Jacksonville

Jacksonville has been Rod's home for the past month, and the kids and I have hung out for about half that time with him. We are all set up in a great hotel room with a separate bedroom, living room, kitchen, and eating area. We have had so much fun seeing the sights around the city. Elijah is completely obsessed with all the bridges and water! I like the breakfast buffet that someone else cooks for us every morning and the dinner at night! We have spent lots of time on the beach and in the pool. Elijah is swimming now!!! He is so cute and proud of himself! Rodgers is learning the butterfly stroke, and is trying to teach Kylie. Rodgers and I also practiced our "dead man's float" the other day, which he thinks is hilarious. Kylie has mastered diving down and swimming between everyone's legs and has an amazing cannonball that can splash everyone in the pool! Eli likes to cannonball off the edge, too, but his is just a jump while yelling "I'm a ball!" The waves down here are awesome! There have been lots of surfers for us to watch and the kids have been out on their boogie boards. Eli and I got pummelled once, but other than that we have had fun in them, too! Last Friday as we were out swimming, we looked up to see dolphins jumping and swimming just a few feet away! Amazing! We had fun watching them for a while. We have a great little schedule most days of playing in the mornings with daddy, eating lunch, doing school in the afternoon, hitting the pool in the evening, showering before dinner, then games and reading or a show at night. The kids are doing great sleeping even though they are all in one bed. We took a field trip to the Museum of Science and History and planetarium, where we learned lots about stars, planets, the FL marine life, the human body, the Earth's water, and much more. We spent an evening at The Landing downtown at the outdoor concert. The kids had fun dancing and walking around looking at the river and boats.
Yesterday, we had a very different pumpkin patch experience: it was 92 degrees, and they sold lots of beautiful flowers there! So, there won't be a picture of all three doodles on the tractor at our favorite Charlotte pumpkin patch this year...sad, but exciting all the same.
School continues to go well. Kylie is learning to read, learning about the seasons, temptations, tertiary colors (what???), patterns, the President, the flag, the pledge...so much to learn! Rodgers continues to teach me a lot. His main concern with being down here so long is that he doesn't get to go to the library. Thankfully we borrowed a bunch of books from Nana Stewart and William last weekend, so we should make it through the week!
Rodgers got to go to Walking with Dinosaurs in Columbia last weekend with Nana Stewart, William, and Bennett. They had a great time learning the history of dinosaurs and seeing the life-size dinosaurs in the show!
We went over to Fernandina Beach the other day to walk around, see the marina, and check out all the pirate stuff! It was a fun morning seeing a new area (and reminiscing for Rod and I since we were there years ago...before kids). They even had yellow ("LELLOW!!!") ice cream for Eli at the ice cream shop.
Well, hopefully this catches you up a little bit. "What's next?", you may ask...well, we don't know. But as of today, we have the hotel room til this Saturday.
The kids and I are headed to Hilton Head to meet Nana Kathy and Papa Fred on Friday for the week. More fun times to come!