gorgeous! I don't know if I'd quite call it fall but for Florida I'm sure this is what fall means. The humidity has toned down way down and the highs have been in the mid 70's to low 80's. It's wonderful. This cooler weather makes my desire for the pool go down to about zero but my desire to play outside boosts to like a 10. So in order to have some outdoor time we headed out on Safari to mini-golf. I almost got like three holes-in-one but alas no luck! Jason shot one hole-in-one but no one was looking...so sad! Here are the pics...no actual golfing shots but lots of safari action. Enjoy.

See...we are wearing long pants, lovely weather.

It was as if she really was being eaten by a hippo, she was freakin' out that I put her in there. Ooops...I thought she would think it was fun.

I know this one is blurry but I liked it.

A Trip to the Zoo and....

Some friends have been asking to see the bump but rather it is lack of a bump. I promise I am pregnant. I heard the heartbeat and I saw the ultrasound. I went to the gym on Monday and thought I was looking particularly pregnant so I decided to snap a pic when I got home to document. And this is what I saw...

Pretty disappointing. So then I decided to "push it out" and this is what I got.

A little more impressive, isn't it? This is "my bump" at 15 weeks. I promise that is really me. Who would know right... I'll try to get one with my head in it someday. Well now for the zoo, probably what you really wanted to see.

The first Saturday of every month, the Naples Zoo is free for county residents. We didn't have anything going on...so Navie and I went to the zoo. I came home with about 7 pictures. The animals were mostly sleeping and they have a lot of glass to look through...not ideal for pictures or even seeing animals in the first place but anyway. We had a great time. We saw some snakes, gators, bears, and giraffes. There were more animals but these were the highlights.

This is the zoo keeper who actually feeds the alligators from her hand...yep she just tosses it in their mouths, after calling them by name and asking them to walk up onto the bank to get "their food." Pretty cool to watch but there is no way I could do it.

Halloween Sillibrations

As Halloween approached, I began to worry about trick or treating; seeing how as we live in an apartment complex, a rather grumpy apartment complex, I might add. Anyway, luckily we have great friends who live in a fabulous neighborhood with regular houses and kids. And they graciously invited us to trick or treat with them. I even got into the Halloween spirit and found myself a little costume.

Here are the pumpkins this year, complete with good old scented candles. Who knows where the pumpkin candles are. I asked Navie why she was bending over like this and she says "because it's like I'm getting a candy." She is filled with great ideas. Unfortunately only 3 suckers were taken when we got home or maybe fortunately, now I have some treats to eat.

Here is Navie all decked out and ready to hit the streets.

We went to a Halloween parade at the library on Monday. Pretty lack-luster but Navie still had fun dressing up.

We went to the ward Chili Cook Off and Halloween Carnival the Saturday before. Another good time.

I think Navie's favorite was her Fall Festival at school. Here she is with her teacher and her teacher's daughter. They dressed the same...pretty cute!

Don't forget the face painting.

I think she makes a cute little Izzy. I was very happy with the way the costume came together.

Rollin' with daddy. We had a glow in the dark pumpkin balloons...quite the hit. It was really fun!

Orlando Trip: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Jason had a week break from school so we hit the road to visit Orlando. Of course we went to Disney World. We had a great time even with torrential downpours and rather big crowds. We saw Merida from Brave, Navie shot a bow and arrow and we rode on lots of new rides...new to us not necessarily to the park. We were really feeling like we were getting good at going to Disney....until....

I love this pick of Navie with Mickey! I know this next one's blurry but the idea was too cute to pass up.

We lost the camera. It was pouring rain on Thursday as we left the park. As we got off the tram the stroller somehow fell or things on the stroller fell and that is when I think the camera was lost. It was sad especially knowing we had only owned this particular camera for like 4 months and that we had so many cute pictures on it. Then Friday came and that is when we meet "The Ugly" part of the trip. We went to Animal Kingdom and after returning to the car, we find that the travel DVD player is no longer in the car. Seriously someone at Disney took the DVD player with the cord to charge it out of our car, seriously? The car was locked when we got to it. I don't completely understand how this could have happened, all I know is that I no longer have a portable DVD player and I had to buy a new Toy Story DVD to replace the library's copy that was inside said DVD player when it was stolen (at the happiest place on Earth, mind you). I was very unhappy about this. That was the only DVD player we owned. We have to watch DVD's on our laptops now. Oh the life of students.

But then Saturday was great. Our friends told us about a little stream that springs from a fresh cool water spring in Orlando. We rented some tubes from Ron's and floated about a mile in the cool, clear water. It was a good day. We also watched a cardboard boat race happening at the park that day. Navie loved the boats.

I was able to find a few more pictures from the trip on Jason's phone...lucky you, eh? Here is the beloved DVD player before meanie-pants took it from us.

We also went to a petting zoo at Animal Kingdom and Navie really seemed to like the goats. I was a bit surprised actually. I really liked the pigs. Not sure what that says about me.

Cute as a Punkin

Last week I went to Navie's class and made a pumpkin mask art craft with the kids. It was so fun to be the parent and not the teacher. This is Navie's final product.

After living right behind a real, live pumpkin patch, it was a difficult move to Florida where we bought our pumpkins from Walmart. But we did find a church group selling way overpriced pumpkins so we decided to check it out and we snapped a few "Pumpkin Patch pics."

I really need to remember to take my glasses off for pictures.

Halloween Hoopla

I love Pinterest. It makes my life so much more interesting when I actually try out some of the pins. Since Florida doesn't really create seasons on its own, I was excited to put up a few Halloween things. We all worked together and turned...

the front door into a mummy.

After one night in Florida, all the bandages began drooping (from all the water in the air) and now the mummy is rather loosely wrapped. It still makes me happy though.

Turtle Upgrade

We've had the turtles for just over 2 months. We were having a hard time keeping up with changing the water so we decided to spring for a filter and a bigger aquarium. We also got some pink rocks because our turtles wouldn't be Pricketts if they didn't like pink.

Crush and Frenchy went to this...

...from this little home. We are rather excited about their new home but it turns out the water still grows algae even with the filter. The turtles seem happy though.