Our Adventures in Florida

It's officially a year before we will be able to move to Florida (assuming all the pieces fall into place when we want them to), and we took a trip there to look around a little more and figure out which neighborhoods we like. We also visited the school Fiona will be attending the Fall after we move. It was a very useful trip...we learned a lot....and I kept getting signs over and over again that we belonged there. It really felt like home, and now the move and the place don't seem so far away anymore.
Fi did great on the plane. (Me...that's another story!) We ended up spending a lot of time in the car, unfortunately, but we did get to go to the beach a couple of times, and to the pool, and we took Fi to some fun places, including a place called the Children's Garden in Sarasota, a dolphin cruise while the sun set, and the Busch Gardens there. Luckily for us, she likes to look at houses, inside and out, like we do, so she enjoyed our house hunting too. Fi loves being in new places, and didn't say anything about wanting to go back home until a couple of days before we came back. She loved seeing the palm trees (we'd been talking about that) and all the wildlife that's different from here...plentiful frogs and lizards, and very big birds that beg for food like the seagulls do here.
We did end up finding three houses we really loved, and if one of them is still on the market next summer, we will snatch it up. We went looking for a 20's Craftsman-style bungalow, but fell in love with some of the very old Victorians. The three we have our eye on were built in 1906 and 1901!
The Waldorf school turned out to be lovely too. Fi liked it there...she played with the babies and on the playground. She's excited about going to school next year, and about having "lots of friends", as she puts it. It's so hard to believe it's almost that time already!!

Father's Day preparations

Fi and I went to a paint-your-own-pottery place for our traditional Fi-made Father's Day mug. This was the third year in a row! This year I pretty much just sat and watched, and got more paint when she asked. Haha. She had a great time.
Funny, someone there commented that she looked like Shirley Temple, and I just shrugged it off....but then as I sat looking at her, the resemblance struck me. I'll have to find a picture to compare and post it, just for fun.

Strawberry picking!

We had a nice adventure last weekend...we found an organic strawberry farm and went picking. It was a bit of a drive, but it was a beautiful day and a beautiful area...Pungo, in Virginia Beach. Fiona was a pro this year, after practicing last year. She looked for the red ones and got really excited. She'd say, "Look! This one was waiting for me to pick it!", or "Look! Somebody already started eating this one!" We left those for the bugs and the birdies. After we picked a couple of buckets full, we went wandering around the area and had lunch at a little pizza place, where a nice man gave Fi a quarter...she's saving it to put in the carousel outside the store here.

catching up...

ok, looks like I let this blog get away from me over the winter....and the spring.....

not too unusual for me, since I do tend to hibernate, but I'll try to catch up a little bit before carrying on...

Fiona has been visiting with her Grammy once a week, which she really enjoys and looks forward to.
































She has learned to love baking, and helping Mama with anything in the kitchen.














































Fi has also become very creative, learning to paint, sculpt with playdough, and cut with scissors.
Here is the first thing she made out of playdough...a "funny boy":















































Here she is using the scissors..







































I'll be back soon with more updates and pictures....I promise I'll keep up better! :)