Legoland Florida

Earlier this week we headed to Legoland. Our homeschool co-op arranged for a field trip and we were able to get amazingly inexpensive tickets. There were 167 people from our co-op there, but since it was a ‘self-guided’ tour, we were able to all do our own thing. It was our first trip to Legoland, although Jonathan and I had been to Cypress Gardens when we were kids. The last time I went to Cypress Gardens though was one summer in college so it had been a long time.

Rosemary and Ben loved Legoland. And we all had a great day.

The lion roared as we were getting ready to take Rosemary’s photo.

Ben wasn’t quite tall enough to ride some of the rollercoasters, so he and I waited for Jonathan and Rosemary to ride the dragon. He was pretty content to dress up like a pirate.

The gardens brought back lots of memories of family trips to Cypress Gardens when I was little. I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of me and my brother somewhere near this sign with a real southern belle.

Another Cypress Gardens icon.

We rested a bit under the big banyan tree that’s still there.

Another lego southern belle

Miniland was one of Ben’s favorite spots and it really was a pretty neat area with all the lego creations of big US cities.

We caught the ski show and that brought back lots of memories too.

While Rosemary and I rode another rollercoaster, Ben, Charlotte, and Jonathan built a lego car and raced it.

This was a fun wooden coaster. Pretty fast and a lot of fun.

Our last ride of the day (and we didn’t get any photos while on it) was the Island in the Sky. It was around five o’clock so the sky was beautiful. Again, lots of good memories and it was fun to share that with our kids.

We closed the place up and didn’t even ride all of the rides. We enjoyed the entire day.

Cedar Key

It’s been unseasonably warm here recently so we took advantage of a gorgeous Saturday last week and headed over to Cedar Key for lunch and some playground time.

We have always eaten at one of two restaurants in Cedar Key. The one by the water is the Seabreeze (the other one is The Island Hotel and Restaurant, where we got engaged). While we waited, we got some fun photos of the kids.

After lunch, we walked over to the playground. It was chilly right by the water, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. I found a place out of the wind and hung out there with Charlotte for most of the time.

Ben loved this super-steep slide. At first he didn’t want to go down it, but once he did it, he kept going down over and over.

There were two rock walls. This one…

…and this one. Rosemary did them both on her own.

Charlotte hanging out with Daddy.

I got some time with her too.

Rosemary not only really enjoyed but also was really good on the barrel.

Ben climbed the little rock wall.

Swinging on the tire swing.

And on the regular swing.

Charlotte’s Birthday

Jonathan took the day off to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday. We spent the morning at home while Ben was at preschool. The kids napped in the afternoon and that night we went to dinner at Cody’s. It was just a nice relaxing day as a family.

After dinner, we headed home for Charlotte’s birthday cupcake.

We had Charlotte’s one year check-up later that week and she weighed in at 18 lbs, 12 oz (the biggest any of our kids have been at 1 year, but still 10th percentile) and was 28.5 inches long (5th percentile). Her head circumference was in the 75th percentile.

Charlotte is a confident cruiser but has yet to take her first steps or stand on her own. She babbles a lot but isn’t saying many words on a consistent basis.

We’ve been transitioning her to be on table foods completely and we are completely off bottles and onto sippy cups. In the weeks since her birthday, we’ve also moved her to a booster seat at the table in moved the high chair out of the dining room. She is a little Houdini so she’s strapped in much better with the booster! We’ve moved out of the baby bath tub as well and she’s now getting her baths in the big tub.

Charlotte continues to have a sweet temperament. She’s a great sleeper, still at 2 naps a day and sleeping about 12 hours at night.

She’s still our little baby, even though I know she’ll be less and less baby-like in the coming months. We’re cherishing this time while we can.