2014 Coming in with a BANG!

Well, we will pick up seconds after we left off!  Happy New Year!!  We still had a TON of fireworks left so we took back to the streets and proceeded to make quite a bit of noise!  Someone did get some sparklers for the kids and we let them run around with them for a bit.  When it was all said and done, we had some fireworks left over (shocker!), but at least we have them the next time we need them.  Hee Hee

Midnight smooch!

Oscar, as far as we know, did not stay up to ring in the New Year.  I fully expect he slept through it, but in typical Oscar fashion he greeted me with a first day of 2014 meow in the face a few short hours after we had all fallen asleep - 5:00am!!  That is what time Jim usually gets up for work and to Oscar, every day is a work day!  Happy New Years indeed!

Whatever people!

One thing that I did not mention last month was my vacuum died.  It was 10 years old but I was quite surprised that it died.  I mean, I was vacuuming one day and then mid-way through the last room, it just died.  I guess that is the way to go.  This happened on the 30th of December.  I took it to a repair service place and they said they would call me after the 2nd to give me the verdict.  Well on the 6th, when I finally got someone to answer the phone they told me they could fix it and it would cost about $100.00.  Great!  Fix it!  A week later when I called back to see if I could pick it up they said that it could not be fixed.  Apparently the original faulty part wasn't the only problem.  Ouch.  So I did some quick internet research and ordered a Dyson Animal canister vacuum.  It arrived the Tuesday after Martin Luther King Holiday.  So I endured 4 weeks without regularly vacuuming my house.  The day after I ordered the new vacuum the repair place called and said they could Frankenstein two vacuums together for about $100.00 - No thanks!  I could not get the new one out of the box fast enough!!  I took it for a test drive on our TILE downstairs floor that has a few (too many) Oriental rugs.  OMG!!! It was pretty embarrassing.  I could not even do the entire area without dumping the canister! On a positive note, this vacuum rocks!  Oscar, however, is not a fan.  With the old one he would allow me to vacuum him as long as I stay away from his feet and ears.  When this one comes into the room, he scatters!  The kids call it R2D2.  

My newest LOVE!

Ok, ok, I am getting ahead of myself a bit.  Back to the first week of January.  Jim comes home with 4 tickets to the Orange Bowl (Clemson vs. Ohio State).  Four tickets, hmmm, last I checked there were 5 in this family.  No biggie, let's find two more adults, get a sitter and go.  Oh wait, it is 7:30pm kick off, televised game.  We won't get home until midnight!  That isn't going to work.  Jim was lucky enough to score an additional ticket - they were just handing them out at work - shhhh.  So off we went to our first BCS Bowl game! The kids and I were pulling for Clemson, Jim for the Buckeyes.  We are even going to tailgate with some friends from Jim's work.  We really went all out for this!  We figured since we weren't spending any money on the tickets we should at least try to take advantage of the experience.

Stadium escalator.
It was actually chilly!   Hooray!

We decide to leave at halftime.  We knew we would have a long ride home and it was getting late.  I can't believe how long it takes to play a game, not even a whole game.  Every time the ball stopped, they would go to commercial.  UGH!!  Besides, Clemson was losing.  Sigh.  We made it home in time to watch the end of the 3rd quarter and all of the 4th.  Especially the last few minutes of the game where Clemson was able to hold on to WIN!!  Yeah!!!  Fitting, orange team wins the Orange bowl after running through a giant orange.  

We actually had a few days of winter here in South Florida!!  Just three, but still check out this photo.  It wasn't for a dress-up day at school it was actually cold, for here.  Of course last year this would have been appropriate for a normal non-snowy day.  What a difference a year makes.  The high this day was 60F.  Something tells me the kids have lost all of their cold weather tolerance from living in Rhode Island.

I have been trying to do a better job of feeding the birds.  We had a bird feeder in Niceville, but mainly our cats were using them to attract a toy for entertainment.  I attempted again in Jamestown to provide some extra food, especially during the snow storms.  Here, we have inherited a feeder in addition to one I had purchased but all we seem to attract are Muscovy ducks, grackles and squirrels.  Even though the one I bought was "squirrel proof" you can see that hasn't stopped them from enjoying the free lunch.  I have since moved it to a different branch further away from the trunk of the tree.  It hasn't stopped them.  Now they work in teams to throw themselves at it, knock some food to the ground and then eat it.  If you haven't seen squirrels, ducks and grackles duking it out for some seeds, you are really missing out.  High quality entertainment, let me tell you.  

Typically January is a pretty slow month for us.  This year was no exception.  I am really grasping at straws for content let me tell you.  Doesn't help that Jim was gone a lot.  It might (or not) surprise you that he is the one that plans many almost entirely all of our little adventures.  It isn't that I am not naturally curious, he just has a higher pain threshold than I do.  Every day with the kids is an adventure for me and since he is gone a lot I guess he feels the need to spice it up a bit.  For whatever reason, we do some puzzling stuff sometimes.  Take visiting the International Game Fishing Association Hall of Fame and Museum for example.  What is it?  Why are we going?  Don't care kids, get in the car!  It turned out to be really interesting, but I will tell you driving the half hour to get there I wasn't so sure it was going to work out too well.  

But then we walk into this!  WOW!  I am still not entirely sure what the purpose of this place is, but man did they have some pretty cool exhibits.  There were several boat sterns set up with the gear you would need to catch certain types of fish.  Here Ben is pulling in a Large Mouth Bass.  You face a screen which shows you what the fish sees and the pole/reel gives you an idea of what it would be like to catch that type of fish.  The kids (all of them LOVED it). 

FISH ON! Jim landing a Sailfish!

Lucy man handling a Marlin

Lilly and her Bass

Of course right next door was a Bass Pro Shops and we had to go in.  I am not sure what exactly my children love about Bass Pro Shops, but it was extremely hard to get them out of there.  I personally think it is because there is always some type of shark photo opportunity.  

As we wind down January, we get the fantastic news that Lilly made Silver Honor Roll for the second time.  YEAH!!!  We are still hoping she can pull the Gold Honor Roll (All A's) but until such time, we are pretty tickled she is doing well in school.

Although not as tickled as she is!!

One very last event for January.  Ben celebrated the 100th day of school!  It was a big deal and his class had some pretty interesting ways to display what 100 means.  From making a 100th day of school hat, to stringing 100 Fruit Loops to make a necklace.  But my favorite has to be the art project of how they will look when they are 100.  Hopefully Ben will have a bit more hair than that!