It's A Wonderful Life: September

It's been another crazy month here in South Florida!

The Mets were in town Labor Day weekend, so we headed down to Miami to see a game. The stadium is beautiful, and thank goodness it's an air conditioned dome because I don't know if we could have done it otherwise!

The next weekend, Matt and I drove up to South Carolina to attend his cousin's wedding. The wedding was gorgeous, and we had an awesome time with his family. The island we were on had tons of dolphins around, and it was really cool to sit and watch their fins and occasionally a face popping in and out of the water.

The best part about going up to the wedding was that Mary came back down to Florida with us. She stayed a few days and got to spend time with the kids, which they were thrilled about. Her time here went quickly, and unfortunately, we were working and didn't have a ton of time to do any fun exploring. We were also busy because Jacqi had her baby that Tuesday!

I had the incredible honor of being with her and Brian in the delivery room as they welcomed Braelyn into the world. Being there with them was indescribable and I feel so blessed that I was able to be a part of it.

Once they were home and settled, I also had the honor of doing some newborn photos for them. Here is my beautiful new niece!!! :)

Our kids are crazy about Braelyn. Seeing Reese meet her was soooo sweet.

Reese finally caught a lizard in the house. She was very excited. I didn't tell her that it was missing a leg, which is why it was slow enough for her to snag. That would have ruined her excitement. :)

Austin caught another one for her when we were over at their house swimming a couple weeks ago. She loves those things!

Reese and Charlie both became brave enough to try out Brian and Jacqi's pool slide.

This was the only picture I got of Charlie going down the slide. Matt was at the bottom to catch him so he didn't go under (even though he had his floater on).

Grandma Betty and my dad were in town that weekend as well. Grandma is now an official Florida resident, but Dad had to head back to Illinois for a little longer.

That evening, the kids found coconuts in the backyard and Reese wanted to see one opened up. Brian was awesome enough to go through the labor intensive process of showing us how it's done. The kids LOVED it!

We discovered the boardwalk at Hollywood Beach. It's a great little area with little shops and lots of restaurants. There is great people watching, and we have been enjoying our newfound hangout . The beach there is beautiful, and we really enjoy the scenery.

The kids enjoy the park area there as well.

When we went last weekend, we didn't have our suits because we were only planning to go for lunch--no swimming. But when we saw how calm and perfect the water was, we decided to walk down and just get our toes wet. And that lasted about….30 seconds. :)

Reese has been enjoying snuggling up and watching football with Matt. The questions she asks about the game are so cute.

After our family story time each night, Reese has been enjoying using her princess reader to read herself stories until she falls asleep. I love finding her like this.

We have had a couple FaceTime dates with Jordan, Olivia, Audrina, and Beckett. The kids love seeing them.

We had big plans to tackle some house projects last weekend. We were going to start on Saturday, but ended up at the beach. And then Sunday, we woke up and discovered that the weather was absolute perfection. It was "only" 80 degrees, and almost no humidity. So we decided to blow off our house projects again and head for the zoo. The zoo here is so great. The animals are separated by natural barriers, and you are so close to them.

We were lucky enough to show up just in time for feeding time for the apes. It was so fun to watch them catching the oranges the zookeeper was throwing to them.

The zoo has an awesome playground and splash pad. The kids had a blast playing there after we were done visiting the animals.

Ever since my half marathon, Reese has been asking me if she can do a race. She wants to earn a medal. So she and I had a date day last Friday. I picked her up from school, we had lunch and went shopping. We found running clothes and running shoes. As soon as we got home, she was ready to go for her first run. She immediately went outside and started stretching before we got started, which was so cute to me.

I let her run/walk as much as she wanted, and she ended up run/walking a 1/2 mile!

I sure do love this little gal. :)

Today, we headed an hour north to visit a pumpkin patch with my mom and Jacqi's family. The kids had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, these were the only 2 pictures I snapped. It was just too crowded and hot to get out the camera!

We didn't buy pumpkins there because I'm too cheap for that. Instead, we stopped at Aldi for $2.99 pumpkins on the way home. The kids painted them this evening and they had a blast.