Best Friends!

My best friend in the whole world, Molly, came to visit us for the past few days with her four month old daughter, Isla! The girls were in absolute heaven taking care of Isla and constantly wanted to "help" Molly feed her or rock her or hold her...you name it and if it involved Isla, the girls wanted to be right in the middle of the action!!! They are in LOVE with her and so are Matt and I. She is absolutely beautiful and the sweetest, happiest little baby! We went to the beach every day and had so much fun that when they left today, our whole family was so, so sad. The girls keep asking where Baby Isla is and don't seem to understand why she isn't here anymore. Our house almost seems quiet without Molly and Isla here!!!! (and that's saying a lot because Reagan and Riley are NEVER quiet!!!). We'll go and visit them again soon in Cleveland and their whole family (Molly's husband, Walt..who is Matt's best friend) and their son, Little Walt, will come again in the spring. We are already counting down the days. What a fabulous few days we had...feeling so blessed! (The two pictures at the end were from the beach this morning! R and R wanted to try on our sunglasses...Molly's may never fit the same again!).

The most amazing trip!!!!!!!

We got back on Friday afternoon from Michigan. We had such an unbelievable trip that I'm having a hard time even starting this post because there is so much to talk about!!!! The girls did so well on both legs of the trip...we flew into Detroit and then had to drive four hours up north. They did so great and we were so proud of them! The entertained everyone on the plane ride there with their singing...it was pretty funny! We went straight to their Great Grandparent's house and the girls FINALLY got to meet Great Grandma!!!! It was bittersweet since Grandpa has now been moved to Grandvue and is no longer there. But....they had a blast with Great Grandma and especially loved jumping off of her front steps again and again and again! (see video!). After we left Great Grandma, we went to the condo we were staying at to meet up with everyone else! The girls got to meet Uncle Bruce and Aunt Mary Jo for the first time ever and got to see Uncle Jim and Aunt Irma again! They also got to meet all of my cousins (except for Erin who is living in London!)....Andy, Kristi, Amanda, and Matt! (and their significant others too....Jayme, Noah and Stephanie!). Even more special was that Amanda and Matt had their kids there too....Colton, Caroline and Julia. The girls had so much fun playing with them all week!  They loved playing in the canoe at Gram's house too...Bruce told me it's over 30 years old! It was so great having so much family around all week and the girls were just entertained nonstop.  I can't say enough about how much fun we all had!
We did so many great things while we were there...we stayed in Boyne City right on Lake Charlevoix. It was so beautiful! The girls loved swimming in the lake and loved playing with Jim and Irma's dog, Scout! One night as we were putting the girls down to bed, Scout came down with us and Reagan put her arms around her and said "This is our family!" It was the sweetest thing ever...and ALMOST has me wanting to get the girls a dog again. Almost. Not quite. If I could guarantee the dog would be as great as Scout I'd do it!  We found a great playground in Boyne City and were there every morning by 8am! The girls loved watching the boats in the lake and we even made it to the Boyne City Farmer's Market! Of course we had to get them lemonade...they love it so much, and some Michigan cherries too! It was their first time having cherries and they loved them! The girls had about 2 boxes worth of popsicles on our trip. We picked the one week of the year where it was about 99 degrees every day...it's NEVER like that up there. It was so, so hot! But the girls didn't mind a bit as long as they had their popsicles (and we had to stop for Kilwin's ice cream a few times too, but that was more for Mommy and Daddy!).
One of the most special parts of the trip was a party for Great Grandma to celebrate her 90th birthday!!! They were able to bring Great Grandpa over so the girls were able to meet him too! It was so, so, so special and I'm so thankful we were there for it. My Great Aunt Shirley came too as did some of Grandma's friends! I'm not sure that Reagan and Riley will remember this trip, but I will remember it for the rest of my life and we have all of these great pictures and videos to show them of all of the fun that they had! There are a bunch of them here...two videos and a bunch of pictures.  At the end is a little compilation video that I put together with music. I was just playing around with a new app on my iphone. It's only 25 seconds and includes most of the pictures that I put on here already, but it's still kind of neat....All in all, it was just the best trip ever and I hope that we can get back up there next summer with the whole family again!!!!

Discovery House

My friend Kay and I took the kids (Reagan and Riley and Kay's son Joshua, "Joshy") to a new children's museum that recently opened in Jacksonville called The Discovery House. It's an old gas station that has been converted into a bunch of different rooms of different types of things for kids to explore and play with. The kids had a blast. They loved playing in the kitchen, the office and being able to pet a bunny. But most of all, they loved being able to paint! They have an entire section of the place designated for arts and crafts and they just let the kids do whatever they want! The girls each painted a butterfly and then created some art on the wall. The walls were all painted in chalkboard paint too, so the kids could just draw all over the walls which Reagan and Riley thought was the best thing ever! After they painted they played with playdough for about 25 minutes (longer than they've ever done it with me!).  The only problem with this place is that it's about 30 minutes away on the other side of town. I wish there was one closer and we'd go a lot more! We'll definitely head back there again soon (especially if it means the girls can paint and get messy in someone else's space other than mine!).
We head up to Michigan on Monday...we're so excited to see the whole Sturgell family! (well, almost the whole family...we'll miss my parents and Laurie, Nathan and Cooper and Ben, Michele and Taylor!). I can't wait for Reagan and Riley to finally meet their other Great Grandma and Great Grandpa and their aunts and uncles and cousins! It's going to be a blast and I'll take TONS of pictures and will post as soon as we get back next Friday! 

A morning at the Zoo

The girls and I hadn't been back to the Jacksonville Zoo since Matt's whole family was here in February...I can't believe it's been that long! So we were the first ones in line at the doors this morning at 9:00 when they opened. As hot as it can get here in Jacksonville in the summer, I wanted to beat the heat. It was awesome. We pretty much had the zoo to ourselves for the first hour. We rode the train all around the zoo, we went to all of the exhibits and saw all of the girl's favorite animals and then we rode the Carousel. The only thing we didn't do this time was feed the giraffes, because we were there too early! It was a great morning and I renewed our membership while I was there so I have no excuses now...we just need to bring Matt with us next time!

A Fabulous Fourth of July!

We found out early last week that the PGA Tour was giving all employees Friday off of work! So we called Nana and BopBop and asked if they wouldn't mind 4 more visitors for the long weekend! They said sure and off we went!
We had so much fun and spent the majority of the 4 days either in a pool or at the beach. The weather was perfect and not even that hot! Reagan and Riley got to practice sleeping in big girl beds again and did a really good job! I think we may be getting closer to making the move here at the house...we'll see!
The girls had a blast playing with Cooper and Nana had bought the girls new Fourth of July swimsuits that were adorable! We were sad to say goodbye to everyone but we'll see them all again next month when we travel back for Riley's big annual checkup at MUSC and to celebrate BopBop's birthday!

Best kiddo waterpark EVER!

While we were in Kiawah for the Fourth, we went to one of the new waterparks in Kiawah. It was so amazing and perfect for kids. It had one of those gradual entrances and Reagan and Riley could stand in almost the entire pool, although they both want to be floating around and on their OWN the whole time! Riley spends most of the time in the pool underwater these days...she loves to put her face in! There were fun waterslides for kids and a BIG one for the grownups. We had an absolute blast...the kids AND the big kids!!!! BopBop must have gone down the big slide 10 times (Matt and Laurie and I did too...) and Nana had fun in the rocket ship boat! It was awesome and the girls are still talking about it. We'll definitely go back again next month!!!! Here are a bunch of videos of the girls in action!

Our first movie!!!

It has been a nasty week here in Jacksonville! It's rained almost every day (and I don't mean a sprinkle...more like a monsoon) and so I've had a tough time coming up with ways to entertain the girls! So, we found out that some of the movie theaters here in the summer host kid's movie days and they show movies for $1 (in the real theater!) and you can get a snack with popcorn, fruit snacks and and a drink for $5. What a deal! I figured that it would be the perfect time to test out a movie in a theater since it only cost me $3 total to get in (yes...I bought the popcorn too!...so I guess it was $8, but that's still WAY better than a normal movie!).  We went with the girl's best buds... Joshua (Joshy) and his mom Kay, and the twins, Addison and Emma and their mom Robin. None of the kids had ever been to a movie before so we weren't quite sure what we were in store for!
Reagan and Riley were SO excited all the way there. They couldn't stop talking about it. They kept telling me how we had to make sure and sit on our bottoms and only use our inside voices. Ha! (If only they would have followed their own advice once we actually got into the movie!). The movie was called ICE AGE and it was really cute. We made it for almost 45 minutes total (15 minutes were previews) and then Riley just couldn't take sitting in the seat anymore, so we had to leave. As soon as we got out to the lobby and she realized we were leaving though, she burst into tears and wanted to go back in. At least she'll know for next time what happens if she starts dancing in the aisles!
All in all, I count it a success! We got out of the house, tried something new and had fun! (and I now know that Reagan loves popcorn...A LOT!). We'll definitely try it again sometime soon (but next time I'm bringing Matt!!!!!).