Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Ten Years A Floridian!

I figured I would get you all up to speed, because tomorrow we are headed out to D.C! Are you totally excited to see pictures from the Easter Egg Roll? I am! We got our time slot, and we are in Group A, so we will be taking part in the festivities from 7:30 - 9:30, that's AM folks. I'm a teeny tiny concerned about everyone getting up that early, so we have been adjusting this week. Our flight leaves at like 9 tomorrow morning, so we'll have to be up and moving pretty early then too!

Anyway, when I last left you we were celebrating all things Rome, and getting ready for our Florida Anniversary. March 18th marked 18 years since the day we arrived with the moving truck in Florida, and we try and celebrate it every year by doing something very "Floridian". We were all planning on taking the boat to Caladesi Island, and then disaster struck! We got a bolt--not a nail--- a BOLT-- in our tire right out on the main road in front of our subdivision where they've been doing construction. We took it to our guy, and he said he's been getting a couple of these a day-- holy geez guys, pick up after yourselves! And the tire not only set us back $100, but sucked up our day. So, we ended up just doing our usual Florida cookout at home. At least  March Maddness was on to entertain us (Hayden killed us all in the first round with his upsets, however, after two rounds Calib's leading). 


We had kobe beef burgers and mac and cheese, and ate outside on our patio. 


Plus we had a nice smores bar. 


So, like I've said before we try and theme our meals around here- it keeps things entertaining. So I kind of feel like all the pictures I just uploaded was of meals. But anyway, we finished up our Rome week with a Roman feast- complete with hard tack, which was indeed super hard, dill chicken, roman potatoes, and salad. 


We also had our oil lamp finally dry, so we rolled up a piece of a towel, added some olive oil, and ate by the light of our lamp! 


We  finished up with our crash course history on the fall of Rome.. 


and went outside with our salt dough balls and catapults to see who could launch the balls the farthest. Hayden was declared the winner. 


We also had a Rome themed Jeopardy. Calib tried to hijack hosting duties. 

And they were allowed three helps in which they could consult their Roman pizza boxes. 


On the home school front, we also watched all of our march birthday presidents in 60 seconds... 


...and had a pop quiz on them (my presidents book is great for consulting on pop quizzes!) I was trying to pad the boys points, since they'll be able to trade them in for cash for vacation spending money. 


 Since we'll be gone this Sunday, we had to celebrate Easter a week early. (It also helped adjust sleep schedules since we woke up at 9 to egg hunt). 



We did something this year and hunted for plastic candy filled eggs, instead of dying easter eggs, which was great, because I don't really like dying them all that much. (Specifically I hate hard boiling them). 


We decided instead of gifts in their baskets, we would give them all $20, so again, they'd have money to spend on vacation. But instead of putting them in their basket, we hid the eggs and they had to find those too. (Each kid had their own color to look for so nobody could get all $60). 


There was also one golden egg with an extra $5 in it. 


Calib located that one. But I'm telling you, kids look a lot harder for money filled eggs than hard boiled eggs. 


Peyton's money egg was buried in the bag of rice in the pantry. 


Hayden's was in our jar of stolen golf balls on the bottom shelf of the corner bookshelf in mine and Asa's room. 


And Calib's was in the middle of all the games on the coffee table. 



The eggs actually proved harder to find than most of their baskets. Hayden's was under a pile of shoes. 


Peyton's was under our headboard. 


But Calib's spot was the best. My dad used to love giving my brother, Cort, a hard time with his Easter basket, and I feel like I've carried on the tradition well. Those big plastic tubs have always been there- full, except, we had one extra, so I put a full one in the garage, and the empty one on the bottom with Calib's basket in it. We eventually had to tell him what room it was in, and then which half of the room. 


But he found it, and was a total good sport about it. They had lots of snacks and candy in their baskets, plus a new book. 


We did our usual Easter Brunch of bunny pancakes. 



And our usual Easter dinner of a Low Country Boil. 


Easter is a special occasion though, so the Low Country Boil gets awesome huge shrimp, and crab legs. 


And nobody likes crab more than Asa and Peyton. They sat there long after everyone else picking the crab legs clean. 


Easter isn't the only holiday we're missing, we're also going to be gone for Asa's birthday, so we pretended it was yesterday. We played True American (complete with all of Asa's favorites). 


It's always a good time. Plus the way we played it the same way we did on president's day, and I got to play too! 


Even the doggies get in on the festivities. 



Asa's birthday dinner request was for Nancy Reagan Mac & Cheese ( I feel like that's all I make these days! Asa does everything else). 


And we had cheesecake, instead of the usual funfetti. 


Speaking of holidays and dessert, this week we also celebrated the first day of Spring with dirt! 


Asa switched a couple days so he doesn't have to take as many vacation days for DC, so he was only off on Monday, and we had errands to run. We went to Kohls to get everyone some new warm clothes to wear to DC, and we were there FOREVER. I was nearly bored. I thought Asa did really good, but then when I got home I found I had emails with pictures of me shopping and the following captions: 

I spy a Corinne looking for clothes. 
I have located the subject in the clearance section. Will continue to monitor. 
I have found a wild Corinne. Her profile matches what I've seen in pictures. Observing from a distance.
The trail has gone cold. The Corinne has gone back into hiding.



At least he knows how to entertain himself. We got back and were talking about having a late dinner, when the boys suggested we go to PDQ. The month of March they were having $5 meals after 7, and if we just held out a little longer, that would work for us. Plus, I have a $5 off coupon. So we all ate for $20! 


And Ellie got to come along, although we all froze eating out on the patio. 


I'm going to miss Ellie Bellie! But, Justin will be here taking good care of her. And now I'm off to go to the store to get some things to stock the fridge for him! And then more packing. 


Oh, and hopefully we squeeze in a candy bar update tonight. I'm not sure when you'll hear from me next. We fly home Tuesday night, but Wednesday morning I'm headed back to the airport to fly to Ohio to help out my mom for nearly another week. So maybe I'll find time when I'm there to update the blog with all our DC adventures, or you might have to wait two weeks. But, either way, I'm taking Calib's netbook along so I can post the pictures from my camera to Facebook while we're gone.  You know, that's what us plebeians without smart phones have to do these days. 


Next Up: The White House Calls! 





No comments:

Post a Comment