Though I've been doing our Olympic blogs, we have had a few other things on our plate. My mom was visiting, which is always a lovely time. We went out for Hayden's birthday and to the fair, but on her last day here, we finally made it down to Venice. Usually, we go on New Years Eve, but with the dog situation, it just did not work out. Then, when Jake was here, the boys went and I stayed home with the dogs. Luckily, this time around we could make it happen. Peyton wasn't feeling well, so he ended up staying home with the dogs anyway.
Our first stop was for a quick light lunch in Sarasota. Asa and I both had BOGO coupons on our Blaze Pizza App, and Tuesday was the last day we could use them. I was so bummed that we were going to let such good coupons go to waste, when we talked about going down to Venice, I remembered there was one in Sarasota and we could use it! It was moms first time at Blaze, and she enjoyed it.
When we got to Venice our first stop was in downtown for a trip to the ice cream shop and the touristy shop of Pleasures and Treasures where I picked up a few things for my fairy garden.
We also might have snagged a couple of airplants from the trees downtown. Shhh!
Then it was off to the beach at Sharky's. When I was a kid we would come down to Venice to visit my grandparents every year at Christmas, and we always spent our days at Sharkys. It's quite different, and way more touristy than it once was, but I still enjoy going.
The crazy boys got in the water. It's getting warmer, but still WAY too cold for me to go in.
I stayed in the sand looking for some pebbles for my fairy garden and some very, very tiny shells. While looking through the piles of discarded broken shells and rocks people had drug up from the water, I came across a sharks tooth. When I was a kid, you used to find them EVERYWHERE. But, in the last few years you've been pretty lucky to find any. This is the first one I'd found in years.
I kept digging through the sand while Hayden made castles to see how long it would take the water to wash it away, and while Asa and mom read their books.
Calib decided he wanted to find a sharks tooth too, so he kept bringing me up handfuls from the water until we found another one.
He went off to show them to mom. In all we found three, and a nice guy on the beach gave my mom one. I don't know if they are getting easier to find again, or if we just got lucky.
After a couple hours at the beach we headed up to the Pier and to Sharky's Restaurant for dinner.
We had a short way before dinner so we walked up and down the pier. People were catching a ton of fish off of it, so maybe it was just a lucky day for finding and catching things.
Then it was time for dinner at one of my favorite places.
Hayden, Asa and Calib all got the giant plate of nachos. It was HUGE.
Mom got her crab and shrimp au gratin, and I got coconut shrimp.
So how'd they do on the nachos? Not too bad. Asa finished his, and Calib came close.
We only had about 20 minutes until sunset, so we decided to sit and wait for it. It was a nice night for watching the sunset, with just a few fluffy clouds in the sky.
Which made for a nice dip kiss picture (although, it's hard to change my Facebook Cover Photo off of our Hawaii dip kiss picture, that one is a favorite!
Mom had a great idea to swing by Blaze Pizza on the way back to bring Peyton some home too (and so we could use our second BOGO coupon), so he was happy when we showed back up with pizza for him.
The next day mom headed home. She's already booked a flight to come back for Calib's 18th birthday. But I think sometime between now and then we'll fly up to Ohio, depending on what happens with Asa finding a new job and all. We are going to bring my grandma's piano down, so we'll fly up and drive back down. It'll be an adventure.
We did have a lovely time with mom. We also visited the Buddhist Temple...
...and cookout at the firepit one night.
Plus she left us with a lot of new stuff. She bought me new fairy gardens and plants for the gardens.
Plus some cool air plants from the fair, and some pretty orchids from the Buddhist Temple.
She also bought me a fourth shadow box so I could finally put our inauguration tickets in a frame.
She also bought all of our ski supplies, and brough us some things from grandmas house, which Calib promptly agreed to put on while doing his chores.
Oh, and she left us with a ton of food. She must have been good luck because for the first time since moving to Florida I was finally able to find Paczkis for Fat Tuesday!
After we dropped mom off at the airport, Asa and I had errands to run and along the way we figured we'd go out for a Valentine's Day breakfast at Goody Goody Burger.
Usually when we go, it's lunch time, but this time we were there for breakfast, so it finally seemed appropriate to get the giant pancake. It was awesome, even though I couldn't quite finish it.
We don't do dinner out for Valentine's Day (ewwwww... crowds!) or really celebrate it, but we do take it as an excuse to have fondue for dinner. We have all kinds of dippers for the garlic butter, cheese, and chocolate fondue in the triple slow cooker.
The boys are always fans.
And, I guess as a Valentine's Day present, I got my house put back together. Calib's bed is back in his room, and with Etta getting along with everyone else, it's been fine to take the door out between the living room and family room.
3/4 of the dogs getting along sure makes our life easier. We're still working with Porkchop, he's still growling at Phenom, so he has to stay in our room, but we're working on it- and he's not quite as mean about it as he once was.
Other than that, there's just been lots of Olympics going on here. In case you missed it, you can check out my last couple country blogs. I just put them all together.
And as far as countries go, I just taught the boys our 193rd country! We only have three left: Portugal, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe. Next week we're doing a 'Best of' each continent week, and I even put together a list of all of our favorite meals and we voted on them to repeat them for the grand finale.
But it's kind of fun every time we color in the country to say the continent is all finished!
We've been tackling a few projects around the house now that we don't have to all be on dog duty 24/7. Asa and Calib (with a little assist from Dipper) took the opportunity to finally hang up our outdoor lights. We're hoping it helps Etta get less spooked at night.
They look awesome, but we really want to get an outdoor plug we can attach to the google home so you can just tell google home to turn them on and off instead of wandering in the dark to the side of the house to plug them in.
I leave you with a couple fun pictures. First, there's Etta who runs to the fridge to beg for a ice cube every time she hears the ice maker. Slide it across the floor and she goes running for it.
Then we have a fun frog that was spending some time on our fence. I think they've probably always been out there, but with the lights we can actually see them.
And then there was last night's drama with our resident possum, who ran into the garage as soon as we opened it to take the trash out last night. He refused to leave, and after an hour or so I convinced Asa to leave him be, so the possum could leave on his own time. At one point he said to me 'I think we're concerned about the possum for different reasons. I'm concerned there's a possum in the garage. You're concerned about the possums well being.'
That's it from here.
Whats up next you ask? Well, by the next time I write a 'What we've been up to' Blog, we will be ALL DONE with countries! That's kind of amazing.
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