Gymnastics

About a month ago, Ellie started taking a gymnastics class.  She goes once a week for an hour.  Kyle and I have been switching off taking her.  She LOVES it!  I think it's really good for her because she is a very cautious little girl (which I like!), but it has encouraged her to try new things and take a few risks.  She still doesn't like the bars and won't go down the "swirly slide," but she will take a running dive into the huge foam pit.  That's her favorite part!

This was the second class.  She's about to jump into the little foam pit.

With her coach, Chelsie

In the BIG foam pit!

This was from the fourth class

 She is the only one in her group that listens very carefully when her coach explains what they will do at each station.  She sits on her mat and watches her every move!

 Doing back handsprings over the mailbox.  I had to chop myself out of these because I was giving everyone a show when I leaned over.  My mom was too interested in Ellie's gymnastics moves to notice I was flashing the whole gym!!

 Cartwheel

 "Ta-da!"

 She really like the rings!  I got in trouble the first time around because I apparently didn't listen well when Chelsie was giving instructions.  I didn't have her touch her toes to the rings.  Ellie corrected me the second time through. ;)

I'm so impressed that she can climb up the rock wall by herself.  Now if she would just come back down on the swirly slide!  It's most kids' favorite part, but it freaks her out!

She really likes the balance beam!

 She also likes climbing the rope.  She will actually come back down the green wavy slide.

Now we just have to get her a leotard.  She asked, "Mom, why aren't all the other girls wearing pants while they do gymnastics?" Good question.

Florida

We took a vacation to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida over spring break.  This wasn't our first time to travel with Jackson, but it was our first time to fly with both kids!  I was a little nervous since Jackson is a light sleeper and he is on the move now!  He gets restless because he is ready to move, but can't quite make his body do what his mind wants it to do.  However, it went very well!  Of course, we got lots of dirty looks from other passengers as we boarded the plane with our 6 month old, two year old, and 6 carry on bags, but they all commented on how great our kids were once the plane was on the ground and they knew it was finally safe to say so!

Jackson checking out the clouds

Ellie and Daddy looking out the window

We had a lay over in Dallas and Ellie always loves playing in this little play area!

It was a long day of traveling!  From the time we left the house (7 a.m.) until we got in our hotel room (7 p.m.) we flew to DFW, had a two hour layover, flew to Ft. Lauderdale, took a shuttle to Enterprise, got our rental car, got excited when we saw our hotel was only 2.5 miles from the airport, got really disappointed when we realized it was going to take over an hour to travel 2.5 miles because we're at the beach during spring break, dropped all our luggage off at the hotel because we got the wrong rental car and it was tiny, went to the grocery store and Walgreen to get supplies now that we had room in our tiny car, went back to the hotel and unloaded. . . all with two kids under two.  OMG!  It stresses me out to relive that.

You can tell how Ellie was feeling here.  Tired, yet relieved that we were almost there!

View from our hotel room

First day at the beach!

It was pretty windy the first day and the ocean seemed a little scary to Ellie.  She also freaked out when she first put her feet in the sand.  She didn't want to get dirty.  I explained that it was going to be hard to build sandcastles without getting a little (or a lot) of sand on her.  She finally decided that getting dirty was worth it.  But, she stood her ground on walking in the ocean.  She'd only go out if Daddy held her.

We'd planned on walking down somewhere cool and kid friendly for dinner on the first night.  As soon as we stepped out, it started raining.  We decided to go into the restaurant in our hotel since it was just right there.  We didn't realize it was a very fancy, very expensive restaurant until we sat down with our two hungry, tired kids.  Luckily, we were outside on the patio.  It was delicious, but we were very out of place with our flip flops and kiddos.  Oh, well!  Not like we'll see any of those annoyed people again.

Lounging by the pool

On the second day we went to the Seaquarium in Miami.  It's sort of a zoo for aquatic animals.  The had several different shows you could attend.  We went to the sea lion show first.

After seeing the crocodiles, sea turtles, and peacocks, we went to the killer whale/dolphin show.  We'd bought Ellie an icee on the way in, and she sat there eating her icee, never even looking up during this show.  Kyle and I thought it was pretty cool!

We saw this sunset on our way to dinner at Bubba Gump's that night.

This was the sunrise from our room.  And believe me . . . we got to see the sun rise every morning since Jackson woke up at 6:30 a.m. Florida time.

Day 3 at the beach!  This day was the most perfect day ever!  Slight breeze, no humidity, 82-84 degrees.  Perfect beach day.

Jackson's first time in the ocean

Seashell hunting

We brought home lots of pretty shells!

Hanging out at the pool. This is one of my favorites!

I can hardly take pictures of Jackson and Ellie together because Jackson can't keep his eyes off his sister for very long!

Going to dinner on our last night!

We joke that Ellie is missing an arm in this picture and Jack is just discovering his!

For some reason, these didn't go where they were supposed to when I uploaded all these pics, and I'm too lazy to move them to the correct places.

In front of a humpback whale's tail at the Seaquarium

Another pretty sunrise shot

Dad at the pool

I took approximately 300 pictures on this trip, so there are plenty more good ones, but you get the idea. Our first family vacation was a success and we all had a great time.  The downside?  Arriving back in OKC to freezing temps.  Boo.  Come on springtime!!