August 2013 Vacation - Ocoee, Cruise, and Cocoa

Last August Tim and I wanted to get away on a cruise, but we weren't quite ready to take the boys on one with us...  Luckily, we had some very willing babysitters in Florida, not far from the port!  We drove down to my parents with the boys and spent a few days in Ocoee, our first time staying at their new house, which they moved into Mother's Day weekend 2013.

Since Mom and Dad have an alligator in the pond behind their house, which Timmy promptly named Chompy, we decided to go to Gator Land.  It has been open since 1949 and we don't think it's changed too much since opening!  We went straight in to see some alligator wrestling, then wandered around and fed hot dogs to some alligators!

Timmy and Tyler were very excited to go in and feed the birds, but they got nervous really quickly, so I ended up doing most of the feeding.  It was really fun!

We went to Cocoa beach the next day with Mom and Grandma.  It ended up being a scorching hot day so we didn't stay as long as we had hoped to.  Timmy jumped right into the ocean and started trying to body surf.  We rented a boogey board and he got the hang of it pretty quickly.  He definitely fell in love with the ocean all over again.

 Tyler still preferred the sand to the waves.

We spent a lot of time in the pool at Mom and Dad's too, and Timmy finally let Tim throw him and decided he loved that too!

On the 12th Mom and the boys drove us to the port and Tim and I headed off on our cruise.  The boys spent the next five days swimming, going to Lego Land and even went to Blizzard Beach for a day with Baba and Grandpa.  Tim and I relaxed, ate, and enjoyed the beaches, on repeat!

Our first stop was Freeport Harbour, which wasn't overly exciting, but we did take a bus over to a little shopping area and had some delicious conch fritters and Tim had a Pina Colada out of a coconut.

Our favorite island of this cruise was the Bahamas.  Tim had done lots of research, as always, and got us a day pass to the Sheraton there.  We practically had the place to ourselves, it was fantastic!

Our last stop was Little Stirrup Cay, which is an island owned privately by Carnival.  It was a drizzly day, but we found a good spot and did some snorkeling.

We had decided the boys needed another day at the beach, so when we got back Mom, Dad, Timmy and Tyler all came to Cocoa again.  We spent the day at the beach, the hotel pool, and then all went out to dinner before Mom and Dad headed home and we stayed the night at a hotel.

 

It was a great vacation for everyone!

Nat's Fan Appreciation Day July 2013

One of our favorite perks of being partial season ticket holders with the Nat's is getting to go to Fan Appreciation Day.  Last year we got to take a picture with Screech which was exciting because he doesn't usually pose for pictures.

To accommodate the large crowds, they let everyone come down on the field and stand around the warning track.  Then different players, coaches, and media personalities walk around the inside of the track.  Some just wave, some shake hands, some do autographs.  They spread themselves out over something like a two hour period, some going clock wise, others going counter clockwise.  Timmy entertained himself by being the photographer with my cell phone, all of these field pictures are his, some you can tell more then others!

Staff

Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman were in the above group, they just walked the track waving

Camera Man

Tony Tarasco

Rick Schu

Timmy and Tyler were autograph magnets.  It was awesome.  Tim was particularly excited to get the manager's autograph, I want to say his name was Davey Johnson.  He will correct me if I am wrong.  Hopefully he will tell me who the un-captioned people are in Timmy's photos too.  ;)  I was extremely impressed with Gio Gonzalez, he spent the entire time on the field signing as many autographs as he could.  I don't think he got half way around the stadium, but we were lucky that he got as far as us.  I told him how classy I thought it was for him to spend that much time with his fans too.

It was hot, and it was nap time.  Tyler was up on my shoulders for a lot of the time, then he started putting his head on my head and told me he was napping.  Poor kid, he actually fell asleep like this for a little while!

When both boys had had enough we posed for a few more pictures by the outfield wall on our way out of the stadium.

Tball 2013

Timmy played Spring and Fall Tball again in 2013 and Tim continued to be the head coach.  For the Spring Season we knew that we needed a banner, but we ran out of time to make one, so we had Office Depot print one for us and it got the job done...

I love watching Timmy play and watching Tim coach, especially at the games.  But my favorite part of practice is getting automatic, no need to schedule, girl time with Suzanne, and Tyler getting automatic playdates with Stella!

During the Spring Season the Little League asks the players to do a fundraiser of selling coupon books to local businesses.  They ask each tballer to sell 8 books, at which point they earn a shirt, but they get some really great prizes if they sell 20 books, so we made that Timmy's goal.  Timmy and I went door-to-door with him in uniform for four or five evenings in a row and he made his own sales pitches.  He ended up being one of only two tballers to sell twenty and got some recognition for it at the end of year picnic.  Timmy also got to represent our team in the "Furthest Throw" competition.  

And Timmy and Caleb represented our team in the All-Star T Ball game!  

And then Timmy dunked a coach!

Tyler spent the picnic eating out of Stella's hand, literally!  ;)

It was a very fun season!

In the Fall season Tim had pretty much no help coaching!  The practice time and field was too hard for Josh to get to and no one else stepped up!  Luckily it was a fairly small team, and Tim handled them extremely well on his own!  We had a particularly fun night game during this season.

Tyler's Monsters

I have mentioned at least once that Tyler has some type of imaginary friends, his monsters.  It's not that he pretends to play with them, but he talks about them pretty often.  He calls them "My Monsters" and talks about their "Rainbow House" a lot.  This has been going on for months.  It never concerned me, his favorite movies are Monster's Inc. and Monster's U. so I figure that's where it stems from.  At first he really didn't say much about them, just every once in a while he would let us know that they existed.  As Tyler's birthday was approaching and we kept telling him his birthday and party were coming up, he would agree, "Yeah, and my monster's party coming up too."  Then, a few weeks later, the last week of preschool, I was driving Tyler to school and we were stopped at a light.  Out of no where he said, "Ahem, Mo-om, I told you.  There it is.  That's my Rainbow House."  I laughed and asked him where, and he pointed out his window.  I was so excited to see this:

It's just an office building that we had been passing to and from school two days a week for the school year, but something about that arch on top, or the stripes in the facade, or a combination, made Tyler decide it was his Rainbow House.  I'm dying to know if he saw the building first and came up with the name later, or if he had the name and noticed that this building fit.  Chicken or the egg?  I tested him a few days later, pointing out the building and asking Tyler what it was, he didn't miss a beat telling me again that it was his Rainbow House.  When I showed it to Timmy, he went through a fantastic thought process, he said the following, rapid fire, without giving me a chance to respond.  "That's his Rainbow House?  It's real?  Has Tyler ever been there before?  Are monsters real?"  Lately Tyler has been talking about his Monster's Party being at their Rainbow House... I would love to work that one out for him... but not sure it's going to happen!

Since revealing the Rainbow House to us, Tyler has started talking about the monster's more.  Susan had a boo boo on her neck once, and Tyler randomly told her that his monster's bit her.  I have explained to Tyler since then that if his monster's aren't nice monster's, that they aren't allowed to visit any more.  He has assured me that they are nice. At bed time for a while Tyler would start insisting that his monster's were coming soon.  Timmy hated him talking about monster's at bed time, but Tyler has never been scared about them at all.  Recently, he tells us very often that, "If you touch my monster's nose, don't touch it hard.  If you touch their nose very hard they will EAT you.  But if you touch it very gently, they won't."  Timmy is getting tired of this warning too, but just tells Tyler he's already told us that a hundred times.

I asked Tyler if his monster's have names.  So far he's named Dingy-head, and Dingy-head, and Meanie-head.  He has said he is drawing his monster's when he makes his scribbles and swirls of drawings for a while now.  When he drew Daddy's birthday card last week he told me when he was drawing Dingy-head.  After making his swirl he said, "He needs eyes." and made two dots.  Then, "and a nose." and drew one dot.  Finally, "and more eyes."  and drew one more dot.  Then he drew the other Dingy-head, he is much smaller.  Finally he drew Meanie-head, and some of the other monster's.

I love when Tyler talks about his monster's, he is very serious and matter-of-fact about them.  I am looking forward to more pictures and stories about them as they grow with him!