Dancing to Didgeridoo

We went to a local Bat Festival and saw a man playing the didgeridoo (one of Jared's favorite instruments). The kids had a fun time dancing and playing background to the music. (Watch the video in high definition for best quality).

Butterflies and Bats

October in Florida means two of our favorite annual "fests": the Butterfly Fest and the Bat Fest.

The Butterfly Fest at the Florida Museum of Natural History was October 19th (Lily's birthday). The highlight this year was holding a live snake.

Outdoors they had a little children's area setup. The kids did some activities at each booth. Here they got to put on glasses to help them "see like a bee" and try to throw some balls (pollen) in a bucket (hive).

The following  saturday was the Bat Festival. The giant fruit bats were cute, we got to pet a baby alligator as well as a snake, we danced to a didgeridoo, and the kids enjoyed 4 different bounce houses (the lines were very short). It was a good adventure.

Pet the baby alligator.

 

 

Cute bats

  

Surprise appearance of a storm trooper.

 

The headless tortoise.

Celebrating Lily

Happy Birthday, Lily!

October was a special month for Lily--she turned six years old! Lily is such a funny girl. She asks questions and wants to learn about the world around her. She started kindergarten this year and loves her teacher, Mrs. Skipper. She loves to play with friends. She is a good sister and plays especially well with Zach. She has a great smile. She loves to collect living pets: frogs, toads, lizards, etc.

Her birthday landed on a saturday this year. We gave her a few options to pick from for birthday activities and she chose "the butterfly fest and a party with Lizzie and Rachel and Kensie and Cade and the Olsen's". So that's what we did!

After breakfast she unwrapped a Lego friends set and some training wheels (to go with the bike we were kindly given from a friend a month or so ago). We had been hoping she could just start riding the two wheel bike, but she isn't quite to that point yet. So new training wheels were in order, and they work great. After breakfast we all went for a family bike ride around the neighborhood--it is so fun to have everyone on wheels! Then we headed to the museum for the annual Butterfly Fest (more to come about that in another post).

We had a quiet afternoon at home while the kids played with Lily's new toys. Dinner was Lily's pick of hamburgers, grilled by Jared. We invited three families (the Cricchios, the Olsens, and the Becks) to join us for dessert and to celebrate Lily. We had a good crowd of 10 kids and 7 adults. The kids mostly played hide and seek in various ways. The adults had a nice time chatting, with an exciting BYU game in the background (Yay! BYU won!). We decided to do something a little less traditional for dessert and served root beer floats. Friday I made a Texas sheet cake and took it to school to share with Lily's kindergarten class, so we also had a little bit of cake. It was a nice celebration.

Blow out your candles!

We were having so much fun, that we neglected to take very many pictures. So Jared took Lily out for a special birthday photo shoot.

Lily smashed her finger in the door one morning before school. Ouch!!!

We love you, Lily! We are so glad you are in our family. 

September photos of the kids

 A Sunday Evening Walk (through the puddles)

 

Last week we went to watch a horse jumping show. It was fun to see the pretty horses.

September was a nice month. We kept busy getting used to the new school schedule, homework and piano lessons, swimming occasionally and heading to the park. We recently got a new camera, and Jared has been having fun taking better pictures. Here are a few more shots of the kids:

Dad, I'm practicing!

All ready for the day!

At the pool

Swimming season is nearly over in Florida (although we went yesterday for a quick dip in between General Conference sessions). Here are a few photos from a few weeks ago.

Sometimes when we go to the pool, we are lucky to find friends to swim with. This time we found a large toad!