Madison becomes a teen!

Maddy celebrated her special birthday with her favorite person in the world - Mya!

And now she's the proud owner of the latest iPhone. While I'm still using a 3G and Mike's still rocking a Rubik cube, I mean BlackBerry...

Northfork update :)

We broke ground today!! Hopefully we'll be moved in by September!!

Taking the plunge!

We decided at work that we would do something new together as a team when we hit a particular goal. After voting as a group we decided on ziplining - yikes! I wasn't exactly thrilled that the Groupon date was Friday the 13th either...

Florida Ecosafaris (weblink here!) in St. Cloud is about an hour drive from Orlando and their 4700 acre eco-ranch is absolutely beautiful. The guides love what they do and it's a perfect setting for a great ziplining adventure. We got checked in and had our safety checks and put on our equipment...

144 steps up to the platform for the Panther Pounce - stepping off the 71 foot ledge into fresh air I can honestly say is one of the hardest things I think I've ever done!

The line got jammed just before our turn which wasn't exactly reassuring either!

After we did the longest zipline in Florida (over a quarter of a mile)..

 ...we decided to do the world's first zipline roller coaster. And you know how I feel about roller coasters:(. I stayed on the platform for over a half an hour going over and over it and I was completely terrified. It rained for about 10 minutes too which the instructors were really excited about since it would be even faster than usual:(. Eventually one of my team came up to get me and reminded me how much I would regret it if I drove home having not done it. He said it was fun and not scary at all. He lied to me...but I did it:)

What a totally amazing day - I am so stinking proud of myself!!

A perfect day at the beach...

I thought we would be at the beach all the time when we moved to Florida - but the truth is, we rarely go! We realized recently that it's been an especially long time since we've gone and went over to Indian Harbour beach on the East Coast today :).

So proud that Maddy knows how to look after her skin - she's such a Florida baby!

On the East coast you get the big ocean waves (as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico on the Tampa side which is pretty calm) which Maddy and Mike love!

When I'm at the beach there's nothing I'd rather do than sit and watch the two of them play, listen to the waves, and read...

I can't wait for our family trip in a couple of weeks :)

Maddy found a crab...

And not much else happened...totally perfect - I've no idea why we don't do it more often :)

Sarah's Visit!

It was really nice to catch up with Sarah (Mike's cousin) and her friend Colleen while they were in town working for Disney! We had a gorgeous dinner at the Columbia restaurant in Celebration and showed them around our little town:)

We decided to go to Magic Kingdom for the night. The girls have such an amazing knowledge of the park and showed us some of their shortcuts and tricks!

Mike hadn't seen the firework show, Wishes before so it was fun for me to watch him and Maddy watch the show :)

Everyone piles out of Magic Kingdom right at 10pm when the show is over but they had extra magic hours so we took advantage of the short lines and went over to Frontierland. I was absolutely terrified (and completely sober) so I had a really hard time waiting in line for the silly runaway train ride! It's so ridiculous how much this fear of coasters has grown!

My 'team' were very encouraging while we waited...

...and it was really nothing. Fun but not scary at all. Another one crossed off my list! When we came back over to the castle, we had a perfect spot for the Electrical Parade!

Pretty girl and pretty Main St....

It was a perfect night with the girls - great to see you again Sarah!