Easter is almost upon us...

Easter is almost upon us.......and that means so is spring and summer! I absolutely LOVE this time of year when the weather is the best, the air is fresh, and there is GREEN everywhere. I also love spring colors and styles and the idea that this means SUMMER is right around the corner!! January-March are VERY BUSY months for me with work and in our little community where we live in general because it is "season" here in Florida and we have all of our northern snow birds in town which generates a lot of activities in my office and in our community in general. It is great for our local economy so I have no complaints, but it is also great when the snow birds pack up and head back home because things slow down here a bit and we can all look forward to quieter days, weekends that are slower and more relaxed, no waiting at restaurants and safer roads as all of the "snow birds" are not on them!!

We are looking forward to so many things this spring including in the order they will likely occur:

1. The birth of another niece in the Burrow family, due around the first week of May
2. the birth of another niece or nephew in the Garn family (sex is a surprise but we think its a boy) due on our five year wedding anniversary, May 21, 2010!!
3. Our five year wedding anniversary (see above)...where has the time gone??!!
4. Jackson's second birthday, May 28, 2010 which we will be spending at Disney World (again, where has the time gone)!!
5. A big trip to Ohio to enjoy family and friends for 10 days in June where we will take in Cousin Corrie's wedding, Grandma Peshke's 80th birthday, we will get to meet Miss Lucy Ehrmin, Baby B #2 and Baby Garn #2, and we will get to spend a few days at the lake with Mimi and Papa and crew and also some time in Toledo with Grandma and Grandpa Donahue and crew
6. We're also hoping to take a week off just the three of us and rent a cottage or condo somewhere just a few hours away to relax towards the end of the summer in August...plans still in the works!

Happy Spring and Happy Easter all! We will be heading down to South Florida in a few days to meet up with our family friends, the Shermans to spend the Easter holiday. We are excited to see them and just relax. We're planning a beach egg hunt for Jackson so look for those pictures after the weekend! FOr now...back to work for me!!

Palm Sunday

We made it to church this morning for Palm Sunday and Jackson did very very well, especially considering mass was an hour and a half due to Palm Sunday mass. He sat fairly well through most of the mass and only went out with Jon at the very end after walking up with us for communion and a blessing for him. I met them in the car after the real end of the mass and we headed to a new favorite spot to go out to breakfast. Our little local airport has a well known restaurant that serves brunch and the COOLEST thing about this is that all of the weekend and seasonal visitors fly in and out on Sundays in their private jets and this airport has a landscaped garden right outside the restaurant and right along the run way!! I learned about this local secret on last month' s "municipal government" tour for my Chamber of Commerce Leadership program I am in when the director of the airport gave us a tour and showed us this little space that is open to the public!!

Jackson LOVED to watch the jets take off and land (and so did we, the whole concept is just so far removed from our own lives, we saw car after car of people just drive RIGHT ONTO THE RUN WAY and get OUT of their cars and just board the planes like nothing was new)!!! Amazing...we need to play the lottery. Here are some pictures of Jackson in his Sunday best, we got so many compliments today at church and at breakfast on how handsome he is, one older lady said he was "pretty", ha!! Jon was a good sport too and without me even asking him, he wore a matching dress shirt and tie, what a good daddy he is!!!

time to dig out your bird feeders!!

For everyone that got a bird feeder from our family for Christmas, time to dig them out and get them ready for your yards! I confess that I forgot about mine or I would have put it out A LOT sooner down here, but none the less, with the Easter decorations out, egg coloring we did today, etc. I've got spring on the mind and I wanted to show you all how easy it was to assemble and how cool it looks hanging in our orange tree!!

The pictures will tell the story, but if you got one that requires a bottle to hold the bird seed, you need to enjoy an adult beverage of choice that comes in a clear or brown or green bottle, (whatever your preference) and then you need to head on down to Anderson's and get some good wild bird seed and then find a great spot in your yard to hang your feeder...a funnel is also helpful in this little project, but not required...send me pictures once you all hang your bird feeders!!

Touch a Truck!

This morning we took Jackson to our local fairgrounds where a local agency, Chilcare Resources, was putting on a Touch A Truck family festival. A lot of communities do things like this, for a small entry fee, you can touch, climb on, and explore large trucks and cars of all kinds! Some of the horns on the big trucks scared Jackson a bit, but he was in awe of all of the trucks up close and the weather is simply beautiful here today, so we all really had a nice time. We wrapped the morning up by letting him ride the ponies and then we went on a mini hay ride and Jon and Jackson even rode a little train they had there!

I know the director of Childcare Resources as her agency is one of the 30 some supported by our local United Way so she and I have worked together a lot over the past 3 years on their various campaigns. Childcare resources offers discounts in various day care programs around town for people that qualify for their program and they are strict on those that qualify, the mothers must be a single parent, working or going to school to qualify and there is an income qualification as well. It really meets a need for many mothers as now that I am paying beaucoup bucks for childcare, I can see how it would be nearly impossible for a single parent to afford that care so they could work or go to school to provide for their family all while doing this on a lower income.

It was a great way to get out and spend some time together, contribute to the goodwill of our community, and to take in the spectacular weather we are finally having!

Jackson is sleeping now, but when he wakes up we have more fun in store as we are headed to Build A Bear for his class mate Reese's second birthday party! I've never been to a party at Build A Bear (actually I've never even been in one of these stores) so this should be fun. What a GREAT Saturday!!


I will upload pictures later, I've tried two times now and the picture uploader is just not working:(

mid-week update

It is the middle of the week already (phew) and just to update you, NO grass yet...I'm hopeful though!! Maybe I need to move my eggs to a sunnier spot...but not too sunny!! I hope to have some sprouts soon to update about.

In other news, I was at my gym this week and they were handing out free Fitness magazines. I don't get too many magazines at home anymore as I really don't have much time to read them and they would just pile up and make me feel bad. However, this one was free so I took it! While reading it there was a "bootcamp" article so I clued into that and low and behold, it was an article about my trainers at my gym and there are photos showing the actual apparatus we used in the two bootcamps I did! Crazy, it even mentions there special weekend bootcamp they do at Gloria Estefan's resort. I did not do this mini one, oh no, I did two in a row for a total of 12 weeks but still, at least you can see some of the equipment we used and read about the program, pretty cool! I tried to find the link to this month's Fitness magazine, now I know why the gym was handing out FREE mags to the members!!! I could not find the link, but here is the link to the gym where they talk about it and show the bootcamp stuff...I may do one more yet going into summer, we'll see!http://www.longevityclubs.com/

Happy Wednesday everyone!!

arts & crafts in preparation for Easter!!

This morning we did an art project I have been wanting to try now for several weeks. I saw this project listed on a blog that I follow from time to time and I modified it slightly to make it work for my life (instead of somehow draining and partially cracking REAL eggs and using a real eggshell as our planter, we used colored plastic eggs and a pink foam egg carton rather than a cardboard one....we'll post progress shots as our grassy eggs grow just in time for Easter! Jackson and Jon are good sports in participating in my little project....

a day to write home about

Today was one of my favorite days in a long time......it was Saturday (always my favorite day of the week as we get a break from the craziness of the work/school routine of the week) but today was JUNIOR LEAGUE TOUR OF HOMES! The league does the tour of homes as our largest fundraiser of the year (tickets are $35.00 per person) and we usually raise around 30k or more to fund our philanthropic programs we host in the community during the year. Things that we do include a program called the sneaker exchange where kids from low income families get to be bussed to a payless shoe store to pick out new school shoes, a series of programs called "Done in a Day" (I chair this committee) where we support about 6 different non profit agencies that support under privileged women and children in the community and we fund a program for that agency that we complete in one day, things like painting a homeless family center's family gathering space, throwing a valentine's day party for teenage foster girls, throwing a Halloween party and serving a meal for low income kids in a low after school program, and hosting a holiday dinner and celebration with santa for an agency for foster children and their foster parents and more. I absolutely love to be a member of the league here where I live on this day as there is NEVER a shortage of amazing amazing homes to see on the tour and it is UNBELIEVABLE to see the amazing multi-million dollar ocean front homes decked to the nines by designers that are paid more than my entire house cost just to DECORATE the home. It is like coastal living comes to life and just AMAZING.

Besides getting to be in a cool home for half a day and tour a few more after my shift is over with, I have an excuse to wear one of my many bright and punchy Lily Pulitzer ensembles with matching pink shoes, pink purse and we have to wear a straw hat which signifies that we are a member of the league and a volunteer for the day. They station us throughout the various houses and the designer of the house is there to explain materials, fabric, paint colors, design scheme, you name it and also we get a little background on the house and the family that lives there (or doesn't live there in my case, this was a second home ocean front that the family uses a few weekends a year)!!! The family has 6 kids, 10 grand kids and I wish I had my camera with me as they had a PLAYROOM fully decked out in PB kids that was to die for, the play room was probably the square footage of my family room, kitchen, formal dining room and living room.......the entire house under air was 7,500 sq ft, ocean front and it was all done in the most beautiful pale aqua hue with creams and sandy colors to accent with oak bleached floors and marble throughout........they even had annie glass (what my chargers were from my PB shop wedding registry) in turquoise displayed around the house as art......simply amazing, I told Jon we need to win the lottery, I have the taste but not the pocketbook to support it, ugh:(

When I came back to reality and came home from the tour, Jackson was just getting up from his nap so I was excited to greet my pink rossy cheeked little boy and hold him while he continued to wake up (my favorite time as he is so cuddly and warm) and then we scrambled around and changed into swimsuits to hit the beach. It is ABSOULTELY a perfect weather weekend here, why people come to Florida in the spring (finally) as the weather has NOT been great this season. Mid-upper 70's and a bright blue cloud-less sky.

Here are some pictures of my guys enjoying the beach today, I forgot to get Jon to take a picture of me in my "ensemble" this morning, maybe I will wear it again in a few weeks for Easter (minus the hat)! I did get compliments from all the ladies coming through though, and my friends voted me best dresser for the day so that was fun considering I wear boring suits and blouses all week......just wait until I retire or win the lottery some day, it will be Lily shifts and Jack Rogers sandals for me every day, even if I'm just at home!!

Happy St. Patrick's day!

It has been another busy week and I did NOT get cards sent out for St. Patrick's day with having been gone part of last week and also having a visitor for the full week, I kind of lost track of St. Patrick's day!

Jackson and I are both wearing green today though so we are showing our Irish heritage to the world!! We hope the luck of the Irish is with all of you today!

Here are some pictures of Jackson wearing his new green polo from Grandma and Grandpa! He looked very handsome! He also has a cute shirt with a shamrock from Mimi that he wore but I did not get pictures, darn!!!

just a few more shots

here are a few more from our time at Epcot! We ran into Donald duck in Mexico!!

Gaylord Palms/Disney weekend

We just returned home from a 4 day mini vacation where we stayed up at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando which is an experience in itself as it is a resort with an inside atrium like a rain forest, go here to see it! http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylord-palms/ (I do not know how to make a live link so cut and paste into your web browser)


While we did have 2 horrible days of nothing but rain which was a MAJOR bummer as that never happens in Florida, we did get to amuse ourselves at the resort and go to Ikea and Mall of Millenia, a very cool mall and then Saturday after we had to say goodbye to Aunt Megan who had a flight back home that morning, we FINALLY got to go to "Mickey's house" as Jackson calls Magic Kingdom. HE LOVED IT! Every single time we go he can do and see more and this time was the all time best. He now knows a lot of the characters by name and calls out their names when he sees them! He waited patiently in line to personally hug is favorite, Goofy (as he says it "GOOCY" and also Donald Duck. He saw the others in the parade and thoroughly enjoyed himself. He even napped in the stroller while we sat in the sunshine in the rose garden looking at the back drop of CInderella's castle so we could stay a full day and we even took a monorail trip over to Epcot since our pass is a park hopper where we took in the scenes from the annual Flower and Garden festival that they have on display there now through May and we rode Finding Nemo and a few other attractions geared for Jackson's age before heading to the World showcase for some dinner. When we arrived back at the hotel we had been gone for 10 hours and we were all exhausted and went to bed early!

His birthday is on a Friday this year and we're taking a personal day that day to take him up there for his birthday before our Florida resident passes black out for the summer! Can anyone think of a better way for this little boy to spend his 2nd birthday??!!

Weekend pictures from the beach

We went to the beach on Sunday despite the warm sun, there was a very NORTHERN wind so we all have long sleeves on (as did everyone else at the beach other than a few random crazy kids that were actually swimming in water that could not have been more than 65 degrees!!!)

We discovered a new public beach and as we were headed for the car, we saw a little sign tucked away that said "picnic and playground area" so we followed a path and found the MOST amazing hidden little picnic oasis surrounded by really neat trees for shade and a gated brand new pirate's ship playground (we were at Treasure Coast beach park after all).

Have a good week everyone!!!

Happy Birthday Uncle Craig!

Today is Uncle Craig's birthday...I am a MAJOR slacker and did not get a card out so instead he gets a blog posting! We hope you have a wonderful day, thanks for being such a wonderful Uncle to Jackson, and a great brother in law to Jon and I:) Our computer is completely down and at the computer shop (darn virus) so sorry, not photos of Craig for the post:(

p.s. Julia, I am responding here to your question about visiting Disney in September...it is AWESOME and the best time to go. The parks will be very empty compared to when you were here last time and while it is a bit warmer than the spring months, it is really a great time to go due to the lower volume of travelers. You can walk on to just about anything. We had the best time ever there on our trip last year for Labor Day weekend in September. Keep us posted if you're coming down again, we will definitely meet up with you!

week in review

Wow we had a busy week with work, life, and celebrating my big 30th birthday! Our computer is OUT of commission again (this time the computer has a virus though and the internet still works, we just have to use our lap top) so at least I can get on line and stay in touch with the world!

I want to thank everyone for the wonderful birthday flowers, texts, emails, cards, gifts and wishes this week. It was a really special birthday! I'll upload some pictures here from my birthday celebration with Jon and Jackson at home.

We had a busy week and this coming week will also be busy. Aunt Megan arrived for her spring break this week. We took her out to dinner last night and to meet some friends and had a good time. We're hoping to get to the beach later this afternoon but it will still be a bit cool. Lucky for her, we have the first warm trend in store in about five weeks and it may crack 80 by Thursday! We are both working Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then we are off Thursday and Friday to go up to Orlando for some fun at Disney World. This will be the first trip where Jackson actually recognizes the various characters and can point them out by name so I am excited to see how he reacts. The weather is supposed to be really nice so we're looking forward to taking advantage of the fun pools at the hotel and also the Disney magic.

Happy Birthday Mommy Big 3-0

Please help me to wish Jenny a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!