Naples Zoo Adventure

Ok....I admitingly haven't updated this in a while! I've been completely distracted by work and studying for my PE Exam (yes....for the second time arrrgghhh!). Now that I am over that hump, I figured it was time to give our fans what they want....an update on the Naples Zoo Adventure! Wooo! Why would we drive across the state to go to the zoo may you ask? Well - our friends the Beckwiths, who live in NC now, just happened to be in that area and we wanted to see them - yes - these are the kind of people that it's worth driving across Cypress National Preserve to get to - no doubt! So we met up at the Naples Zoo b/c it's right off Alligator Alley and it seemed like a fun place to go with all the kids. Honestly - it's a really cool zoo (especially the monkey island boat cruise) and we had a great time seeing Suzy, Greg, and their girls, yummy as pie Katie and precious little Julia! Here are just a few cute photos from the day. Thanks for meeting up with us Beckwith clan! I love the picture of the boys with all the kids...who knew that would happen when you guys were at JMU together?

Ladies Night!

Last week, some of my best lady friends and I actually took a break from crazy busy lives and decided to have a Ladies Night! Woo! It was so nice to have a break for a few hours and just hang out together. Altogether, it was Marlis, Kaitlyn, Tammy, Shelley, Keri-Ann, and I hanging out, drinking wine (except for our cute Mommy to be, Kaitlyn), and painting pottery. Tammy planned the whole idea and we all had a great time. We all wanted to sit next to the resident artist, Shelley, if you cannot tell from her very beautiful and planned out pattern she painted (freehand!) on a puppy cookie jar! Some of the finished products are shown in the top picture - we had a plate, bowls, frog, ying/yang salt & pepper shakers, and I did a dog bowl with a gnome painted on it (are you suprised?). Awesome time ladies! Can't wait til the next one!

Busy Busy Cuteness

Here are a few pics from the last couple of weeks - as you can see, our little T Monster is getting into everything these days! She may not be 100% toddling on her own (though she will walk between Jeff and I when prompted/encouraged), but she gets around pretty well. I love the apple series of photos. I literally turned around for 3 seconds, and before I knew it, she had pulled out an apple from the fridge and was biting into it all by herself....and if you notice, she ate quite a bit!

Jareth LIVES!

These are barn owls that that someone at my work took pictures of from the Everglades project I work on here - they are nesting on the site where we are going to build a reservoir and wetland system. They are really cool looking, but also kinda scary (hello?! Beak alert!). They are also a protected species under the migratory bird act, so I always think it's awesome to see pictures/proof of such important animals. No worries everyone - their nest is going to be relocated before we flood the area!

Anyway - I will give a reward to whoever picks up on my title reference...if you know what I am referring to, then you might be one of the coolest people on earth ;)

Remembering Peace Corps Days...

The other weekend, we had some fantastic visitors: Joan and Dean! These are some of my favorite people ever - Joan was one of Jeff and I's teammates from Peace Corps Mali days and she lived in a village just outside of Sikasso, where we lived, so we were very close. Dean and Joan met in Peace Corps but unfortunately, his village was really far north so we didn't get to see him that often due to travel time. Anyway - we had not seen these two since we had left Mali (hello?! That's been almost 6 years!) and they came into town due to another Peace Corps friend of ours, Brendan Beck, having died in the Hotel Montana collapse during the Haiti Earthquake, so we could all attend the memorial service. It was obviously horrible circumstances to see old friends, but regardless, it was so amazing to see old friends. I just love it when you have the kind of friends where you don't see each other in forever but when you do, it's like you didn't skip a beat, and you just picked right back up where you left off. That's Joan and Dean for sure. We had a great visit with them and got to remember our good times with Brendan, who was an amazing person and contributor to the community, and reconnect with some other Peace Corps friends while at the memorial service. The service was appropriately located on the beach (last picture posted) in Stuart, FL since Brendan loved the water, and ironically, the location just happened to be on our Obscure Tourist Attraction list (see link for info). It's funny....Brendan is one of the reasons why Jeff and I ended up in Florida. Since he was from here and an engineer, he always told us while we were in Mali and trying to figure out what to do with ourselves - how great the work in Florida was and that we should move there. So we did....so unfortunate to loose such a great person but I am so happy to observe and realize how much good he did in the world and it will always be a constant reminder how I can always do more and strive to help others, like Brendan did. He was actully in Haiti at the time to do some engineering work for USAID....so he never stopped doing what he did best. I remember Joan and I had a good hug and cry after the service and it was so healing and reflective (N be Mafine fe dat!). Sometimes I think that is why God chooses to take good people away from us too early - the type of person they were makes us re-evaluate ourselves so that, as a whole, more people are encouraged to be better people. Through the reflection of our past relationships, we can influence and improve the world. Isn't that the point? Sorry for the deep thoughts...it's very difficult NOT to think deep thoughts when I'm remembering Peace Corps days....we always knew Africa would scar us for life. Ala K'an Deme...

New Favorite Hobby

Some of you may know about an issue that Jeff has....he is an iphone application whore! He loves applications and tells me about them all the time and most of the time, I admittingly fade out mentally listening to him. He will sometimes even wake me up in the mornings saying things like,"I found a great app last night! This one will...." (What happened to Good Morning!?). So you can imagine my skepticism when he told me about his new "Roadside USA" App, thinking that it would be a fading interest like all the others. BUT - I was completely wrong (sorry my love)! This is a really good one and we are turning it into our new favorite hobby actually! This App identifies all the nearby Obscure tourist attractions and it is simply hilarious and fabulous. Think "the Peachoid" or "South of the Border" for you South Carolinians out there! Anyway - we have decided that we are going to go find as many of them listed in the App as possible wherever we go.

Our first obscure tourist attraction and the closest one to our house was the Barefoot Mailman statue at Hillsboro Beach, FL. This is honestly one of the coolest statues I've ever seen - I mean, barefoot man, mail bag, AND a machete?! Does it get any cooler?! Apparantly, there used to be 11 mailmen that walked up and down the beach between West Palm Beach and Miami and this statue is a rememberance of them (see title link for more information - cool story actually). Anyway - here a few pictures of our visit this past Valentines' Day (yes - I'm just now posting this and yes this is exactly how we like to spend our VD haha).

Love this Girl!

We went to a birthday party for the fabulous Madelyn over the weekend and Aaron sent me this picture which is just too fun not to post. We had such a great time at the party, which was at a baby gym in Delray! Who knew!? Tyndell had a great time crawling around all the mats and balls with all the other kids. We are so thankful to have friends with awesome kids that Tyndell gets to grow up with. Happy Birthday to Maddie BG!

True Love

This past weekend, Tyndell showed us all what true love really means: sharing your most precious/favorite thing with someone else. I realize that, in this case, we are talking about a baby, cookie monster, and a pootie (aka pacifer), but it was really cute and funny, and there's definitely something to be learned from this and a lot of things that kids do. Hope everyone had a great Valentines' Day (or "Happy VD" as I liked to say in high school haha)!

Fair, Park, and Zoo Weekends

I haven't updated too much lately - work has gotten really busy for me and I started taking a class recently as part of a Career Skills program I am involved at work AND I'm studying for the PE test AGAIN (that's right....ugh...) so needless to say I haven't had too much time for thinking about pictures. Luckily between a few shots on our camera, phone cameras, and friends' cameras, I found a few from the past couple of weekends b/c we managed to get out to the South Florida Fair, the park, and the zoo. Obviously, we found out recently how much Tyndell likes ice cream (I leave Jeff alone with Tyndell for 5 minutes at the fair and I come back to find her covered in chocolate!!!) and bunnies and chickens and swings and merry-go-round tigers! Hooray for weekends!