Family Pictures.

Richard, Heather & girls plus Tanek with the sun in their eyes.

Ricky, Stephanie and Tanek

The whole family together on Thanksgiving.

The 'kids'

Lori and sweet Emily

All the girls. Kirsten, me, Rena, Stephanie, Hannah, Heather, Lori and Emily

Tanek and his daddy

Richard with Hannah on his back

Our two youngest. Emily and Tanek

My two "American Girl Dolls" Hannah and Emily. Aren't they beautiful?

Papa with Richard and his girls

Hannah and Emily singing the Lord's Prayer in English and in Latin. They were amazing.

Gathered around the table for Thanksgiving.

Sisters and daughters

Aunt Grandma and Tanek enjoying the beautiful day outside. We have had a great and relaxing weekend. I hate to see it end. It has been so nice to have family here and Richard, Heather and the girls have been able to get to know their cousin and aunt again. It has been several years since they have seen each other. Tanek loves spending time with his Aunt Grandma and his Aunt Lori. The girls enjoyed their time too.

Family Time!

Monday evening Richard, Heather and girls came in for Thanksgiving. We all met at Johnny's with Heathers family. Here is Kirsten, Casey, and Emily at Johnny's.

Emily, Austin, Tanek and Hannah

Heather and her mom Jackie.

Heather and her sister Karen

After Johnny's it was over to our house for some boiled peanuts. Richard and the hubs.

Even sweet Emily loves boiled peanuts and she isn't even a southern girl.

Heather and Kirsten

Hannah

The "Ryans" Casey, Cary & Karen all the way from Minnesota. They are enjoying our warm Florida fall.

Today it was Papa's turn to show off his winter garden. Hannah is quite the gardener and has a very green thumb. She always likes to help Papa in his garden.

Hannah checking out the garden

Emily and Tanek also checking out the garden.

2 sweet cousins. Just 3 months apart.

Happy birthday to the Hubs

The first night that Jean and Patrick were here we of course had the normal "Mexican" dinner. Tanek was enjoying his taco too!

Today was the hubs birthday. We went to St. Augustine with our good friends Jean and Patrick who were visiting from Raleigh, NC. We had a lot of fun. We went to the Old Fort, walked around St. George street, ate lunch and just enjoyed the day. Tonight we all went to dinner, with Ricky, Stephanie, and Tanek and all of us at Blue Water Bay. Afterwards we came home and showed Jean and Patrick how to play a game of Phase 10, which I won this time. We had lots of fun and the hubs is another year older and had a good birthday.

Gary and Patrick

Waiting for them to shoot the cannon

At lunch, Patrick, Jean and Gary

Me and the hubs. I forgot my camera so all of these pictures were taken with my phone which didn't turn out all that good, but this is what we had.

Happy Birthday Sweet Emily!

Today is my little grand-daughters 5th birthday. It is hard to believe she is alreay 5. She is such a sweetheart and such a princess. She loves to sing, and dance and perform. These are some pictures I took of her this past summer.

Nana & Papa love Emily

These were taken last year (2009) of Emily when she was in her dance recital. She was a dancing bunny. A little worn out after a long recital.

She was the cutest little bunny in the recital.

And here is a picture taken today when she opened her present from us. She got a pair of Cinderealla shoes so that she can be a real princess. Emily , we love you and hope you have such a Happy Birthday. It has been a great 5 years having you in our lives. You are such a precious and loved little girl. We are so thankful for you and just wanted to let you know how much

Nana and Papa love you. I hope you enjoy your movie about the Princess and the frog too. You are a real princess and a beautiful 5 year old girl.

Update on Construction

Here is all the ugly parts of our construction project. The grinding work is finished. We had a few days of constant grinding off the old pool deck. You can see here we have several bad cracks in the concrete. All this will be filled in and refinished. What a mess it has been. A lot of the white concrete dust is at the bottom of the pool. We still cannot see the bottom of the pool but eventually we will get it cleared up.(hopefully)

All the cool deck is off.

The forms for the footers and extension are in. Ready for the inspector and the new concrete.

When we came home this afternoon all of the new concrete has been poured. Yea! No more dust blowing all over. Now it has to sit for 14 days to cure and then he will start on the resurfacing. All of it will match and will look like stone pavers. What a change it will be. Now the screen company can come out for their final measurements and in just a few weeks we should have a finished project. Yea. Can't wait.

You can see how much larger the deck will be. It is going to give us a lot more room for entertaining. Not that we entertain all that much, but we could. It will give us room for a nice table and chairs to eat outside. This is going to be a very large area and will be SO nice.

This small area will also be screened in and the rock will be spread back out. This will be an area for the grill.

This area has very little grass (that we planted last Spring) left. We probably will just put rock in this area and eliminate the work of keeping up a little bit of grass. The whole idea behind this project was to ELIMINATE a lot of work. Not only will it be more enjoyable, the work should be a lot less. Of course we have a LOT of work to do to get it all back in good condition, but when the initial work is done it should be much less up keep. At least that is the plan. The next pictures you see should be of them when they start the refinishing of the concrete. SO....it should start looking better soon.

Decorating for Christmas!

Yesterday morning it was freezing cold. Tanek's mommy had to work and his daddy was sick. SO, we decided instead of going to the ballgame and playing and sitting in the freezing cold we would do something else fun. (Tanek was just getting over strep throat and it didn't seem like a good idea for him to be in the cold). So we came to my house and we had hot chocolate and a Christmas cookie. Then we turned on the movie Cars and decorated his little Christmas tree. He had a good time doing it and we call it his "cars & candy ball tree". This is his own personal tree and his 12 days of Christmas gifts go under this tree.
He did most of the decorating himself and was quite pleased with it when it was finished.

Lightning McQueen or "Mine" as we call him. A few years ago when the movie first came out Tanek got the shake up car and it said "the checker flag is mine". Every since then Lightning McQueen has been called mine.

I love this sweet little face.

The almost finished project. Part of the day was spent going over Lego catalogs and thinking about what might go under a Christmas tree.

We love the Christmas season. It is so much fun to get ready for and so much fun to anticipate the whole season. We talk a lot about the real meaning of Christmas and about the real gift of Jesus and why we celebrate. We love the lights, and all the magic of Christmas. It is so much fun to share it with a child.