What a small world!!

So last week I was in my local Chick Fil A to get lunch and look who I ran into!! WHAT??!!! It's our neighbors and great friends from Olive Branch MS!!! We haven't seen them in about 2 1/2 years since we moved from there! Ironically, Emily was here for a swim meet at the local college!!! Wow!! It was such a shocker and great surprise!!! What are the chances really that we would be at the same place to eat at the same time. Rhonda was gonna give us a call while they were here, but we ran into each other first!!! wow!!

Mike took the boys to watch one of Emily's swims. They really enjoyed it!! Too bad she wasn't standing up straight to see how tall they all have gotten!

This is how Emily and the boys remember each other! wow...Look how they've grown up! Too bad Zach wasn't here too!

Sunday we picked Emily and Rhonda up and headed to the beach. It was a beautiful day!! Everyone had a great time! Emily and I did some snorkeling to find her some shells. We saw tons of live sand dollars! Wow..I've never found a dead one on the beach yet alone been able to see them alive on the ocean floor! It was so cool. We picked one up to look at it and show the boys but then put it back in the ocean. We also saw tons of conchs alive in their shells. I thought they were hermit crabs but in looking it up later online, they are conch. Very interesting!! I found a leg of a starfish also. Too bad I didn't take a picture of it. A guy and his daughter told me and Emily where to swim to see the sand dollars and also some red coral. We were kinda scared but the girl showed us and even swam out to it to help us find it. Wow..who knew there was such bright coral not far off the beach. It was so cool!!

Then as we were leaving the beach parking lot we got to see this!!

It's a gopher tortoise. Thanks to my sis's boyfriend Buckey for letting me know what kind it is. Wow..this guy was chomping down on some serious grass. He wasn't very afraid of me at all. I didn't get too close, just used my zoom. It was so cool to see such a big guy. It was such an amazing day!!

The boys got to experience a roll up window this weekend in a moving truck! They were fascinated with it!! ha ha!!

Last week we did make it to the indoor trampoline park. The boys had a blast! One hour there is plenty of time for them to gett very sweaty! I need to figure out how to get the videos from my phone over here to the blog. They had a blast doing flips and playing some slam dunk basketball and dodge ball.

Bry is on a poster at his TKD school! How cool! He told me they took his picture for it and here it is! I want to try to get a pic of him standing next to it in the school. Very cute!!

The other night Dev and I played several games of Monopoly. This version is really fun and pretty easy to play. Bry tried to play but he gets upset too easy if he starts to lose. Dev had one episode where he got upset and I just tried to explain to him that it's a game and to enjoy. He is getting much better though at playing games and not getting so upset if he loses.

It's a kinda short week again. I get to be off 1/2 days on Wed and Fri. to spend with the boys before school starts on Monday! Wow, I can't believe it's here already! Thursday is the orientation for their new school. I hope the weather is nice so we can try out a local water park afterwards. Hopefully we can get some fun in at the water park before the afternoon rain comes. I think they are excited about their new school. They both got personalized letters in the mail from their teachers welcoming them to the new school year. Dev found out in the letter that he will get to participate in safety patrol. He was a little worried but we explained to him that he will know everything he is supposed to do before they send him on duty..ha ha.. I'm excited to meet their new teachers and I pray for a great school year ahead! I did get to the uniform store and bought them each 2 uniforms. The school is having a used uniform sale this Friday so I'm hoping I can finish up getting their uniforms from the sale at much cheaper pricing! I plan to be there when the doors open to get the best picks..ha ha...

Mike and I are trying to plan our anniversary weekend. I think we might take a short 2 day trip to Miami to be tourists. Neither of us have been there and it's only 2 hours away, so it would be a perfect short weekend trip. I am most interested in seeing the well known "South Beach" and to do some people watching! ha! Maybe we might even see someone famous! who knows...

Well, the next time I'm blogging will probably be pictures of my new 3rd and 5th graders headed to their first day of school!! Wow..time sure does fly by!! Toodles for now.

Wildlife and celebrations...750!

Wow, so this is my 750th post!! That is crazy!! Hard to believe I've typed up that many short stories about what we have been up to since I started this in 2006! I really need to check into having this printed into a book. I know there are services out there I just haven't researched enough into it yet.

Anyway... so we celebrated Mom's birthday. We went to a great restaurant right on the water downtown Ft Myers. I wish it wasn't so hot outside so we could of walked around a little more to some of the shops. We still had a great time. I love that we live in such a beautiful place!

This place also never disappoints for the amount of wildlife that we get to see. Here are a few of the most recent sightings...

This owl is amazing! We have heard him in the mornings with his "hoot hoot" but this morning I actually spotted him in the tree behind us! Wow...he was huge!! Good thing he was actually a good distance away because I would of been terrified!!

Also spotted this woodpecker one morning in the back yard. 

A bizarre find was this crawfish in our yard...wierd! 

A cute little bunny in our yard. Surprisingly he wasn't really afraid of me much and I was able to get pretty close to him. 

A neighbor of ours posted a family of 5 deer that they spotted in their back yard. That would be cool, maybe we will see them...I will keep my eyes posted!!

This is one sign that I am not happy to see. It was actually on TV, but they were saying the signs were being posted in northeast Florida at the rest stops...yikes!!! 

The boys finished up summer camp last week. The theme for dress up day was Twin Day! I think they did pretty good. They also won 1st prize in the contest..yippee!! They were so happy.  They were a little disappointed that they will miss celebrity dress up day this week though..ha ha... Bry was wishing he still had his afro so he could be Michael Jackson!!! I think Dev would of picked his fave soccer player Ronaldo. 

So Bry competed in his first sparring Taekwondo tournament on Saturday!! He was very nervous and so was I!! In fact, I might of even been more nervous than him!!! LOL.... 

So we get there and he is all registered and they call the names for the very 1st match of the day....guess who?? Yep! Bry was 1st match! Really?!! I was hoping he wasn't first! Oh well...he got out there and did awesome! He had a few anxiety moments..but he did great and even got in a headshot kick for the win!! He won his very first match!! SO PROUD OF HIM!! I think my heart was pounding over 200 beats a minute as he was sparring! If you remember...I don't enjoy this at all! ha ha... He did so good!! I was so impressed how well he did in his first tournament ever sparring and also being the first match of the day! wow!! Awesome job Bry!!!

BRY WINS  3-1 !!!

He then had another match against a kid in his school. He did well, but I think he got a little nervous. He did a great job but lost the match. He still did awesome and got 2nd place for the tournament in his group!!! So overly proud of him for getting out there and doing it!! There are 4 more tournaments in this series. I'm hoping he will compete in at least 2 more of them. His points will accumulate over the series and he could get an extra medal in the end depending on his points!!

I'm excited to have some afternoon with the boys this week. I know we will have a few treat lunches that I have coupons for..of course...LOL.. We also need to go by the school uniform store. I think we might visit glow in the dark golf or the indoor trampoline park too. I'm looking forward to it! yay!! 

Well that's all for now...Toodles...

FFRRRIIIDDDAAYYY!!! yay!!

     I'm so happy it's Friday! For some reason it seems like this has been a very long week! Not for any particular reason I guess, just seems like it has taken a long time to get to Friday!!
     Well we didn't get to the beach last weekend like I thought we would. The good news is that we finally got some storage shelves installed in the garage! Whoo hoo..these garages around here are so small and definitely small to what we are used to. We had some overhead storage shelves installed and wow what a difference! We spent most of Saturday getting things up on the shelves and reorganizing the garage for what seems like at least the 100th time. I think we are getting very close to not having to organize again! yay!! I also hung some curtains in the boys' bedroom thanks to Mom and Mike's help. The sun shines in their room in the morning and it's so bright so I was hoping by hanging some curtains it would help them sleep in longer on the weekends. I'm not sure if it has helped yet. It seemed to only draw more of their attention to the window last weekend, wierd...but hopefully this weekend they will be more relaxed and sleep in...maybe to 7 or 7:30 would be great!!
    Tuesday night I met one of Bry's classmates Mom and kids at the pool to sell her some of Bry's uniforms that he won't need this year for the old school. The boys had a great time swimming and playing while she and I got more acquainted. Turns out she is a runner too! (smile) She also does races! We got to talking and I think I might join her and her sister for some Saturday runs. I'm excited to have a possible local running buddy and race buddy! She also told me about a particular method she uses to run long distances of a run/walk interval. I have seen it before but never really tried it. I have always just tried to run non stop. I have tried her method this week on a few runs and I really like it. Especially for long distances. My overall time isn't much slower either even with the walking intervals. Hey who knows....with this method I might actually talk myself into doing that full marathon one day!! yikes....ha! Anyway...looking forward to meeting up with her for a run possibly next Saturday. This could help me stay on track with my training for the 10 mile race in October! I'll keep you posted on how it goes!
   

     Well we have been taking our trips to 7 eleven for our freebies this week! We started with the free slurpee, then got the M $ M's too! We skipped the Monday cookies and on Tuesday searched for the Twinkies! Well, several stores were out of Twinkies...I was wanting them since Bry says he had never had a twinkie. After a few stores I finally told the girl at one of the stores that I was going to call and complain because first of all the app didn't work for a few days and now no one is stocking more than a few twinkies for the FREE promotion?!  I know it's just twinkies but hey.... anyway....She was super nice and let us pick something else out for free. I wasn't expecting that at all! Then she said she would hold a few of the ice cream bars promotion for the next day in the back for us to pick up to make sure we got ours. Wow...ha!! Who knew...so we went back the next day to get our ice cream bars and Dev made her a home made thank you card. It was so sweet! Turns out she was the manager of course. She wasn't there, but we left the card for her.

We skipped the granola bar freebie yesterday, but got the free cookies for today! ha...who doesn't like a freebie right? Of course we will be there on Saturday for the last free slurpee! Nice little free treats all week! ha ha!

     So of course we watched the final World Cup game. Bry was all pumped and wanted Argentina to win! If you missed the game, Germany won. But, Argentina played a pretty good game.

Yesterday morning we saw almost a complete rainbow! The boys really were in awe. Too bad we didn't see the pot of gold too!!

Bry lost another tooth! This tooth has been just barely hanging on for days now. Finally last night when brushing his teeth he popped it out! Luckily the tooth fairy remembered at 6:10am before the alarm clocks went off! whew...!! By the way...a tooth fairy in a hurry leaves good things!!  a $5 bill!! 

Well, only three weeks left till school starts!! Next week the boys go to their last week of TKD camp. The following two weeks they will be home with either Mike, Granny, and then me. I am taking off 1/2 days three days each of the last two weeks so the boys and I can have some last minute summer fun. I haven't decided exactly what we are going to do just yet. I am looking forward to it though!! 

Well that's all for now....happy Friday and good weekend to all! Toodles!

Fun and silly

First I have to share this photo that I saw on Facebook. I love it!! I love vacations!!!!!

So today is inside out day at camp. I love Bry's enthusiasm to participate! He came out of his room this morning all ready for inside out day. He did this all on his own! Inside out hat, shirt, shorts and even put his underwear on the outside of his shorts! funny!! Yes, he is wearing normal underwear underneath it all, we checked with him..haha! I guess it's appropriate.....LOL...

Well no jury for me today. Boo! I was really hoping I'd get a chance to go and just be able to experience the long boring day. Nope....now I just have a long boring day at work.. Oh well. I did decide to get my guilty pleasure on my way to work, a skinny vanilla latte...yum!!!!!

I saw a hot air balloon on my way into work today, kinda strange. I'm not sure why it was there, I didn't see any others around. I have to say I don't think I'd ride in a hot air balloon. I know they can steer it and all but I feel you are at the mercy of the wind...yikes...I'm sure it has beautiful views but I'll pass.

Here are a few more pics from the 4th activities. The boys and I made some strawberry, blueberry, marshmallow kabobs. Dev decided to be a cool dude this morning with his "Daddy" shirt and sunglasses, too cute!

The boys had a great time playing badmitton and throwing water balloons.

Watch out for flying water balloons!!

So here's some interesting info for you. 7 Eleven is having a week long freebie sale, here is the breakdown in case you have one near you and are interested in some free sugar!!

Head to a participating 7-Eleven store on 7/11 from 11 AM-7 PM to get a FREE small Slurpee! There is no purchase necessary and this will be a great treat during this hot summer.

Plus, there are also other freebies that 7-Eleven is offering during 7-ELEVEN WEEK! Download their app to help them celebrate all week long (7/12-7/19).

Other Freebies:

Saturday, July 12: FREE Big Gulp Drink
Sunday, July 13: FREE M&Ms Birthday Cake Chocolate Candies
Monday, July 14: FREE Grandma’s Cookies
Tuesday, July 15: FREE Hostess Twinkies
Wednesday, July 16: FREE Twix or Snickers Ice Cream Bar
Thursday, July 17: FREE Quaker Chewy Yogurt Snack Bar
Friday, July 18: FREE Pillsbury Cookies
Saturday, July 19: FREE Small Slurpee

Lucky for us we do have one near by us, so we can indulge in some free sugar!! hee hee..

Well my font has changed after adding that info that I copied and pasted and I'm not sure how to get it back to normal. oh well. 

Anyway...I'm still couponing. I just find it interesting how you can save some serious $$ but you really have to do your homework. I bought a 8.2 oz Crest toothpaste yesterday for 27 cents! ha! I do a lot of reading on a couponing blog and I study the sales ad. Hoping to get Mike some super cheap deodorant this week and some cheap Mio and a few other items. Many of the things that I see people "stock pile" are not things that I want or need. I don't need 40+ bottles of Febreeze..I only got 1 for 50 cents! hee hee.. I also got a pack of razors normally costing $5-6 dollars and I only paid $1.79! Not too bad! Anyway, enough of my coupon ranting for now. Time to see what sales and coupons match up for this week! Toodles for now.

Moving right along

Wow, we are already into July! This year seems to be flying by! The boys only have 5 weeks of summer left!! Wow... it makes me sad that it all goes by so fast. Luckily the long weekend didn't go by so fast. It seemed to be a nice, long, relaxing weekend! The weather held off for us on the 4th and we were able to grill and have some great family and friend fellowship. The boys had a blast playing with their buddies and even having water balloon fights! The biggest pain is filling all those water balloons though and then they last all of 5 seconds! ha!! Me and Dev started out bright and early for a neighborhood 4 mile run for the 4th. Dev did really good considering he hasn't been running too much or training for this and his longest run is 3 miles. He didn't quite make the whole 4 miles but I'm so proud of him for attempting the run. I did make the whole 4 miles. It was not my best time at all but I did it so that's that! ha!!

I attempted a layered 4th of July drink for the boys. It turned out pretty good. I couldn't find the right drink for the white layer so I just had to improvise. It still worked out OK and the boys thought it was really cool to have the layered drink!

Oh yeah, flashback to the Starbucks iced coffee. So, it's not my favorite. I think I will stick to the hot coffee. The taste was OK, but it really isn't something that I would purchase again. 

So I have been called for jury duty. This is my first time getting notice for jury duty. It is supposed to be this Wednesday. I have to call the night before to see if I really need to show up. I am hoping that I do because otherwise to have to go into work will make for a very boring day since I have to cancel all patients assuming I will have jury duty. 

The boys had a wonderful time at Vacation bible camp. I didn't get any pictures since I only picked them up one day. They loved going and really enjoyed it so I'm glad I signed them up. I even bought the CD of songs they learned over the week. They want to listen to it every night when they are going to bed. I'm so happy they liked it and made some new friends and saw old ones there too!

Last week they had backwards day at TKD camp. Bry wanted to participate all out. He wore his shirt and shorts backwards, a goofy hat backwards and even wore his shoes on the wrong feet. He is too cute! He won 2nd place...yay Bry!! ha ha....

Disney posted a picture of the medal for our race in October, the Tower of Terror 10 miler. It's the medal in the middle. I'm really looking forward to it!!!

We have been watching most of the World Cup. The boys are thrilled that one of their favorite teams Argentina is still in the running to win. Dev wants to get his hair cut like one of the players with a letter Z shaved in the side of his head. Interesting..I figure I can go along with that since his hair grows fast! I think he might get it cut this week, I'll post pics! 

Oh yeah, so I made two new recipes over the weekend and they both were a success. The first one was a simple Fiesta Dip. Only four ingredients and the other was a Pineapple Breeze alcoholic drink! Yum, it tasted like I was on a tropical island on vacation, at least while I had my eyes closed! ha!

Fiesta Dip

1 can rotel

1 8oz bag of shredded cheddar cheese

1 16oz. sour cream ( i think...i need to check that size)

1 pkg of Hidden valley dry mix fiesta flavor

Mix it all together and enjoy!

Pineapple Breeze Cocktail

fill ice in a 16oz glass then add the following,

1/4 cup pineapple juice

1/4 orange juice

1 1/2 oz shot of coconut rum

fill the rest of cup with Sprite.

Totally yummy!!!

Well it's only Monday so there's a long week ahead but I'm already looking forward to the weekend. I'm hoping we can explore another local beach or local area that we haven't visited yet. Toodles....

Rain out and money making!

Well our baseball game started out great! The boys were waiting in the grassy outfield to catch a homer. We decided to move closer to watch the game. There were not a lot of people at the game so you could sit pretty much wherever you wanted. Both boys got asked to participate in some on field activities after the 5th inning. Only Bry agreed to do it. Let me say, it was the longest 5 innings ever..haha..Bry was excited to get to go on the field. Well as the game continued the dreaded rain clouds, thunder and lightning started to roll in. Boo! Finally at the middle of the 5th inning, we had to leave the seats due to lightning. We checked the radar and the strong storms were really close and not going to miss us so we decided to go ahead and leave. How depressing it was to leave because only 1/2 of the inning was left before Bry's big appearance. Oh well, it was a good thing we left because the sky opened up with torrential rains, thunder and super scary lightning!! Maybe another game day will be in our future! We still had a great time though. 

Well.....I'm still working on my couponing and doing a pretty good job and getting some great savings on things we actually normally use and normally buy. Here is an exception: This Starbucks iced coffee. I have never tried this or tasted it but I had coupons so I thought I would. Here's the best part......I made money!! You heard me right!! Ok, so here's the breakdown. They were originally $1.99 at Walgreens, but on sale for $1.00 with a register reward coupon that would print out at the end for a $1.00 coupon to be used on anything at Walgreens. I also had a $1.00 off coupon for each one...

$1.99 on sale for $1.00 minus $1.00 coupon = zero dollars to pay AND they gave me a $1.00 coupon to spend at Walgreens with no minimum purchase. I did this on both so I have 2 of the dollar coupons now. I haven't tried the coffee yet, that will be tomorrow, but if I like it I'll go back and use my 2 dollar coupons to get two more coffees for FREE and get two more coupons for $1. each...ha ha..... Funny! I hope I like it! I'll let you know.

Mike posted this picture on FB for throw back Thursday of us in Hawaii in 2001! Wow...We went again in 2007 and we want to go again  now!! We were hoping for 2015, but with some unforeseen events looks like we will be planning for 2016, but that's OK. We are determined to get there, so hopefully one day we will make it back and take the boys...it's so beautiful and we love it!!

It was a nice relaxing weekend. Saturday we decided to check out the local flea market. Let me just tell you it's the mega-flea market!! It's so huge! We only saw a little bit of it so we will go again to see more, wow it was overwhelming!! We need to go early, without the boys, and plan to spend several hours browsing!! Then we spent some time in the afternoon relaxing at the pool. 

I'm looking forward to this being a short week for the 4th holiday.  We are going to have some friends and family over and cook burgers and hot dogs and play some yard games. I might even make my Sangria punch! It is fabulous!! We will probably get a few sparklers for the boys and hang out at the house for the evening. I'm not into getting in the big crowds and traffic to watch fireworks. The best fireworks we ever saw would have to be the ones in St. Louis for 4th of July....wow!! Those were worth the crowds and traffic! 

Well it's time to "Wine" down for the evening and get ready for the short week ahead. Toodles!! 

Live life to it's fullest!

I read this article on FB and wow...it is so true! This has been my new outlook this past year or so. We all have our own insecurities but you have to think of your kids and not yourself. This can apply to multiple situations and not just a swimsuit. Read it and think about it...we only get one chance at life! Live life to it's fullest! 

This article is a must read...  click here to read it.

A few lines from the end of the article:

I refuse to miss my children's high-pitched, pool-induced giggles because of my insecurities.

I refuse to let other women's judging eyes at the pool prevent me from exposing my kids' eyes to the wonder of the sun glittering on the water.

I refuse to let my self-image influence my children's.

I refuse to sacrifice memories with my children because of a soft tummy.

Because at the end of the day, it is not just about me.

It is about my kids.

I want them to remember twirling in the water with their mom.

I want them to remember splash fights together.

I want them to remember jumping off the edge of the pool into my arms.

I want them to remember that their mom was there, with them.