St. Louis for Grandpa's surgery - Sep2019

In August, Grandpa was diagnosed with colon cancer and a surgery was scheduled to remove the tumors and a section of the colon. I decided to fly in town and bring Graham along with me. He was a great little traveler and even endured a lot of hours in a hospital waiting room with great patience.

After my trip was already planned, but the day before we left, my Dad's brother, Uncle Jim passed away suddenly. It was tragic and horrible and we spent the weekend before the surgery saying goodbye. Here is a photo of my Aunt Jean, my Dad in the middle, and Uncle Jimmy on the other end. 

At the hospital, in the waiting room and then out for a little bit of fresh air at the turtle playground at nearby Forest Park.

First Day of School 2019

First day of school for 2019 saw Parker headed to 2nd grade in Mrs. Pelletier's class. We continued our previous arrangement of having Ben and Colin come to our house in the mornings and Parker going to the Nudds' house in the afternoons. Next year will add two more kids to the mix!!

Benny lost a tooth while we were waiting for the bus!

Florida with the Chalfants - August 2018

It was a long time coming, but we finally planned another vacation with the Chalfants. The plan was to all stay at Papa G's house in Florida, but nature had other plans and threw us a curve ball of The Red Tide. The Red Tide is an algae bloom that naturally occurs way off the coast, but in 2018 a number of factors made it come in to shore and stay there for some time. It killed so much wildlife and made the beaches unusable. As we neared our trip date, we realized we needed a plan B. We ended up booking an AirBnB near Indian Shores Beach, which is south of Clearwater and north of St. Pete Beach. The house wasn't on the beach, but was a very short drive and fit the bill on such short notice.

We still flew in and out of Punta Gorda so spent a couple nights at Papa G's house on both ends of the trip.

We had a blast with the Chalfants, who are always up for adventure like we are! We rented a boat, went to the beach a ton (sometimes twice in one day) and the kids had so much fun playing together and swimming in the pool. Graham had a swimming breakthrough the first day at Papa G's house and was solidly swimming on his own all week! 

Dinner at The Lighthouse Grill at Stump Pass Marina

Checking out the beach on Boca Grande

lots of dead fish

But a beautiful sunset!!

These guys were catching crabs and the only other people on the beach

On our way up to Indian Shores, we stopped at the Mote Marine Aquarium on Siesta Key.

Then we arrived at the house and settled in for four days!

After dinner across the street, we watched the sunset from the beach and then walked down to check out the construction going on...a barge out in the gulf was pumping sand back to the beach with a huge pipe and these machines were moving it around