Family Date Night!!!
Lure for dinner, DLites for ice cream, and Barnes and Noble for books!
Category Archives: Family Date Night
Oldsmar Taphouse 5K
Earlier in the week, Andy called me and said that he was planning a date night for us on Friday and he needed Courtney’s phone number. Hummm…I love surprise date night! He had been searching online for local 5k races this summer when he stumbled across this one for this Friday. It was their third annual race. I was so excited; not only because I love to run races but because Andy wanted to run it with me. So he registered us and along with 2,000 other people we took to the street at 7pm. It was 95 degrees and although we ran on the water, most of the second mile was directly in the sun. I am happy to report that Andy crushed my time by a full minute and a half…so proud of him. :O) Afterwards, we joined the party for snacks, beer, and then headed to Zen for dinner. This was a wonderful surprise date night.
Filed under Family Date Night
“Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree….”
It is the day after Thanksgiving… our Elf has arrived bringing pj’s and the Polar Express, the turkey decorations are down, the house has been cleaned and rearranged, the totes have been pulled from the garage, and that could only mean one thing…. IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME!!!
All year-long we patiently wait for the holiday season to return and once it gets here we can’t wait to let the celebration begin. Our tradition is to go and pick out our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, that way we can enjoy it usually for a full four weeks. Also, by getting it on Friday we have all weekend to decorate it.
This year we decided to go to the new lot located next to the village in Westchase. Since it is still early, we knew that we would get to pick one of the best trees on the lot. Davy was so excited to go and get our tree, Matty was just excited to be out and about. We all put on our santa hats and ran into the lot. We wandered through and around the trees and then all of a sudden Andy and I come to a complete stop, look at the same tree, and said…”Yep, that’s it!” I love the feeling that you get when you just know something is right. The guy loaded it up onto the truck and we headed home. This year we decided to move the tree from the Man room to the Family room. I think I’m gonna like it here….
The first thing I do to the tree is wrap white lights around the trunk to light up the tree from the inside out. We found a present in our tree…a bird’s nest. I was happy that there weren’t any eggs in it or even worse a bird, how funny would it have been it all of a sudden a mad, crazy bird flew out at me in the house… :O)
Here are the boys dancing and jumping around our newly finished decorated tree. We peeked at our day 1 Advent Action card…it was to go out and buy a new ornament for the new tree…
Filed under Christmas Traditions, Family Date Night
Picking Out Pumpkins at the Pumpkin Patch!
Off to the Pumpkin Patch we go…. For the last two years we have gone on over to the Boy Scouts Pumpkin Patch on the corner of Linebaugh and Sheldon. The selection is huge, prices are decent, and we knew that the boys would have a great time running up and down the pumpkin isles. They have big ones, small ones, orange green and white ones, bumpy and smooth ones…and in the end…one for everyone… :O)
Filed under Family Date Night, Halloween
Celebration Station
Davy’s Day Out!
Children often ask for and to do a lot of things, and Davy is no different. So Andy implemented the wish list for things that Davy wants and “___’s Day Out!” for things that we all want to do. Now that school is back in and schedules are a little more routine and consistent, we decided that it was time to increase church involvement every week to Service and Sunday School. When you only get two days on the weekend to hang out with the family, it’s a lot of time to miss with them…. 3 hours of church and then 2 hour naps… = :O(
How it works is each week after church, whose ever week it is gets to pick the family outing for lunch. The rotation is: Mama, Davy, Daddy, Matty, … and so on. Last week was my week, so I picked pizza. We all know I love pizza and any opportunity that I get to go out and get it…I’m all over that. This week was Davy’s turn. He picked Celebration Station. It is a little far from the church…but it doesn’t matter, that is what he wanted to do. I packed our clothes to change into in the car so we wouldn’t have a detour.
I can see why kids would love this place there is a lot going on. Indoor video games, laser tag, mini golf, kiddie rides, water bumper cars, race cars, and more. So we bought the boys the unlimited wrist bands and off we went. For lunch we ordered a pizza ( :O) – I had no part in that…I swear) and some chicken tenders, surprisingly the food wasn’t half bad. Here are a few pics from “Davy’s Day Out!“, can’t wait to see where daddy picks to go next week!
Sweet Matty wasn’t handling the teacups to well, so Andy ended up holding him so that he wouldn’t fall over…
Last ride of the day…the train. Oh, how little boys love trains… :O)
Filed under Family Date Night
Baseball Date Night
Tonight I decided to surprise the family with a “date night” to the Ray’s Baseball game. Courtney unexpectedly had a couple of extra tickets to give away so I immediately said “Yes”. The boys had a great time cheering with crowds and eating cotton candy.
Filed under Baseball, Family Date Night
Camping at Fort Desoto
We have had many attempts trying to find the perfect weekend to go camping, so you can only imagine how happy we were when this weekend worked out so perfectly. Sarah has been in town visiting with the boys and we thought that it would be so much fun to go camping on the beach, have them come meet us for a cookout, and to take the boys out in the canoe.
Now if you live in Florida you are probably thinking, “Are they crazy?” Yes, it was hot; but we had so much fun. Andy went out early Friday morning for the first come first serve walk-up lots, and he picked the best one. It was western facing so we would see the sunset and the trees were thick on both sides of us, making it a little more private than others. We headed out bright and early Saturday, excited to get our weekend started.
It had been a while since we used the tent, but once we remembered how it was put together…piece of cake. We played down at the beach, had lunch at the campsite, and remembered how much we enjoyed camping; very relaxing and fun family time without the world of electronics. Andy and Davy took the canoe out and had two dolphins swimming about 6 feet away from them, they were so excited. David, Jenni, Sarah, and the boys came on over early in the afternoon just as the sun was hitting the western sky making it extremely hot. In the shade we weren’t to bad, but down by the water…it was hot. They stayed for a couple of hours and left right before dinner. We cooked chicken bundles on the grill [chicken, corn, potatoes, onions, and parmesan, sage, and black pepper butter] and for dessert we hopped in the car to cool off a little and get the boys milkshakes.
The sunset was gorgeous, for fun we lit sparklers, and then it was time for bed. This camping trip was very memorable for all of us, I will never forget sleeping in the tent together, and next time I won’t pass on bringing the fan.
Filed under Beach, Family Date Night, Fun Outings
Mountains! Beach! or Both!... 