A Quarantined Birthday!

We celebrated Brooks' birthday quarantine style this year! His birthday was April 22 and I'm just now getting around to post about it. These last few months have been CRAZY to say the least. 

Y'all know how much we make a big deal out of birthdays in our house...we weren't going to let covid damper our parade! We celebrated B from the time he woke up until he went to bed! I had the yard party people leave signs in our yard. When he first woke up we sang "Happy Birthday" and had a donut cake! Then Josh took him fishing, which is exactly what B wanted to do! We had pizza, cake and ice cream and ended the day with a party parade! Our family waited down the road from our house and all drove by together with balloons and signs! It was fun! They drove by a second time and dropped off gifts and we handed out cake! It was really fun to be able to see our people!

We did the best we could and it ended up being super fun! 

Oh, and the very next day he had to have surgery for an abscessed tooth. :( I'm telling y'all, it's been crazy.

Ya Mon!

Whew! The last time I left off here we were Jamaica bound! The week before our trip was crazy. So much was in the air and people had SO MANY opinions on whether or not we should travel because of the corona virus. I was going no matter what anyone said. HA! I'll have to have a whole other post on the c word. Basically, we traveled just in time! Things quickly fell apart in the US as soon as we got to Jamaica. We were safer there than we were at home BY FAR.

 

Our trip was AMAZING! The most wonderful trip I have been on in my life! (And we've climbed/walked the Great Wall of China so that says a lot!) When I started researching this trip I knew we needed to stay in a villa because there were 12 of us and it just made more sense. The villa we found was amazing, beautiful, perfect in every single way. It had a staff that lived there and I was so spoiled by the time we left. I've had lots of people asking about the villa so I'll link it here My entire family highly recommends and we plan to go back! You won't regret it! The staff will take awesome care of you BUT- Rafic will spoil you like you are royalty!

 

When we arrived at the airport we were greeted by our driver for the week...we loaded up our luggage and asked him to take us straight to Scotchie's! They are famous for their jerk chicken and it was tasty! After that we went to check in and relaxed the rest of the day. The kids swam and the grown ups had yummy cocktails! Again, RAFIC!

 

The next day we headed to Ocho Rios to climb Dunn's River Falls! The kids loved it! The grown ups did, too, but it's tough dragging kids up the falls! haha! We stopped at a local jerk shack for lunch and then headed to the Martha Brae River to raft! By the time we got there they had just closed! AH, but remember....there are no problems in Jamaica! The guides unstrapped all their rafts and took us down the river anyway! We ended up with a sunset cruise down the Martha Brae and I was worth NOTHING when we were done! HA!

 

On Monday we hung around the villa and got spoiled some more! We ran down to Margaritaville so the kids could slide. I'm NEVER doing that again! Geeze. Tuesday we loaded up and headed to swim with the dolphins! I didn't realize how much we would LOVE this! They were so much fun! Brooks had the best time because the guide let him take a belly ride even though he wasn't supposed to!haha! After swimming with the dolphins we stopped by the craft market to show the kids around and get their hair braided!

 

I'm pretty sure on Wednesday we hung around the house but at this point it's all running together!

 

On Thursday we took the boat out for snorkeling. And by we I mean I sat by the pool! Motion sickness is NOT my friend. I would have been so sick! Everyone else had fun, especially Griffin who ditched his life jacket mid snorkel because it was holding him back!

 

Friday was spent lounging and being sad about leaving the next day! We had an amazing dinner(well the food was amazing the whole time actually) with a band playing reggae! :)

 

This trip could have not come at a more perfect time! Time to plan another trip!

Life Lately

Life is definitely not slowing down for this crew! We are busy, busy, busy. Griffin and Peyton's soccer season is in full swing, Brooks is still taking karate and Reece is cheering! And, no, it won't be long before Mia has something extra going on too! haha!

Last week was Reece's middle school cheer tryouts. She had clinic for three days and then tried out on Friday! She has been working SO hard for months brushing up on her skills and we were so happy to find out she made the team!



Brooks had a karate competition this past weekend. It was actually a National competition that thankfully was held in the town where we live! He was awarded a gold medal in board breaking and a bronze medal in form. Don't feel stupid if you don't know what any of that means! I'm learning all this too! HA!

Side note-do you love my shirt? We get super tired of all the stares we get so when I saw this shirt I had to have it! haha!

Last week was Read Across America week! Brooks and Mia had dress up days at school all week. If you know me, you know how I feel about school dress up days. Ugh. One day was dress as your favorite book character. They decided to be the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood ALL ON THEIR OWN and I can't even deal with the cuteness!

Mia had a check up with her cardiologist last week. He told me he doesn't need to see her for THREE YEARS! We are so thankful. I get so caught up in dealing with her Thalassemia that I often don't even think about her heart issues. I think because she had her open heart surgery in China-it makes me not really know as much about that as what we deal with on the daily. Which kind of sucks because we weren't there for that.

That's about it! We are gearing up for a big trip so stay tuned for that! YES, we are still going. Every single doctor I have spoken with about the c word says to GO! So BYE! 

Ringing in the New Year-Disney Style!

Four days after Christmas we headed to Orlando for a week! This was a bit of a impromptu trip. We booked it about a month out. If you know Disney, you know this is LATE! haha! Thankfully, I'm a pretty adventurous person so it didn't bother me. We were still able to get really good dinner reservations and most of the fast passes we wanted! We are rope drop people anyway so the ones we didn't get we knew how to be able to ride!

The first day we spent some time at Disney Springs! We rented an AirBnb this trip and it wasn't ready so we had time to kill! Side note-we rented the house because a last minute trip with a big family is pretty much a no go at Disney! It ended up saving us a ton of money and was great! We also drove for the first time and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed having our own vehicle and not relying on Disney transportation! AMEN!

Our first park day was spent at Animal Kingdom! This is my favorite park! The rides are amazing and the park is beautiful! We arrived at the park about 5:45 am for a 7am rope drop! We didn't have a fast pass for Flight of Passage so we had to be there unless we wanted to stand in line for hours! The rope dropped and we RAN like crazy people. We didn't have to wait at all and were already off the ride by 7am! :) By lunch we had rode everything in the park, because everyone else was in line for flight of passage! Boom shakalaka! We had a reservation at around 4 at Tiffins-we didn't enjoy it. Gasp!

The next morning we were at Magic Kingdom bright and early! Mia was PUMPED  because she was finally tall enough for Splash Mountain! And she loved it! We spent most of the day to the left side of the park because we had two days planned at MK. We had a dinner reservation very late-like 9pm-at Jungle Skipper Canteen! This was our first time to eat there and it was FUN and the food was tasty!

The next day was spent at Epcot! Everyone said this was their favorite day! And it went by the fastest because we were having so much fun! Soarin' is one of our favorite rides! We rode Test Track and everything we could squeeze in before the World Showcase opened! 

First thing's first-a margarita and nachos from Mexico! We explored a bit after that and waited for our Lunch reservation at the Nine Dragon's restaurant in China! It was meh BUT BUT BUT-If you know me you know I'm obsessed with looking at cast members name tags to see where they are from and our waitress at the Nine Dragon was FROM THE SAME CITY IN CHINA MIA IS FROM!!!!! So exciting! The waitress kept saying she was so happy!

The rest of the day we explored around the different countries and had the best time!

The next day we went to Hollywood Studios. This day killed it for us. It was INSANELY crowded because of the new Rise of Resistance ride. If you don't already know, you HAVE to be at the park an hour before it opens so that you can be INSIDE the park when it does open to be able to MAYBE get a boarding pass for this ride. Y'all. I've never been around that many people at one time IN MY EVER LOVING BORN DAYS. It was too much. Disney REALLY needs to fix this! We were able to get a boarding pass and rode the ride around 10:30. We arrived at the park at 5:45 am. It opened at 7. We were able to ride Slinky Dog while we waited on our boarding group to be called so that was good! Rise of Resistance was pretty fun, I have to admit that. But, that being said....this crew will not be doing all that again. One and done. Thank you. We waited about 3 hours for the other Star Wars ride-Millennium Falcon and I LOVED it! We rode most of the other rides also-Josh's favorite ride is there-Rockin' Rollercoaster. He ended up not riding because the wait was so long. Reece and Griffin braved the line and had fun on it! :) Overall, not a great day. haha!

OH! We also ate at the Sci-Fi Diner. It was not great and we are pretty sure Peyton got food poisoning there. He didn't feel well the rest of the day and threw up that night!

That brings us to our last park day! Back to Magic Kingdom! It was the BEST DAY EVER! Peyton was thankfully feeling better and we made the most of our last day!

We rode everything we wanted to ride, including Splash Mountain AGAIN 😂 Hey, we were drenched from the rain so we figured why not! haha! We had a dinner reservation at Be Our Guest that night. It was delicious and we rode the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train to end the trip after that! None of us wanted to leave. We always have the best family time in Disney!