Weekend in ORL

Did I mention that we put in a pool? 

I can't take my eyes off this kid for a moment without her climbing up something she can't climb down

Yesterday, Natalie was drawing a picture. She told me she was coloring the tree of life. I was all excited, and feeling proud that some of my gospel instruction was sticking. So I said, "You mean the one from Lehi's dream? The one with the fruit on it?" And she said, "NO! The one from Disney World with all the animals on it."

On Friday, we went to Disneyworld's Animal Kingdom. We don't plan to go there much over the summer because of crowds and heat. We had a great day, the weather was cooler and there were hardly any lines. We made the mistake of taking our kids to the 4d movie experience, "It's Tough to be a Bug". They're probably going to be traumatized for life over that one. Natalie also rode a dinosaur ride with Micah that I guess she was pretty terrified of. Afterwards, she said with a very stern expression, "Let's not do that ride ever again."

There were redeeming moments. She got to ride the Kali River Rapids- TWICE! She really loved it with me and we both got totally soaked, then I guess when she went with Micah she spent the whole ride pointing out the pretend temple ruins along the way and they didn't get wet.

Meanwhile, Angela got pretty wet herself. She enjoyed the getting wet part, not so much the being wet afterwards.

 We spent the night in a hotel so that I could go to my zumba instructor training the following morning. It was a long day of dancing and demos that could have easily been condensed from 8 hours down to 5 or 6, but whatever. The facility where the training should have been held ended up not being open due to construction delays, so it was held at this super tiny, ghetto gym. We spent the whole day crammed like sardines in a tiny room, smacking one another and stomping on each others feet as we danced the cumbia. I'm near the back in a white bandana.

Micah spent the day freaking out trying to keep the children under control all over Orlando. Among other things, they went to the mall and picked out some new paint and a giant frozen coloring book at the crayola store. Micah's respect for what I do every. single. day. has grown immensely.

The girls were playing finding nemo on Saturday night when we got home. They were singing all the songs from Finding Nemo: The Musical. I asked if I could play. Natalie told me I could be the big butt. 

Here's Sammy, hoping a squirrel comes his way. 2 comfy couches and a padded chair in the room, and he chooses to lay on the end table!

Our Surinam Cherry tree is insane. We didn't know it was a fruiting tree until Natalie noticed the berries and since then it has produced nonstop. Most of the fruit is up too high to reach, so it ends up mostly ant food once it ripens and drops on the ground. Still, we've been picking 2-3 cups of fruit from it every other day for a week now. I'm cleaning, pitting and freezing it to make jam.

Gardening is going well, though pests are becoming a problem.

 Something nocturnal keeps digging in our garden ever since I began fertilizing with chicken poop. Annoying. It knocked over a bunch of cherry tomato plants that had outgrown their stakes, so I put another white trellis beside them to help hold them up. We have a few little green tomatoes on those, some corn growing, and lots of flowers on the melons. The beans have been confusing. The potted ones started making beans quickly, but the ones in the garden have grown enormous but havent made any beans. Very curious.

These girls could come into laying ANY DAY! They enjoy lounging in the shade and flying out of their day pen to roam the yard. Pretty soon, I'm gonna take down the pen around their coop meant to keep them in and just put it up around the garden to keep them out and let them have free range of the whole back yard.

I don't even care if I don't get a single cantaloupe, I feel like a major boss training the vines up this trellis.

These 2 pots of beefsteak tomatoes have 18 fruits growing! I'll be bummed if the bugs and critters ruin them. Garden crops grow more slowly here, since they are grown in spring and fall, when the sun is lower and the days are shorter. I started these the first week of January and the biggest one is maybe 2 inches in diameter and still quite green.

Micah will have his first scout camp out this weekend. They're going to a natural spring in Central Florida. It's the middle of alligator mating season, when the most incidents with gators and humans occur. Yippee.