Spring Break (part 2)

We met up with the Patton's at siesta key beach for a few hours to play in the sand and visit. The Weaver's joined us a little bit later....it was a really nice time. Everytime we go to the beach I wonder why we don't go more often, the kids have such a great time....but it is a lot of work.

We had an Easter egg hunt at a friend's house on Saturday. I think it was the twins first real egg hunt, they got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Dying easter eggs on Saturday afternoon!

We spent the afternoon with the Landress's today. It was nice to combine our food efforts and just chill with the kids. We did another little easter egg hunt and watched "Bolt" together. All in all it has been a very full spring break....definitely not too relaxing, but we had a lot of fun! Kids head back to school tomorrow and hopefully we'll have a little bit of "normal" around here. (whatever that looks like) :)

Spring Break (part 1)

Josiah and some of his classmate buddies at field day

We had the firetruck come to mom's morning out last tuesday. The kids enjoyed getting a chance to sit on the driver's seat and see all the cool firetruck tools.

Leighton got sick right before we had to leave for AR....the doctor said it was some sort of asthmatic thing and put her on steroids and albuterol neb treatments....my little independent girl wouldn't let me hold the mask on for her, she had to do it herself.

Kylie got Top Cat (a citizenship award) and was given her award at the assembly the friday before spring break!

The PTO did a penny drive the week before spring break....each grade had a teacher volunteer to be the pie in the face person...and the 3 grades with the highest amount of money got to throw a pie in the 3 grades with the lowest amount of money. The vice-principal and principal also had goals for the whole school set and after raising over 2500 dollars they both got pies in their faces! The kids loved it.

I took my camera to Arkansas with us and this is the only picture that I took. I think after the craziness of getting there I was just so tired and overwhelmed...I really didn't even think once about taking a picture (which, if you know me...is not me at all!). Many of you have heard our crazy travel story......because of the assembly that we were at school for on friday noontime (and because we weren't fully ready to leave after the assembly) we missed our flight out of orlando that afternoon. The guy at the desk told us our only option was to fly out the next morning (saturday)...we had to pay the penalty for changing the ticket, but did it and ended up staying in a hotel in orlando for the night (and took the kids to see monsters vs. aliens, which was fun!). Did i mention that Kylie had thrown up friday morning and Josiah threw up in the car on the way to the airport? We arrived in AR on saturday afternoon...our time there was busy, but a lot of the time was just visiting with people and getting to know them and the area. We met with the search committee on saturday night, Tom met with the session on sunday night, we had a dinner with five or so families on monday night.... monday we spent most of the day driving around town looking at neighborhoods, getting tours of several schools in the area.....Sherwood is the city that the church is located in but it's looking like we might actually try to live in North Little Rock, which is another suburb of Little Rock....all three cities seem to run together a good bit. Anyways, the visit itself was very nice and we feel like this could be it! The congregation will be voting on us in a week...and we'll continue to process our time and pray about this being our next step.....please pray with us!! I'm getting more sad at the thought of our time in Wauchula coming to an end. I'm going to miss a lot of people here. But, I'm excited about the next step...and I know that God will provide for us wherever we end up next! Ok, so on tuesday we went to the airport to fly home and found out then that when we missed our flight on friday, the guy cancelled our roundtrip ticket, applied the penalty fee towards changing it to a ONE WAY ticket to little rock!....We didn't have a flight home on tuesday....instead of paying 1500 to fly out either later tuesday or early wednesday (since we only had 2 kids) we decided to rent a car, buy a bunch of dvd's at wal-mart and drive the 16 hours home....we got home with two hours to spend with rose marie before tom had to drive her to tampa to catch her flight back to VA. whew....we were sooo glad to get home!

The 3 big kids with grandma. Thanks, Rose Marie, for spending the week with the 3 littles!!

We've done some fun things this week since we've been back....I'll post more pics soon!

Day trip to Lowry Park Zoo!

We got a zoo pass last march when we were chaperones for kylie's class field trip....and finally made it back to the zoo yesterday before the pass expired! We were there from 10 to 2 and had a great time...the weather was perfect (not too hot, not too cold) all of the animals were out (except the skunks who were sleeping and a few more unimportant animals). The twins especially had a fun time seeing the animals that they are learning in their books. Leighton loved feeding the goats the leaves that she found on the ground. Matthias loved the "monkeys".

fyi: tom and i and the 2 big kids are flying (in just a little under two weeks) to arkansas to candidate at a church out there. My mother-in-law will be coming in to take care of the three little kids while we're gone. Please pray for us as we are apart...for safety for all of us, for grandma taking care of the kids, for Tom and i as we interview and meet the congregation out there....to know whether this church is where God wants us or not. Thanks!! We'll keep you updated!

Mirabella family photo shoot....

for my family and my non-facebook friends....here are several pics we had taken recently from a good friend in town.

strawberry picking and 2 year birthday party!

We went to Gardner farm with some friends from our preschool co-op. The kids had a blast picking (and eating) strawberries.

Matthias and Leighton turned 2 today!! We had a party with some church friends and some preschool co-op friends. It was fun....and I'm glad it's done with. :)

an attempt at a group shot.....only about half of the kids there, and the twins didn't want anything to do with it. oh well...i tried!

it's hard to keep up!

I really think Matthias looks like a moviestar in this picture. Partly the great smile, and partly the collar sticking up. :) It's been a crazy couple of weeks. We've been working hard to get the house ready to show...we've had company (which has been wonderful!)...and we've had sick kids off and on for a couple weeks (normal colds and fevers that come with changing weather). For the month of February, Kylie has needed to be at school by 7am which has been exhausting to try and get the kids up by 5:45 and out the door by 6:50.
Matthias LOVES strawberries! He would pick one...walk around a little bit...eat it...and then pick another one and do the same thing. He and Leighton were both so cute to watch!

Leighton picked more than she ate, but she seemed to go for the green ones (mostly). We are going back to pick next week, hopefully there will be more ripe ones then. I've never picked "hydroponic" strawberries before...you can see in the background the styrofoam containers that they were planted in. We picked some broccolli, too, which was fun.

Ward and Martha came to see us this past weekend. We had a great time of hanging out, working hard (tom and ward painted the kitchen...martha and i took kids shopping) and playing (the guys went golfing and of course we watched "24" together).

We put the house on the market this week. Yesterday I had some friends over for lunch, and when I got back from karate in the morning I was informed that our realtor was coming over to take pictures of the main rooms and house. If you have ever been in my house you would know that it is never ready for pictures to be taken of it...plus with my 3 kids and 6 more it was going to be crazy. Anyways, when the realtor got here my sweet friends took my 4 (we had a friend over) and their 5 out of the house for a walk around the block. (it was quite a sight) :) It's sad to see the for sale sign in our front yard. I'm going to miss living in wauchula.