A gorgeous weekend, and a celebration for Caroline!

What an awesome weekend! We are finally almost finished with all our house projects, and just in time, because the weather has been AMAZING! The trees and flowers are starting to bloom here, and we're taking every chance we can to be outside. Yesterday we spent the whole afternoon at our new favorite park. Here are some sweet pics of Sam, who cannot get enough of sliding!

The best thing about this park is that it's right by the Ortega River, so there's plenty of boat-watching to do when we get tired of playing.
Sam loved watching the boats go by. What a cute little man :)
After our park adventure, we got some ice cream!

Last night, Mom got together with all her favorite Jacksonville girls for dinner and a "sprinkle" (not a shower...just a sprinkle :) for Caroline. The girls sprinkled Caroline with all kinds of adorable girlie things and some great practical things...cute pink outfits, pjs, blankets, bows, socks, a pink diaper pail (when you have two kids in diapers, you need one for each kid's room!), one of those cute bottle-drying racks that looks like grass, and a huge box full of baby wipes! They even gave Sam a book about becoming a big brother! It was so much fun to have a chance to get out for dinner and see all the girls, and SO exciting to start celebrating Caroline's upcoming arrival!

Today was another gorgeous day. Sam looked like such a big boy when we got dressed for church this morning that I HAD to snap a picture of him. He was not happy about having to pose for me :)

Today we went to Big Talbot Island for one of our favorite nature walks through the maritime forest and a brief walk on the disappearing beach as the tide came in. Here's a picture of Miss Caroline at T minus 8 weeks!
There wasn't much beach to play on by the time we got there, but Sam had fun picking up shells amidst the driftwood and the weird rock/sand formations.
As we walked back through the trail to our car, Sam plopped down in the dirt and started playing. He got pretty dirty...
...and then dirtier...
....AND dirtier!
Ahhh, this is the life :)
Hope y'all had a great weekend!

BIG BOY!

Well, if you've been wondering what we've been up to on our weekends the past month, it's basically been one of two things:

(1) Moving furniture/rooms around in our house; or

(2) Getting out and enjoying the warmer weather!

Starting about a month ago, we started the process of moving Sam into his BIG BOY room! We moved the guest furniture to a new room, had Sam's room painted, then had fun moving Sam's furniture into his room. Sam tried out his new chair and gave it a thumbs up!

This was a multi-step process, including moving furniture into Caroline's room while we moved Sam's old furniture out. In the meantime, Sam was a big help using the dustbuster to get up all the old dust bunnies hiding behind his crib!

Moving the new furniture into Caroline's room...

When we put down the rug in his new room, Sam got so excited! He ran around in circles, enjoying the big new space for him to play in!

We were a little unsure of how this transition would go, but Sam has been so great! He slept well from day one and is happy as a clam in his new digs. We're happy because we have more space to store his toys...and he's happy because he has more space to destroy!

Unfortunately, we don't have any "after" shots yet. We've made a lot more progress since then, but all of these rooms are still works in progress. We've put together Caroline's furniture, gotten Sam's room partially decorated, and we're making progress in the guest room and our room...but we'll probably need a couple more weeks. We are so proud of our progress and loving how our house is coming together :)

The second (and MUCH more exciting) thing we've been up to is enjoying being outdoors in this warm(er) weather! We've had high 50s/low 60s pretty regularly, and we've been taking advantage of it! We've been up to Fort Caroline, been to the park lots and lots, and taken many long walks in the neighborhood.

The weather was gorgeous last weekend, and after a morning of making more progress in Sam's room, we decided to head to the beach for the afternoon. Sam walked and walked and walked, and picked up half the shells on the beach singlehandedly :)

We crashed at Chip and Phy's house overnight, and Sam had a great time playing with his grandparents while Mom and Dad went out for a nice dinner at Medure. We're trying to use the rest of our Teal Deals before they expire, so we've had a couple delicious date night dinners lately!

In the morning, we woke up and took another great walk on the beach. Sam walked some more...and picked up some more shells. What a sweet little man :)

The weather wasn't quite as warm this weekend since we've had rain the last couple of days, but it was clear enough and warm enough to spend the afternoon at the Zoo! Sam had so much fun!

This kid LOVES animals, so he was in heaven the moment we arrived. We would pick him up at each exhibit so he could see over the fence, and when we would finally put him down after a few minutes of watching (and making lots of animal noises and/or repeating the name of the animal we were looking at over and over), he would start walking off toward the next exhibit, saying "MORE! ANIMALS!" It was unbelievably cute.

Here were a few of his favorites from the Africa exhibit...

A highlight of the day -- Sam got to feed a giraffe!

He thought this was really hilarious :)

Clay's favorite -- the Jaguars exhibit. Clay tried to pose with Sam, but Sam was much more interested in watching the Jaguars!

Another Sam favorite -- the Kangaroos in the Australia exhibit! We didn't get any great pictures of Sam with the kangaroos, but Clay snapped this cute one of a very happy Sam :)

And here's a new shot of Caroline in my quickly-growing tummy. I'm feeling REALLY big these days...and only about 10 weeks to go!

But the BIGGEST highlight of the day was the TRAIN! Sam kept hearing the "Choo-Choo" sound as we walked around the zoo and got more and more excited about riding the train, but we saved it for last because we were afraid that we might never get him off once we got on :) Needless to say, Sam absolutely LOVED riding on a REAL choo-choo train. I think this was the happiest day of his life :)

As we passed by the animals, Sam and another little girl on the train had fun making animal noises at them (and at each other). What a great day!

We promise more cute Sam pics and some pictures of our finished Big Boy room and nursery to come soon. In the meantime, lots of love to all and hope everyone's doing well :)