Beach times

Here are some random beach pics.

Hannah


Our fam


The girls


Elena helping Téa into the water


Robert with the fish he caught


Keith with a crab he caught


The crab


Julia (doesn't she look like a model in this pic?)


Papa and Elena


Ellen and Elena


Elena (there sure are a lot of her. another thing - doesn't it look like after the picture was taken she popped that fish in her mouth for a little snack?)


Téa playing in the sand

Jenny's Wedding

Here are some pictures from Jenny and Travis' wedding. It was a very nice ceremony held at sunset on the beach in Naples. All of our family and our Grandma was there. Jenny and Travis' friends from Ft.Lauderdale were there, as well as some of our old friends from Naples. It was really nice for all of us to get to be there and we're all really happy for them.

Sea World

Sea World was, by far, my very favorite park. I don't know why but I absolutely loved it. I even teared up a little watching the killer whale show (don't ask me why, cause I couldn't tell ya). So here are our Sea World pictures. (Our friends Alvaro and Tiffanie came with us and so did my sister Ellen.)

The first thing we did was watch the sea lion show. Elena loved it, and as we were leaving, she asked if she could take her picture with the trainers. They were glad to oblige, and she was so excited!


I couldn't resist putting the captions. The looks on their faces are priceless.


We watched the killer whale show and it was awesome. This was taken before it started. Note that they are sitting in the soak zone. From right to left is Ellen, Keith with Téa on his lap, Amya, and Elena. You can't really see Alvaro and Tiffanie.


My favorite trick was when the killer whales came up out of the water with the trainers standing on their noses.


Now you can see why they call it the soak zone. Amya thought it was so cool!


Maricela turned 4 weeks old the day we went there. So many people would come up to us and ask us how old she was.


The girls loved this little water play place. Normally they hate it when Keith sprays the hose at them, but they sure thought this was fun.


We also saw a dolphin show, which was really cool. After that, we went to the Dolphin cove where you can pet the dolphins. We must have stood there for at least 15 minutes with our hands in the water, waiting for a dolphin to come by and let us pet him. Keith got bored with it pretty fast, and Amya was so disappointed when I finally told her we had to go.


Amya rode the water ride with Alvaro and Tiffanie.


A group shot. We were all so tired after our long day, but we had so much fun!

Animal Kingdom

On our second day in Florida, we went to the Animal Kingdom. My family had left the day before to drive down to Naples, and they pulled into Orlando around 6 in the morning to crash our hotel room. :) We convinvced them a few hours later to come to the park with us and we got to spend the day there with them. Also our friends, the Roberts family, drove over from Gainesville to hang out with us at the park. We hadn't seen them in over 2 years, so it was fun to spend some time with them.

Right when we got to the park, Rafiki was saying hi to everyone, so we had our picture taken with him. Téa was not very interested in him. She hadn't minded the characters the day before, but something about Rafiki scared her.


The kids got to ride some fun kiddie rides.


Amya played the bongos with her friends Julianna and Ashley.


Here's a group shot of all of us.


Robert, my Dad, Julia and Ellen on the river rapids ride. They got soaked!


We went out to eat with the Roberts' after the park at a restaurant called Jungle Jim's. I have fond memories of this restaurant. When we would go on temple trips, we always used to eat at this restaurant after the temple. So I wanted to make sure I went while we were there.


We had a really good time at Animal Kingdom. While I wouldn't say it was the best park we went to, it was definitely fun to be able to go with (almost) my whole family and spend time with them there.

Maricela's page

Okay, I don't know what was going on with the other post, maybe it was too long with all the journaling or something. But here's the page, and the journaling is two posts down.

For credits, see my 2 peas gallery.

Easter '06

Another page I did.

For credits, see my 2Peas gallery.

Journaling reads: The girls were way too excited about their candy to smile nicely and cooperate with me. Maybe next time I'll let them eat their candy before I try to take their picture.

Maricela's Birth Story

Here's a scrapbook page I did, documenting what happened the day Maricela was born.

**For some reason, it's not letting me load the picture. I'll try again later.**

Here is the journaling:
The alarm went off at 7:00 am. I got up, took a shower, and got ready to go. Dad woke up and he got ready as well. When we were ready to go, we woke up the girls to say good-bye to them before we left for the doctor’s office. When we arrived at the doctor’s office, I was a little nervous that Dr. Liddle would say that I wasn’t dilated enough to have you. We waited for a long time to be checked - it was 9:00 am when we got there, and he didn’t get to me until about 9:40 am. So I had a lot of time to worry. But when he checked me, he said that I was dilated to a 4 and ready to go. He sent us over to the hospital and said that he would be over later to break my water.
We drove straight over to the hospital to check in. They sent us to our room and told me the nurse would be in soon. I changed into my gown and we waited. The nurse put my IV in at 10:30 am. We had to wait an hour before I could get my epidural. When the anesthesiologist arrived, Dad wasn’t there. He had gone to the car to get our cameras so that we would be ready. I didn’t want to get the epidural until he came back, so they had to page him to come to the room. We were waiting for a long time before he got there. He had gone to the wrong floor! Once he got there, they put in my epidural and everything was fine. It was now 11:30 am.
Dad and I watched some tv and basically just realxed in the hospital room. Dr. Liddle finally got to the hospital at 1:30 pm. Dad wasn’t there (he had gone to get some lunch) but he went ahead and broke my water to get things going. At that point, I was dilated to a 6. When Dad came back, I told him that my water was broken and it wouldn’t be long now. He didn’t believe me. He thought that he hadn’t been gone for that long, and was surprised that I’d done that without him there. But I was ready to get you here!
Dr. Liddle waited around in our room because he knew that it would go fast after that. Sure enough, about 45 minutes later, I started feeling my contractions a little bit. They checked me and I was at a 10. Dr. Liddle and the nurse quickly got everything ready to deliver you. Once they had everything in place, they told me to push. I only had to push 4 times to get you out! You were born at 2:33 pm. You weighed 6 lb 13 oz and were 18 1/2 in long. Just a teeny little baby.
We were so excited to see you. And you looked perfect and so beautiful right from the start. The nurse let me hold you for about a minute, then took you over to clean you up. While she was checking you to make sure everything was okay, she said that you were having a hard time keeping your oxygen levels up and that she’d need to take you over to the nursery so they could moniter you. She let me hold you for another few minutes before she took you, but I had to keep an oxygen mask next to your little mouth. Then she and Daddy left with you to go to the nursery. I didn’t get to see you for another 2 hours. But when they brought you back, they said that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. What a wonderful blessing you are to our family. We’re so glad to have you here with us and that you are a part of our family, Maricela. We love you so much.

Magic Kingdom

So we'll start with our first day in Florida, which we spent at the Magic Kingdom with Kara. We had so much fun there! The girls loved getting to see the princesses, ride the rides, etc. All in all, I think it was our favorite park, not because it was so much fun for Keith and me, but because it was so fun to watch the girls have so much fun. Make sense? Here's some pics from the day ( I had such a hard time deciding which ones to post!)

Here we are just arriving at the park. Can you see Maricela asleep in the stroller?

We got to meet Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. I don't know why Keith didn't take one of them with the girls. And after Keith turned away, Mr. Smee gave Maricela a kiss. That would have been a cute shot.

Here's Téa giving one of the Tweedle's (Dum or Dee) a kiss.

The girls got their faces painted and they absolutely loved it! Téa had daisies, Elena did Tinkerbell....


and Amya's was a butterfly.


We also got to meet Woody and Jesse.


Here's Keith and me in the stockades.


Keith had a little too much fun on the Buzz Lightyear ride. I think he went on it like 3 times. And it's an interactive ride - you get to shoot at aliens and stuff while you're going through. He scored something like 300,000 points on his last time through. I scored 1300.


And here's Kara and Maricela, in front of Cinderella's castle at night. Am I good at holding the camera steady (to get the cool lighting I couldn't use the flash) or what?

Well, it's 12:54 am and I think I better get to bed. I'll be back tomorrow with another days recap from our Florida trip. If I'm lucky, I'll get it all caught up. We'll see how it goes. I have a three page paper to write that's due on Tuesday. Can you believe my teachers are already assigning big homework things? I'm so not excited about the massive amount of work they're expecting us to do, now that we're in "the program". 3 more semesters, 3 more semesters. That's what I have to keep telling myself. See you tomorrow!