Family!

Family connection is really so amazing.  I am always so happy to see what happens when my family gets together year after year...how the kiddos always just begin right where they left off.  They just know family, they know who loves them nearly as much as their own Mom and Dad.  Even when they were babies, they knew.  They feel that amazing connection instantly every single time...no nervousness, no pretense, no getting to know each other again.  It's family and it's so special.


My 2 big sister's and my youngest nephew came down to visit us in April (during my blog break!) and as always it just happens.  I thought maybe with our move to FL and this new environment things might be different.  It wasn't.  It was so fun as it always is.  We talked, we ate, we watched kiddos swim, we hit the beach, we talked more...just like always.

The cousins!

 Daniel is now in high school and my younger kiddos might drive him crazy at times but I think he has a lot of fun too.  My kiddos adore their cousin!

Love you guys!

On Anna Maria Island City Pier...happy hour!  Hubby and biggest sis chatting away, middle sis taking pics, and all the kiddos hanging out!  This is one of my favs!

And it's definitely not limited to just direct family...I am lucky enough to have a bestie that I consider my 3rd sister and it always happens with her kiddos too.  We walk in their door, the kiddos find each other and disappear...not to be seen again until us Mom's decide we had better feed them.  As soon as that's done though they are off again.     

I am so thankful for my Family...they are amazing!  LOVE!

In Memory...

I am thinking of you today...
Grandpa Grover, Grandma Viola, Grandpa Olin, Grandma Elsie, Father-in-Law Slavko and Brother-in-Law Michael...You are all missed very much!

Love!

Baba's back!!

As some of you might remember, I mentioned a while back that my MIL had left on a world cruise for 4 months.  She was so thrilled to go but knew that she would miss us all terribly.  She did and we missed her a lot too but she had an amazing trip.

She is back now and had a fabulous time!  Her visited so many cool places and took thousands of pics (literally)...Chile, Easter Island, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, United Arab Emirants, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and Spain to name a few. 

Here is the map we used at home to follow her along on this journey.  You can't make out all the specifics but you get a great perspective.  

She made some new friends, saw many amazing sights she had always wanted to see, and got 4 months to put her life and our world into a whole new perspective.

As always, she brought home lots of treasures for us to enjoy.  As she put it, shopping for these things helped her think of us while she was so far away.  The kids loved all their stuff!

Belly dancer outfits for the girls!  Halloween costumes-check!

Baba must be telling them some amazing story...L's face is hilarious!

She is such a great MIL and I am so very thankful that she took the time to do this for herself. 

You deserved every minute of it Carolyn!  Love!   

Time flies...

So where does the time go...?  It is now the end of May and it's been a month since I last posted again.  There are reasons for this. 
Last year was a big year for our family.  We moved from our home of 18 years to a new and different "world".  As I have learned over the last year, we lived in a little utopia.  Everyone it seemed was a friend, the parents all had the same values and beliefs, the kids were well behaved, respectful, and happy, we had easy access to bike trails that took us anywhere we wanted to go, and a small suburb of a larger town that both had very little crime.  We miss it...a lot. 
Sometimes it's a bit too much and it's hard for me to write.  Being down is something I don't have a lot of experience with.  I have always been a very positive person and been able to see the proverbial glass half full and not half empty.  But this has been rough. 
I have not been myself.  I hope to get back to myself soon. 
The other thing I have realized was the minute I had followers the desire to blog disappeared.  This is very strange because this is what I so wanted from the day I started blogging.  I wanted people to read my blog, like it, and comment about it...everyday.  The minute you all did that was the minute I didn't want to do it anymore. 
Thanks to Oprah's finale yesterday, I think the problem was I felt I didn't have anything worthy to say and the validation I was receiving from you was not deserved. (What are we all going to do without Oprah?!)

I have said before that I want to use this blog as a place to share with friends and family, as if we are sitting on the couch just sharing our lives, the good stuff and the bad.