Everybody Needs Friends

I am finally getting around to posting about our trip to Florida (with a stop in GA on the way)!

We are blessed to have really great friends who just happen to live several states away. So what do we do when we want to see those friends? Take a 14 hour car ride, that's all!! :)

Our first stop was in GA to visit our church friends that live there. We stayed with our very good friends, the Lesters (somehow I forgot to take any pictures while we were at their house, I guess because we were only there for about 24 hours!) We drove most of the night Wed night to get there and then took a couple short naps on Thursday.

Thursday night, Ralston was graduating from preschool, but Isabelle was not in a good mood, and we were still pretty tired, so we skipped the graduation and then met everyone for ice cream afterwards. I stole the first few pictures from Dawn's blog.

Riley really enjoyed his ice cream:

So did Isabelle and I:

and Isabelle and Daddy:

That afternoon, before going to get the ice cream, we got to meet Andrea and Nirav's precious new 3 week old baby, Abigail Krupali Shah. She was so tiny, and absolutely adorable! So happy for them!

On Friday, we drove the rest of the way to see the Bramletts in Florida.

I think this picture is fromt the first night we were there: Isabelle and Kirk-a-ley playing with a baby doll:
Even though the weather was foul, we still got to go out and experience a little bit of Florida. Saturday, we went to the Gulfarium, where we got to see dolphins, sea lions, and a few other interesting creatures.

Kirkley had it made riding around in this awesome sling. I have to get one of those for the next baby! That foot in her face cracks me up.

We got to stop and take a peek at the dolphins in the tank before going up for the show:

Izzy enjoying a green apple while waiting for the sea lion show to start: Noah looks like he wants a bite.

Our only family beach pic from the whole weekend:

Shaking fins with the dolphin statue:

Touch tank:

Picture with the lovely Bramlett family while waiting for the sea lions.

Amber took this one. I love Isabelle's scrunchy face:

One of the shows was a sea lion and dolphin together. This was a really cool trick. That lady is about to put a fish in the mouth of that sea lion, but he's not going to eat it.

Amber also gets credit for this awesome action shot: The dolphin looks like he is going to eat the sea lion, but he is actually going to take the fish straight from the sea lions mouth.

For dinner we went to this really cool place called Fudpucker's. If you have to wait to be seated somewhere, this is a pretty cool place to have to wait. They have a "lagoon" with baby alligators to look at while you wait. Izzy thought these were really cool.

Amber took this one too. I think it is my favorite pic of the weekend.

All three of these little girls have red hair. They look like they could be sisters:

Noah loving on his baby sister. He is a great big brother.

Baby Kirkley has the sweetest little grin:

"Umm, maybe you shouldn't chew on that."

Isabelle really enjoyed playing with Noah's blocks, dinosaurs (or sinosaurs as she calls them), and cars. So her Daddy went out and bought her all three of those things when we got home.

This one is of all the kids before church on Sunday:

I also have to mention my incredible trip to Publix Saturday night. It is grocery store that I WISH we had in VA. They have great B1G1 sales, and they accept competitor coupons. Anyway, Amber helped me organize all my coupons (and even hooked me up with a few) and we hit the store. I got almost $140 worth of groceries for a grand total of......are you ready?............about $16.00!!!!!! That total will go down in the history books!

Anyway, we had a wonderful time getting to see all of our friends, just wish it could have been longer!