Happy Fourth!

We spent our Saturday evening in Coffman Park watching the Dublin City Fireworks. It was great. The girls had a great time, too!


Here's Brett and Izzy waiting for it to get dark.

And Maddy cheesing for the camera.

Everybody but me hanging out on our blanket.
Inside the football stadium, they play music to the fireworks. We could hear them and Maddy was "dancing" - it was hilarious!

Dolphins! Sea Lions!

Brett and I took the girls to a place called the Gulfarium in Destin. It's a "marine show park" where you see a dolphin show, a sea lion show, and a show with both! We also got to see sharks, sting rays, penguins and alligators. The girls loved watching the dolphins jump and splash. We weren't fast enough to get pictures of any of the big tricks, but we did get a shot of the dolphins at the trainer's platform.
This is 7 year old Lily and 4 year old Ariel - both Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins. Lily's mother, Delilah, was also in the show with them - she's 35 years old! Lily's brother, Zach, is the largest Dolphin at the Gulfarium - he performed with Kyle, the sea lion, in the mixed species show! We had a great family day!

Vacation... Destin, FL

Well, I think I've given up on trying to "catch up" - I think it was February last time I posted! But, here's what we've been up to recently. We just spent a week in Destin, FL with some of our best friends - the Holland and Rhea families. 8 days, 7 kids, 6 adults, 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 3 families, 2 pools, and 1 beach! Whew! We had a great time.

First full-day at the beach - a beautiful day! No oil in sight and nice calm waves that the kids could play in. Maddy wasn't crazy about the water, but enjoyed playing in the sand. The bigger kids loved jumping in the waves. Pictures are of Brett and Brian playing in the sand with the kids and Tasha with Maddy.
The afternoon we tried to go back to the beach, just the Fry Family, we found Tar Balls. Boo! The little black chunks are the tar balls - they are solid and about an inch in diameter. But, you can smush them with your toes or fingers and they have kind of a gummy consistency. And, it's hard to get off of hands and feet and stroller wheels. They did a good job of cleaning up the beach and we were able to spend a little more time there before we left - but we just walked in the water, no swimming.Our private pool in the back yard was so great! The kids had a great time and all the adults enjoyed cooling off, too - the temps were over 90 every day we were there! We also had access to the larger and deeper community pool, which we visited a few times, too. It got really crowded when the beach was in poor condition, though. The mommies had a nice relaxing morning at the community pool without kids... that was fun!

Wordless Wednesday... almost!

The picture was taken on Wednesday, so it counts, right? :-)

Let it Snow!

After getting about 12 inches of snow from Friday into Saturday, Izzy was itching to go outside and play. The girls loved sliding down the slide of their playset into the snow! Snowpants move quick on that cold plastic slide - Whoooosh! We also made snow angels and sat in the snow to make "chairs" in the drifts. One drift was almost as big as Maddy!
It was fun, but we got cold quickly! Izzy could have stayed out much longer, but the rest of us were cold, so we came in. BRRRRR!

Wordless Wednesday

A trend is catching on... thought I'd join in. ;-)

Christmas Whirlwind!

We've had a great Christmas 2009 and New Year 2010... below are some of the 222 pictures I just spent 40 minutes uploading to the computer!

We started our celebration with the neighborhood "gang" - we had a donut party at the Rhea's and followed it up with the kids' Christmas exchange. Tara Rhea watches the kids during the day and she had them perform some Christmas Carols they had been working on. It was cute. The parents also got some "works of art" from our kids that will, of course, be cherished for many Christmases to come.

Kids singing with Tara - I think Noah was pouting and not singing, so just Izzy, Leo, Tara, and Nicholas are shown here.

Here are the kids using water bottles to punch out the middle of their donuts - Brian then fried them in oil on the stove... they were extra yummy!!

Our next celebration was our annual Christmas Eve with the Goods. Izzy, Gran and Mommy embarked on our first gingerbread house decorating mission... we learned many things and are now prepared for next year! Here is our creation... it is a "church" made of gingerbread.

The biggest hits of the night were Maddy's shape sorter and Izzy's marble maze... I think this may actually be a bigger hit with Izzy's daddy, but she loves it, too. We've spent many hours playing with it already!

Maddy and Gran figuring out where things go...

Grampy and Izzy watching the marble travel through their first creation!

Christmas morning, the girls found their gifts from Santa in personalized bags by the fireplace! We're so happy that Santa was thinking of the mess of toys in our living room and how we could best organize them in the coming year! :-)

Then, we spent a fun Christmas day with the Fry family at Grandma's house in Greenville. It was so nice to have everyone together and be able to spend a nice relaxing day together.

Izzy and Leah are really at good ages to play together and they spent hours dressing up with Izzy's fairy and princess dress up clothes. Colleen even helped Maddy get in on the action - this is her new face that has emerged in the last couple weeks... she thinks the crown is hilarious!

Izzy and Leah also spent quite a while cutting and taping and coloring at Grandma's bar. (This is what they did while Tammie and I watched the new Tinkerbell movie... ha! They were too tired to sit through it at that point, I think!) Apparently post-its and scotch tape are quite fun, though!

Following our visit in Darke County, we headed north to Van Wert for a day at my Grandparents' house and a quick visit with Josh and Laura Gross, who were in town from Florida. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from either of those visits... hopefully we'll remember to take more next year!

We rang in the new year back at home with our neighbors, the Holland family. After getting the kids to bed, we tested out our new Wii Sports Resort, which was a lot of fun. It's probably best that we didn't have any pictures from that event!

Family and friends joined us New Year's day for a "lucky" meal of pork, potatoes and sauerkraut, accompanied by a big Buckeye Win!

The Frys had a great holiday and are so looking forward to what the new year will bring our way!