This past week we spent at a family reunion in Florida! The weather was absolutely glorious most of the time, and a little on the hot side one of the days.

We are really cool (aka: not cool) and hardly took any pictures. But here’s what we’ve got.

First we rode on an airplane. Carter said this was one of the highlights for him.

While in Florida we saw some really cool things like manatees!

There were actually a ton of really cool animals at this animal rehabilitation facility, all of which are native to Florida except the hippo. But the hippo was the most exciting hippo I have ever seen (Others I have seen just sit there and stink, this one did lots of moving around and cool-noise-making along with stinking.) so we were glad they made an exception for him.

We also went to a beautiful spring of which the water was 99.8% pure H2O! A lot of people tried the water and said it tasted exactly like water. The bottle never made it to me, but I believed them. We also went to the beach (where the water was full of salt, believe it or not) and enjoyed the waves and sand and sun. Plus we hung out a lot at the house which had an ice-cream shaped pool in the back yard which was loved by all.

There were also cousin activities.

Josh described the cousin olympics as a “contest to see who was oldest.” Fay was a little saddened by how much of an edge the 8 and 9 year old boy cousins had over her. But there are only so many ways to involve all the ages in a single activity.

One exciting moment from the reunion came when Portia found my make up bag. 🙂 Everyone was impressed by how very obviously intentional the locations of make up application were. I was probably the most impressed because I know how infrequently she ever witnesses somebody applying make up. She must have been watching very closely that one time I did it this year. 😉

So many more memories were made than have been shared here!

When we got home Fay lost her first tooth! Truth be told, I pulled it out without asking her express permission and she was very distraught about it (I blame the 10 solid minutes of bawling on fatigue). But by the next day she was quite pleased. And now that she has put her tooth under her pillow and the “tooth fairy associates” have replaced it with money and she has replaced that money with a new toy from the dollar store I would say she has pretty good feelings about the tooth-losing process.

And one last, very important, thing happened this week. Yesterday we were working on household projects and Josh asked if I wanted him to start on the bench for the table. I told him that I would love it and by the time we went to bed, look what my man had whipped up!

He really is so good to me! I told him I might ask him to make me fewer things except that he just keeps delivering! Also, he keeps claiming to enjoy the projects I give him.

Anyway, I am super grateful for this past week! And I’m still grateful for this season of being grateful!