Never a Dull Moment

We have had our first fish casualty.  Nemo one was found belly up the other day.  The other Nemo (#2) is still swimming strong.  I don't think Brayden has even noticed that we are down one fish!

It seems that christmas and new years were so long ago, but it's only been 3 weeks.  The tree has come down, the lights have been stored away.  And now we are back to a normal pace of life.  Christmas was fun for us this year as Brayden was a little more interested in ripping off the paper to see what was inside.  He did get a couple of sneak peaks when he decided to help himself to a couple of gifts that were set out before christmas day.  I think his favorite gift (from Santa) was his spiderman powerwheel quad.  He was so excited about it that he rode it for about an hour when he woke up.  We had to bribe him to come back inside so we could finish the morning.  

We were doing a little shopping at Wal-Mart and we happen to pass by the fish aisle.  Brayden has been obsessed with watching Finding Nemo and has started to recognize most of the characters.  So as we passed the extra large goldfish...he kept saying hi Nemo.  How cute...I couldn't resist, so we picked up a couple and brought them home.  Brayden is taking good care of Nemo 1 and Nemo 2, with mom's help of course.  Brayden loves feeding them and watching them eat.  It's been an exciting thing for him to do when he comes home in the evening.  Hopefully we can keep them alive for a long time!

So Brayden has finally started to recognize that Ryan is a Firefighter and works at a fire station. The only problem with that is EVERY time we see a fire truck Brayden he assumes that Ryan is in it and he wants me to follow it. Brayden loves to go up and see his dad at his station, but we I can only take him on the weekends when Ryan is on duty because it is so far away!

So if you know me at all you know that I am always changing my hair. When Ryan and I first met I was a blonde with cute short hair. Then I let it grow out. Since then I've been brunette, brunette with hightlights, brunette with red highlights (not one of the better ones). So about every 2-3 years I decided to go from one end of the color spectrum to the other. I've also been trying to grow out my hair, but one thing i don't like about long hair is that it never seems to look "done" so a couple weekends ago, I went and had it cut and colored to start off the new year with a new look. What do you think?

I know I just put up Christmas Decorations but I realized that I never posted Halloween pictures. This year was fun again. We went door to door with our Neighbors Brittany and Jared and their kids Brooke and Caleb. This year Brayden was a little reluctant to put his costume on, but he finally did it after I bribed him with a few suckers and he saw all the other kids outside with their costumes on. He was a little scared of the masks this year, at one point he bolted around a house to escape a Spiderman! Once his bucket was full and our feet were tired we headed back to the house to pass out the rest of our candy. One great thing about Halloween in Florida, you actually get to see all the kids in their cute costumes because no one wears a coat!!! I remember my days of trick or treating and we always had to wear coats, mittens and boots over our costumes!

Some of you might know that I have two tattoos.  I've been thinking for a while that I wanted to get another one, but I wanted it to be something that represented Brayden.  I've been thinking I would  pick out some picture that reminded me of him, but I hadn't been able to find anything.  Finally this morning I figured out what it would be - the chinese symbols for his name.  Some of you might know that I already have my name in chinese on my back.  So I think his name in chinese will be the perfect thing.  I'm still trying to think about where I will get it.  My other two aren't really visable to the general public, so I think I would like to do the same with this one.  I was thinking of maybe putting it on the inside of my ankle.    

Until we got our new macbook. Our other laptop was pretty much becoming extinct. I swear the Internet was slower than dial-up, I guess that would be ok, except we have high speed DSL and we pay to get the faster service. So we decided to go to the apple store and check out their selection. Now I have always thought that macs were just overpriced. Boy was I wrong. This computer is totally sophisticated. It's seems so sophisticated that I can't seem to do anything on it ! It is totally different than our other PC. I am so used to windows and Microsoft that I have totally alienated myself from our new computer. So I feel like I'm starting over with learning how to use a computer. If anyone has any hints and tips....let me know.

Since it’s been raining for what seems like FOREVER…we haven’t been out to the beach since January (we had a warm winter) and Ryan’s had school every weekend Jan. - June. So last weekend we were finally able to get out and enjoy the beach. It was a perfect day…no rain, no clouds, no wind. Although the weather report was 89° with 78% humidity making it feel like 99.2°! With all that being perfect, something was bound to happen. First Ryan, Brayden and I arrived at the beach about 11:30, no problems there. We got the jetski unloaded, again no problems – except I still can’t back the trailer in. I need to practice it one day.

We had a few friends meeting us out there. The first to arrive was one of the guys from the Ryan’s firestation. I don’t know if Ryan is bad at giving directions or what but 2 of the 3 people who came out ended up on the beach north of us (which is about 3-40 minutes drive). Ryan went to meet is friend at the boat ramp to help in unload his jetski, although the whole trip took about an hour everything else seems to go ok. While that was going on, Brayden patiently waited on our jetski. Can you imagine sitting in one spot for an hour. By the time Ryan got back my toes were like little prunes from standing out in the water next to the jetski since Brayden insisted on patiently waiting on the jetski for his dad. Everything was going good. Our next the next person arrived, a girl from the firestation and her two boys. After watching her chase around a 3 and 4 year old, I’m getting a little scared to consider having another kid. But it was fun watching Brayden play with the older boys. So, things are going good and then it happens…the other guy’s jetski sucked up his rope, anchor AND buoy! The beach was so packed that it was hard to maneuver in and out around all the people. So as he tried to maneuver around everyone….all off a sudden it stopped working, everything had gotten sucked in. (Note to self: when the beach is packed have someone push you out so you don’t run over your rope.) Because they were about to take Brayden out for a ride, I had to take Ryan’s place so Ryan could help his friend figure out what to do about the “little problem”. I don’t really like being out in the “big ocean” all that much, I’m more of a land-lover. Brayden on the other hand is a little fish. Brayden seemed a little irritated that I would only go 20-25 mph. He and his dad are little speed demons and they love going fast. Brayden has been out on the jetski since he was about 16 months old, so I guess he’s an old pro. Everyone is always so amazed about how serious he is on the jetski – you would think that he would be laughing and screaming, but I personally think he puts his “game-face” on when he gets out there! After propping the jetski up on it’s side, our group along with some friendly citizens helped cut the rope out of the propeller and I was able to come back and have Ryan take Brayden out. It took them about an hour to get it all out of the propeller. After a little flushing, the jetski started to run good again. Hopefully no internal damage was done. And then the diaper! I decided to take Brayden out of his regular diaper and put him into a swimmer diaper. I was hesitant at first, because if a kid has to go #2 in one of those things, it is really hard to get it all cleaned up and changed. But I figured we would be ok. HAH! Was I wrong, not more than 20 minutes after changing him it happened. Let’s just say, I should be relieved of diaper duty for a month! Let’s just leave it at that! I’ll save you and not go into the details.

The last of our friends arrived around 4:00 after getting lost on the northern beach again….Next time I’ll be the one to give directions. The guys jetskiied for about another 2 hours, until we finally left the beach around 7:00pm. Although we are all pretty sore the next day, the best part of it, NO SUNBURNS! After being out there for 8 hours, I was sure one of us would be a lobster. But after multiple coating of sunscreen we all have a nice tan going! I hope it nice again soon so we can go out again.

By the way since the sand gets on EVERYTHING…I only took the camera out once and got these pictures. Next time I’ll try to get some video of my little jetskier!