OUR night

earlier in the week, my sister offered to have natalie spend the night at her house for the first time. natalie was elated! this must have been the best week in her life -- school all week (which she loves), and then a night at Titi's house at the end of the week to top it off! Later in the week, my mom called me with an offer we couldn't refuse: her and my dad wanted to have russell spend the night with them on friday, thus giving russ and i the night to ourselves! what on earth would we do??? after a lot of thinking, we decided to take a walk on the beach and go from there.
we headed out to the beach at around 7:00, walked on the beach while we people-watched (we were amazed at how many people were out there), then we took a walk on the jacksonville pier and watched the color of the sky change as the sun set.

the pier is very long and this was the color of the sky when we began our walk:

when we first got there, we saw some amazing waves, it must be from that hurricane out there. it's hard to tell from this picture though


the color of the sky by the time we got to the end of the pier:


walking back to the stairs, we watched this guy surf for a few minutes. we saw him surfing while we were walking on the beach earlier. i can't believe how much strength and endurance he must have had swimming for so long and waiting for the perfect wave to ride. he was pretty far from the shore too, alone, with God knows what else lurking around him in the waters... talk about being fearless. i guess it's the love of the sport.

after the beach, we headed to panera for coffee (for russ) and pastries (for me):

when we arrived home we watched our netflix movie of the week which was so much better than we expected (that's always a plus), while we snacked on my favorite chips (Wise BBQ) (and it was a tasty batch!).

waking up this morning was very strange. i looked at the clock and noticed that it was past 10:00!!! what a treat! so then we ate a small breakfast and anxiously waited for the kids to come home.

having a night alone is definitely bittersweet -- we love the time together, yet miss the kids like crazy! glad to have them home!

natalie's first day of school

the countdown on the board in the office:

every day we would change the number. natalie started to help me at the end. here's her "zero" that she wrote this morning (she turned it into what she called a smiley face):

posing for pictures outside before we left for school:

her bookbag:

she picked it out at the disney store

it's almost as big as her!

the hug -- can you tell this is SO forced??

my little girl is growing up *sniff sniff*

bikes!

at the park this past sunday:

after the park, daddy set up the big pool in the backyard and the kids had fun getting wet and playing in their sanbox. here's daddy's snow--err-- SAND-man.

self-diagnosis

we all do this, don't we?
i mean, that's what the internet's for, right? if we have a question or concern, all you have to do these days is LOOK IT UP! how convenient.

so back to the title of this entry...

i think i have hypothyroidism! long story short, on a whim i looked it up tonight and discovered that i have almost all of the listed symptoms. hmmmm. OR i could be anemic... double HMMMMM. so i think i need to call my doctor to get some blood drawn. I HATE NEEDLES! and to make matters worse, i have tiny veins (i am told this every single time i have to have blood work) and the nurse usually has a hard time. in fact, a few times, the nurse has called for "help" from another nurse, and one time they even resorted to using a baby's needle!

anyway, hopefully i can get this figured out soon. aside from my mom, who i know will have advice for me since she has already been diagnosed, i am wondering if anyone else [who reads my blog] has any advice/recommendations???

WOW

if you have kids, this will surely apply to you. if you don't have kids, you will be entertained :)


have you ever had one of those moments where your kid says something so off-the-wall and incredible that it leaves you speechless? well, we had another one of those moments in our household today.


russ took the kids out on their "bikes" (AKA: big wheel, tricyle and scooter) after dinner today and when he came back in he was telling me about how russell was actually pushing the pedals today all by himself. usually he is really lazy and pushes himself forward with his feet. recently we've been talking about getting the kids a bike for christmas -- and i know natalie is ready for one, but i wasn't too sure about russell. so when russ told me what he was doing, immediately i went online searching for bikes! natalie was sitting with me and she started to get excited about wanting a bike. i told her she had to ask santa claus, and that we needed to work on starting a letter/list for him. she told me to open up my card program on my computer (how she realized that i could do this was beyond me) and so we started making Santa a card. It started off like this:


Dear Santa Claus,
Can I have a Tinker Bell bike please? I've been a good girl today.


Then i went on to ask her what else she wanted. after listing a few things, she then said "and i want a baby doll, Lauren." I said "but you already have a baby doll named Lauren." And she says: "No, like Heather's Lauren."


WOW. My friend Heather just had a baby girl a few months ago and named her Lauren. I took the kids to the hospital to visit her when she was born, we see her at playdates often, and Natalie has even held her and "fed" her a bottle. (Not to mention, she talks about her a lot).


i THINK Natalie was trying to give her mommy and daddy a hint and all we could do was look at each other and laugh.


if natalie wants a baby brother or sister, she is going to have to turn to her little brother russell, because as badly as we want to fullfill her request, it just doesn't seem likely right now. But truthfully, that is out of my hands. We will be blessed with another baby, in His time, i know. and i look forward to it.




On another note, Natalie starts Pre-K4 on Monday. Her class orientation is on Friday morning. We are all very excited. Natalie will be giving up her MyGym class to her brother so he can have a turn while she is in school. I am looking forward to spending one-on-one time with russell in hopes that i can focus on some more learning time with him. we've pretty much decided that we are not going to put him in the Child Find program that i talked about on here before. In the end, we didn't feel it was a good decision. Lots of changes taking place around here!!! As this new school year begins, I'm sure many of you are going through similiar changes too :)



One more thing to mention: Our family vaca is coming up soon! One more month and we will be making our yearly trip to my parent's timeshare in Orlando. We hope to hit a couple of the Disney parks while we're there, then we will be travelling to Ft. Myers to spend time on the beach with Russell's parents, who will also be vacationing. So many things to look forward to! YAY!

so long dylan

our last night with dylan was spent at our favorite place to take him for dinner - bucca di beppo, and then playing some silly games, while watching t.v. back at home, staying up until the weeee hours of the morning. dylan is a major night owl!

here are some pictures from after our dinner at bucca.
i practically had to hold him at gunpoint to take these... just kidding :)

our little dylan is not so little anymore. we joked about how this might be the last year he'll want to come spend the summer with us since he's growing older. boy, did that drive him crazy because he *insists* that he is not going to change!

it's crazy to think about how quickly these kids are growing. it's definitely bittersweet because every year that goes by watching our nieces and nephews grow up, reminds me of how much older I'M getting. YIKES!

natalie's artwork

the kids have really been in to coloring lately, mostly with markers. yeah they're messy--i usually end up having to clean clothes, hands, arms, legs...even faces...but how can i deny them the fun, right? we have a bunch of scented markers and it seems as if the kids think the only way to smell them is to make it actually TOUCH their nose! it's fun to see what they look like after a few minutes of coloring.

so, without further ado, here's one of natalie's masterpieces. i had to post this because she was SO proud of herself and wanted me to take a picture of it.

some pictures from orlando

these pictures show just a fraction of the amount of family i have! it's missing about 50 cousins LOL

our third child

no, we're not pregnant.

this is in reference to our nephew dylan, who we like to refer to as our third child ;)

every summer for the last few years, him and his sister nichole would come visit for a week or two. nichole usually stayed across the street at "nana" and "papa"'s house, and dylan would usually stay with us. this year was a little different. due to a lot of things going on with her health, nichole couldn't make the trip. it was very sad news for everyone. so dylan came alone and he's been sharing his time between ourselves, and nana and papa. for some reason, dylan fits in with our little family like he's one of us, which is why we joke about him being our 3rd child! the kids have enjoyed every minute of having him around, and i must admit russ and i are going to miss him very much when he leaves this thursday.

now, dylan is a teenager and of course, a boy, so i tried to respect that as much as possible by not breaking out my camera every 5 seconds like i normally would!

at the mall

dinner at chili's

florida state parks

first stop: fort clinch park in fernandina beach

the entire calascione clan took a ride out to fernandina last weekend for another day at the beach. it was a beautiful day for the entire 3 hours we spent out there, and we just missed the afternoon thunderstorm that came rolling in.

once you're in the park, this is the path to take to get to the the beach. it's like an oak tree tunnell with spanish moss hanging everywhere, just beautiful!

natalie was having fun being buried:
uncle philip found this horeshoe crab that washed up on the beach. here's brave shelby picking it up:

***

Next stop: Alpine Groves Park.

The four of us drove out there today to let the kids run around and get some fresh air. This park is only about 20 minutes south of our house and from these pics you might recognize that this is where brittani took our family photos.

at the playground:

russell, who's obsessed with going to every single bathroom that exists, was upset because we wouldn't take him to the one at this park, so he went off to sit by himself:
a view of the river:
this land used to be a farm in 1900. the other side of this building, was where one of our family pictures were taken :)

on the nature trail. lots of beautiful magnolia trees surrounding us

back at the playground:

this is the coolest slide ever. each bar rolls as you go down. russ and i tried it out and personally we thought it hurt a little, but the kids loved it!

finally a picture with mommy!

Celebrating Anniversaries

My parents celebrated their 34rd anniversary this past Sunday but we were all in Orlando visiting family and weren't really able to celebrate. I decided to have them over for dinner and surprise them with a homemade cake last night to make up for not doing anything for them on their actual anniversary. I think they were pleasantly surprised.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM & DAD!

Five years ago today, Russ and I exchanged vows... My life changed in ways I could have never even dreamed of! Happy Anniversary to my one and only!