Nine is Fine!

Mattea turned nine and she started her birthday out right... with breakfast in bed!  It's a family tradition. 

 She loved opening her presents and we loved watching her facial expressions while she did it!  She is very easy to please, so it was very fun to give her presents that would make her happy.  She had been eyeballing a cute iPod case instead of the boring, practical one we made her use, so she freaked out when we FINALLY got her a cute kitty cat case.  She also loved the sparkly headphones from Justice!

 

For her party, Mattea, Valeria, Sami and Hannah went to the open gym at her gymnastics studio and then had a sleepover.  They ate pizza, brownies and ice cream with tons of whipped cream & sprinkles, watched movies and stayed up late.  The next morning, we took them to eat pancakes and watch a flick at the Movie Tavern.  They had a blast and kept trying to convince us that the party hadn't been long enough, but for the rest of us, it had!!!   Happy 9th Birthday, Tater Tots!!!

 

Girls on the Run 5k

Mattea joined the Girls on the Run program offered through her elementary school.  The group met twice a week for 8 weeks where they would walk, run and talk about issues that girls face in the world.  At the end of the program, all of the girls were signed up to run a 5k race called The Candy Run.  I totally lucked out and Uncle Terry happened to be in town the day Mattea and I were going to run the race, so they were able to run it together. 

They did their stretches before we left for the race...















they did handstands when they got to the race...

they did cartwheels during the race...

and they held hands while running the race... like the ENTIRE time... how adorable is that???  

Fall Sports

Mattea played for Crush, a competitive softball league, this year.  Her team was registered as a 10U team which means there were some girls that were almost 12 years old.  Mattea was the youngest player on her team.  She played with a great group of girls and they learned so much by playing against girls older than them.  Some of the other teams have been playing together for many years.  Mattea primarily played outfield and 2nd base.  She made some good plays at 2nd base and, although there wasn't a lot of action in the outfield, she had a spectacular catch one game that gave her some good bragging rights. 

Josh chose not to play tackle football this fall and played fall baseball instead.  Since he hadn't played fall ball before, we searched out a team and found the Parker Raptors.  The team was coached by Jim Vaughn and he was awesome!  Josh's new teammates quickly made him feel welcome.  His team had a great season and Josh had a great time playing with them.  He played catcher, outfield and second base.

Fall Break in Florida

Just like last year, we headed to Florida for fall break.  This year, we rented a house in Pompano Beach and Uncle Terry came along with us.  The house had 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, an outdoor pool and boardwalk access right to the beach.  It was such a good decision to rent a house versus staying in a hotel like we did last year.  We had so much more space, our own kitchen and the kids weren't constantly hounding us to go to the beach since they could play in the pool until we were ready to go.  We enjoyed the lizards that came sunning on our pool deck, too!

Saturday morning, we had a yummy breakfast at Duffy's Cafe and then went on the hunt for a sporting goods store to buy fun stuff for the pool and the beach.  After that, we hit the grocery store for a week's worth of food so we didn't need to eat out so much.  We spent a huge chunk of change at the store, but in the long run, it was the less expensive option.  For the rest of the day, we played in the pool, went to the beach and the kids rode their boogie boards in the waves.  Mattea had fun building sand castles, too.

Our grocery store receipt

 

On Sunday, Alex woke up not feeling too great so we had a pretty low-key day alternating between the beach, the pool and watching football.

On Monday, we took a road trip to Marco Island and had a surprise visit from Aunt Julie & Uncle Kevin!!!  Crazy coincidences had us in Florida at the same time just 2 hours apart.  We felt so lucky to get to spend the day with them.  Julie scheduled a boat ride/dolphin excursion for us all and Kevin paid for it which was so incredibly generous.  We saw quite a few dolphins, including a baby and her mother.  The boat dropped us off on a private beach to hunt for sea shells and go swimming.  Everyone had a great time and we topped off the fun day with an amazing meal at the Snook Inn.

After breakfast on Tuesday morning, we headed towards Ft Lauderdale to rent bikes to ride along the ocean. Alex was disappointed that we couldn't find a place to rent longboards.  Apparently, "longboards" in Florida mean surfboards and not skateboards!  Everyone but Josh and Mattea ended up with beach cruisers.  Man, the seats on those are COMFY!!!  We took a ride through a state park where there were workout stations every half mile, so of course we stopped and did those, too! After that, we headed down to ride along the beach.  We rode for awhile and then stopped for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the ocean.  When we got back to the house, the kids and Uncle Terry went to ride the waves and then we had a volleyball game in the pool.  After dinner, we drove to Boca Raton for a movie.  We showed up at the iPics Theaters and were completely blown away.  It was the fanciest movie theater we had ever seen.  We opted for the premium seats... I mean, it's VACATION... which meant we each had a recliner, a pillow, a blanket and unlimited popcorn.  We were the only ones in the theater, so we jokingly thanked Jeff for renting out the entire theater for our family!  We all wished the movie lasted longer and were sad when we had to vacate our recliners to leave.

Wednesday was a very low-key day.  Uncle Terry wasn't feeling well, so after breakfast, we left him at the house chillin' while we went for a long walk on the beach.  The water was "angry" so there were lots of waves and washed-up jellyfish. We spent the rest of the day relaxing.  Mattea decided she would do a workout. I kid you not... for at least a solid hour, she did multiple rounds of scaling the stairs (monkey-style) and laps in the pool.  We finally had to make her stop as she showed no signs of fatigue, but we were worried she would be sore the next day.  Crazy girl.  I wish I still had energy like that.

 On Thursday, we were supposed to go snorkeling, but sadly, the water was still tough rough so our adventure was cancelled.  Instead, we played in the pool and then went souvenir shopping.  We spontaneously decided to take the kids trick-or-treating since it was Halloween, so we shopped for some cheap costumes.  But, as we all know, they don't seem to make cheap costumes that are also cool.  So, we opted to just get Mattea dressed up.  We bought some miscellaneous items from Party City to make her look like a rock star and called it good.  Our next obstacle was figuring out where to trick-or-treat since we hadn't seen many kids in the neighborhood where we were staying.  We ended up in Boca Raton.  There didn't seem to be many kids around, but since Mattea was getting anxious, Jeff dropped us off to ring the doorbell at a house.  The lights were on, but I was a little hesitant since I didn't see any other families out trick-or-treating.  This nice guy answered the door and Mattea said "Trick-or-Treat".  He looked a little surprised, but smiled and then said "Just a minute."  He closed the door and then came back a minute later with an apple!  Mattea was happy about the apple, but we all knew that those people were NOT expecting trick-or-treaters, so we moved to a different neighborhood.  We finally found this fancy neighborhood where there were other people out walking around.  Some of the houses just had fancy bins of candy sitting outside their gates.  We were in awe of the houses, so it was fun walking around.  Some of them had some really great decorations.  It was a Halloween to remember!

 

  On Friday, it was time to head back home.  We were all bummed to leave the beach and the pool, but it was nice to be back home and I know Cody was happy to see us!