Saturday, April 23, 2011

Atlantis-Fish Fun

Atlantis has awesome aquariums! We saw a ton of sharks.
A ton of fish. I love how the aquarium goes up over you.
Creepy eels. They looked like the ones on Little Mermaid.
Sting Rays!
The big thing behind Bryce is a Manta Ray. They had two and they were about 8 feet across I think.
Walking above the hammerhead sharks

Walking through an aquarium. It actually goes all the way over you and you could see fish swimming above your head.

This awesome Grouper. We all loved him.
The fish down low is a Saw Fish. Very different looking fish and very cool to see.
Love this picture!
Kyle and Grandpa on a night walk past the hammerheads.
The Hammerheads! This was the thing the boys were most excited about seeing when we went. We ended up buying a hammerhead shark to use as a Christmas ornament.
The creepy eels again.
Check out how thick the glass is. No need to worry about that breaking. I love how mesmerized he was.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Atlantis-Water Fun

I've been trying to do this post for 2 days, and it looks like the pictures are finally working. Somehow I didn't get a picture of Kyle on the "white slides" which he loved so much, so here is Graham. They had a bunch of little pools with these slides connecting them. They were the only slides the Graham and Kyle could do and they loved them.
The boys playing in the kids area.
Baby Claire even got in on the swimming. As a side note, I think she had a different swimsuit every day we were there. Grace needs to do some serious shopping.
If you were sitting at our seats at all during the day, you were watching Graham do this...over and over and over again.
I loved this slide. You end up in a tube that goes through a shark tank. You go through that part pretty slow so we got to watch them swim under us, over us, next to us, etc.
Evan loved it too.
Brandon vs Ben. My Dad, Brandon, Bryce, Ben, and Camille did this race several times a day. It even times you at the bottom so they could have competitions. Sadly Brandon was not the big winner but he had a blast.

Floating the "Crazy River" as Kyle named it. It took about 30 minutes to go around the 1 mile loop. They had a tidal wave, rapids (or bunnies as Kyle called them...he thought we were saying rabbits, not rapids), and a fun conveyer belt. There was even a conveyer belt to take you up to some of the slides to help you be sure to gain the adequate amount of vacation weight.
The pool next to the actual Lazy River where you just float slowly. Somehow my kids decided to pose like Power Rangers in almost every photo this trip.
Attempting a picture of these 4 proved pretty tricky.
The blob at the bottom of the slide is Evan holding Grace. She was not so sure about this technique.

An actual successful photo of our 3.
We got to the kid area before it opened so we took pictures to distract the kids.
Grace loves Grandpa.
Our little model. She has awesome tan lines now.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Atlantis-Family Pics

Over spring break my entire family headed to Paradise Island, Bahamas for a week of fun in the sun. I'm copying Camille's idea and attempting to blog about it in a series of posts, so here we go. We spent our last night doing family photos (we all wanted a little color first).Our new family picture
Bryce, Camille, Graham, and Claire
This was the first time we got to meet Claire and she is a cutie. I also just noticed in this pic that I think she and Grace have the same taste in shoes.

Grandma and Grandpa with the 5 (soon to be 6) grandkids
Katie looks so cute pregnant. I wish I looked that cute....pregnant or not.
Katie and Ben
All 13 of us
Click on this to see Kyle's expression a little better. Classic.
My cute parents
We tried to do updated photos of our kiddos
This was the only picture Grace would allow, but it turned out awesome.
Poor Evan sunburned his cheeks. I need to redo his pictures later.
An actual photo of the 2 of us. These don't happen very often so enjoy it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Math Star

Our school district decided to honor math month by honoring math stars. Of the 13,000 or so students in the district 116 got to be honored and Evan was one of them. Pretty exciting stuff. We went with my parents to the school board meeting for him to get his big award.

Here he is with his teacher, Mrs. Pittenger, and his two buddies Sage and Jacob who also got an award. Such cute and excited kindergarteners. He was so pumped he got a medal. The certificate is coming to his school tomorrow.
Sitting for the big group picture.
All of the math stars who showed up tonight. Pretty fun to get an award at a school board meeting when you are only 6. I think Evan may take after his mom and turn into a math geek. There could be worse things in life. Oh, and in other news he can officially tie his own shoes. So nice to not have to do that anymore.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Front Yard Makeover

We haven't loved the look of our front yard since the day we moved in. Since then quite a few plants have died...the landscapers didn't plant them right. We could have demanded new plants, but we didn't want what we had so today we decided to do a front yard makeover.Here is the before. Just blah...especially that strip between the walkway and the driveway. (Click on the photos to get the full effect)
A close up of the patch by the porch. Not terrible, but we weren't in love and we wanted more stuff that flowers.
Here is the after. Brandon mowed and edged, we snagged some rocks from an empty lot, planted some flowers and decorative grass, and transplanted some of the stuff from the middle strip to make it look more full, and did all new bark.
A close up of one of the rocks with some cute flowers. They are supposed to stay green all year too, unlike some of our previous stuff that dies off to nothing in the winter.
The strip between the walk and driveway. These are just starting to bloom and will have white flowers, then the leaves change to red for the winter and should be pretty. Plus we planted the purple azalea at the top of the picture where previously we had a dead plant.
This is the side of our neighbors house, but it is what ours looked like too.
Here is what we have now. Brandon did the walkway a week or two ago and today we did the flowers and bark. Now we don't look like every other house in our neighborhood which is kind of what we were going for. Anyway, that was our day.