Saturday, November 2, 2013

Picture Dump

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted on here. Needless to say there has been a lot that has happened in the last few months. I'll do my best to give you the spark notes version of it.

Stratton had his last day of daycare at Miss Lisa's house on Aug 16. There were a few tears from me of course because Miss Lisa has been so awesome with Stratton over the last almost 5 years. She started watching him when he was 6 weeks old and he truly loves her and her family.
 Stratton and Miss Lisa
 He is in love with Hannah.
Barry was his buddy too.
 Stratton and his best friend Keegan

We celebrated my cousin Beth's daughter Mady's birthday at Pagliai's Pizza
Anna, Stratton ,and Mady cheesing it up

Stratton started preschool on Aug 19th and it was a tough day for everyone involved. Stratton was excited the first day but that week just got progressively harder. He was not happy with having to go to the Preschool.

 We look so incredibly tired. I don't think I slept very well that night and I know I stayed up late making sure we had everything in order for Stratton's first day of preschool. 
Look how cute he is!
One of his teachers sent this to me the first week making me feel a little better about him being there.

On Aug 23 we went with my entire family to go see the Cardinals play.
 So we may or may not have gotten in trouble for him climbing on this. Haha.

 
 Stratton was less than pleased about being on the very top level in the very last row of the stadium. He hates heights.
 Our view was pretty dang awesome to say the least though. There was a breeze so it felt amazing.

 Panoramic from our seats.
 
 Love my parents. My mom was the one who scored these awesome tickets for us.
 Finally got a smile out of him.
 Family pic! Even Derek got caught wearing a Cards hat even though hes a die hard Red Sox fan.

 Strat thought it was pretty cool to use the binoculars.
 Me and my beautiful sis.
 Me, Casey and Marcus
 Casey and Marcus aka the Cutest Couple Ever ;)
 
 Stratton was having such a good time once we got some hotdogs and popcorn and nachos in his tummy.
 ...and a fruit roll us. I swear this kid is a bottomless pit.
 Stratton and Grandpa B he loves his grandpa


 Another pano from our seats

This semester I have been taking more classes since I'm not part time at work. I'm taking a print making class this semester that has turned out to be pretty dang awesome. These are some of the first prints that I made.
  This one is a little hard to tell what it is unless you know what you're looking at. It's Groucho.

 
I love this little octopus that I made too. I love the red and blue rainbow roll the most.

We celebrated dad's birthday a little early this year because Derek, Stratton and I were going to be out of town for his birthday. We went to Grandma Marge's house for dinner and dessert. Dad turned the big 6-0!
 Stratton has to help blow out the candles.

The reason why we were out of town was because we went to....

DISNEY!

 We drove through the night to get to Floriday. We left at 9:30 at night. Needless to say it was a LONG drive down there.
 Stratton did amazing though. He slept most of the time and was all smiles when he was awake.
 We saw some crazy accidents when we were driving. This was an 18 wheeler that had gone off the road and flipped over on it's side.
  The first sign of daylight was amazing. We were so close to being on the beach!
 
 This was the HUGE bridge that we had to take to get to where we were staying.
 Derek, Stratton, and Grandma Lisa were SO excited!
 This was our view for the week before we went to Orlando. It was beautiful!
 Stratton and I had to run down to the water of course.
 
 Stratton thought the sand was SO awesome!
 This was my and Derek's room. I took a pano of our room while Stratton ran across in front of me. Looks like we may have found his twin in Destin.
 This was Dale and Lisa's room.
 Their balcony looked out over the ocean.
 
 Stratton and Derek on the beach.
 
 Can you tell that we had been up for almost 24 hours straight?
 
 Our first sunset on the beach was beautiful! It looks like a postcard.
 Stratton and Dale played army men on the beach. I think that was Stratton's favorite part of the beach.
 
 
The water was the perfect temperature. Stratton loved to get just deep enough for it to hit him at his knees.
 
 
 
 
 
 I couldn't get him to stand still long enough for me to get a good picture of him.





 Needless to say I am not a beach bunny. I got crispy. 
 Derek kept having to put aloe on my back.
 There was an awesome little restaurant right down the beach from our condo called Whales Tale.
 They had the best crab cakes I have ever had.
 This was the view from where we were sitting on the balcony.
 Seriously, doesn't that make your mouth water!?
 I needed a sunhat while I was down there so I went to a little shop down the street and found this awesome hat there. It's so me with the leopard print.

 That evening I sat out on the back porch and drank some wine while listening to the waves crash on the beach.

 Derek got some sun while we were there too. Haha. Poor guy. I think he burns worse than I do.
 We went back to the Whales Tale and got fruity drinks. They were AWESOME!
 
 Did I mention how beautiful the sunsets were?
 
 Derek and I enjoying a nice walk on the beach with our fruity drinks.

 Every time I tried to take a pano of the beach Derek had to get in it.
 He's such a dork.
 We went out on the beach and caught crabs at night. That was kind of a funny thing to say at the time. Catching crabs...haha.
 
 We left for Disney midweek from Destin. The drive wasn't bad at all. Stratton played on the iPad most of the drive. 

 This was the view from our room. The pool was a lazy river!
 The golf course was right behind our hotel too.
 We went to the T-Rex restaurant located in Downtown Disney for dinner the first night we were in Orlando. 
 Every hour they had a meteor shower that would make all the animals in there move and the lights would change. It was pretty cool if you ask me.
 Derek and I had a good laugh at this fried chicken sign. It looks like the one owned by Gus on Breaking Bad.
 Stratton had so much fun.
 He could barely contain himself of the tram that took us into Disney World. 
 * I'm missing a lot of pictures from Disney because they're on my good camera and the SD card I used is currently misplaces *
 Stratton finally got to meet his favorite Disney character of all time. MINNIE MOUSE!
 
 He had the biggest smile ever! I loved seeing him so excited about getting to meet her.
 He kept stepping back to look at her and then hugging her again.
 
 We got to ride the Dumbo ride which was just what we were needing at the time. It was pretty dang hot that day and getting to go around and up in the air gave us a nice breeze.

 Stratton got to control the up and down lever. He thought that was pretty cool.

 Stratton and I rode the raceway bummer cars. I let him drive which was about what I expected. They have a rail down the middle so you can't hit anyone. We kept clanking into the bar and it would jerk us one side or the other. He still loved getting to drive the car though.
 If you couldn't tell from the picture above...he was pooped after we got done for the day. We were there for almost 9 hours.
 When we first got there for the day Stratton saw a big red Minnie that he wanted. I told him that we would get one before we left for the day. Sure enough, 8.5 hours later he remembered that I told him he could get one and we bought it for him. She is almost as big as he is. He loves her so much though.
 We had a little storm roll in that night that kept us from getting to go back to Downtown Disney.

We only stayed at Disney for a day but it was just enough time for Stratton to get to see most everything that he wanted to see.

We headed back to Destin the next morning for our last few days of vacation on the beach. I went geocaching when we got back and actually found one right down the street from our condo!
 Woop woop found a geocache!
 I caught a little lizard while we were there and we named him Raphaello
 This was our last day on the beach. It was sad to go but I think we were all ready to get home.
There was this awesome little coffee shop down the street that Derek, Stratton, and I went to while we were there. It was called Bad Ass Coffee Co. They had awesome sandwiches and a coffee called the Widow Maker. It had 6 shots of espresso in it.


The week after we got back my best friend Sarah came in town!
 We went to Simply Swirled and it was SO good! I miss her everyday that she's gone.
We also took time to goof off while we waited for Sean to get done working.

This semester has had me drawing a lot more than I usually do. This was one of my recent drawing that I did that I kind of fell in love with.





While we were in Florida Zoe stayed with Derek's grandparents while Groucho stayed at home and my dad came over to feed him. When we got them back together they were SO stinkin cute!
 Zoe kept licking Groucho on the top of his head.
 Groucho couldn't get enough snuggles with me.
 He also wouldn't let me get any homework done.
They snuggled on the couch together too which was adorable!

The Semo District Fair was the week after we came back from Florida too! Stratton loves the fair.