Christmas in Chicago {2018}

Posted in Family, Travel by Kendra G.

We started our Christmas break with a lovely Christmas service at church on Friday night.

Saturday morning came early and we hopped on a plane to head to Chicago!

Michael and Rachel showed us around the city while the kids headed back to the house to bake cookies and see Arie.

We stopped at Macy’s to get warm and check out the Christmas tree and beautiful decorations.

Afterwards, we hopped on over to the Christkindlmarket which was packed the moment it opened. I got a cute mug full of warm goodness, then we headed out.

Our next stops included Garrett Popcorn, Ballast Point to taste some beers, and Au Cheval for the best burger in the entire city.

Finally, we met up with the kids at Forge Brewery!

The next two days, we had a wonderful visit with family.

We were hopeful for more snow, but she was thrilled to at least see this much.

Christmas morning was full of coffee and opening presents before we packed our bags to hit the road.

Our first stop was in Lafayette for a short, but sweet, visit with the cousins.

After one more stop in Indy, we were on the road. 14 hours later, we arrived in warm Orlando to continue our Christmas break!

We had such a wonderful time in Chicago and we already can’t wait to plan our next visit. To say that Michael and Rachel were amazing hosts would be an understatement. We had such a very, merry Christmas!

4Dec2018

Minnie’s Halloween Dine

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

Crosby’s birthday landed on a Saturday this year and it was our last birthday celebration of the month, so we decided to do our first character dining experience. I knew we wanted to go to Hollywood Studios for his birthday, so I looked at the options there first. Hollywood and Vine is usually an experience with the Disney Junior characters, which would not be my first preference but for the month of October it turns into Minnie’s Halloween Dine at Hollywood and Vine. I immediate jumped on this because of the character line up and the Halloween costumes!

We opted for lunch so we could start our day around noon and end the evening with the Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular show.

Since Minnie was the star of the show, we were able to get our photo taken with the Disney Photo Pass. All other photos were from my phone on our own.

Mickey was Crosby’s favorite!

Goofy asked Crosby how old he was and was being a jokester.

Donald’s costume was my favorite.

Kenley’s shirt was the hit of the day! Daisy played with it and she got several comments about it! Daisy and Minnie were Kenley’s favorite.

We had a great time! It was the perfect way to celebrate Crosby’s day and cap our month-long birthday festivities!

13Nov2018

Happy Halloween!

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

We had a great Halloween this year! Kenley started the day as Pinkalicious from Pinkalicious and the Pinkerrific Playdate for the character parade at school. She was also Pinkalicious last year for the Kindergarten character parade which shows that the girl knows what she likes. Crosby also had a storybook parade at school and he was Dash from the Incredibles.

By night, the kids transformed into Addison, the cheerleader, and Zed, the zombie from the Disney Channel movie Z-O-M-B-I-E-S. The movie is super cute and the kids love the soundtrack so it was a quick and easy decision on who they would be this year. Unfortunately, Crosby made a last minute decision to go without the green hair and zombie make up, but they still looked super cute.

We headed around our neighborhood to trick-or-treat and check out all of the decorations. Our neighbors really go all out! It seemed more crowded this year too! The policeman on duty was driving around all night playing the Halloween theme song which was super creepy, yet awesome.

We had such a fun night!

***

A look back… 2011 // 2012 // 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016 // 2017

8Jul2018

4th of July {2018}

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

We kicked off our 4th of July holiday with the Firecracker 5k in our community! Kenley and I signed up the morning of, so there wasn’t much training involved in this 5k. My expectations were low and I knew there would be a significant amount of walking involved. Kenley was excited that her friends were there too!

She did a good job but you can definitely tell the difference from a 5k in January versus a 5k in July. It was hot and humid!

After the 5k, we had some friends over for food, frose, and fireworks!

We had such a fun and eventful day celebrating our independence!

28May2018

my {long} weekend in photos

Posted in Random by Kendra G.

kenley’s end of year luau was friday. i can’t believe the school year is just about over.

on our way to sarasota, we made a short detour to stop by concord coffee in lakeland!

delicious iced coffee in the cutest coffee shop.

reading during lunch.

we opted for some indoor fun on a rainy saturday.

we had a short break in the rain so we headed out on the water.

this was our workout for the day.

hot tub for these two…in the rain.

we headed down to the beach on sunday morning to see what was happening. the skies were ominous and the waves were crazy! tropical storm alberto was passing by.

my guy.

my boy.

we chased this little crab to get a pic.

memorial day cookout with cousins.

we had a great time celebrating bobby’s birthday!

the kids had so much fun.

***

we had such a fun weekend in sarasota with grammy. though it rained most of the weekend, we did get to see the sun for just a little bit. we headed back home today to prep for the last couple days of school before summer officially begins!

happy memorial day!

4Jan2018

Florida Christmas {2017}

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

We headed down to Sarasota this year to celebrate Christmas in Florida with Greg’s family. We had an amazing five days filled with family, fun, and sun.

The kids spent a lot of time in and on the water. It was way too cold for me to even think about getting in. The boys caught several fish from the dock and I paddle boarded with the manatees!

We had dinner out on the circle on Saturday night and spent some time at the beach on Christmas Eve.

We opened presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The kids spent the rest of our time playing with their presents.

We had such a great visit and a wonderful Christmas with Greg’s family. We loved seeing the Gilbos in Florida and the kids especially loved seeing their older cousins!

31Oct2017

Happy Halloween!

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

Happy Halloween!

Kenley started her day with a Character Parade at school with the kindergarten and 1st grade classes. She chose to be Pinkalicious from the book Pinkalicious and Aqua, the Mini-Mermaid. We also have the book Aqualicious which has the same characters in it. She was excited to be able to take her pink mermaid to school with her and dress in pink from head to toe. Crosby had his Storybook parade yesterday and was Spiderman.

Tonight, we headed out for trick or treat fun with the Jenkinsons. They kids were all superheros! Kenley was Batgirl and Crosby was Justice League Batman.

Greg and I keep talking about how much fun we had tonight. The kids had such a great time too and crashed as soon as we got home.

***

Halloween through the years.

2011 // 2012 // 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016

30Dec2016

Christmas {2016}

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

Merry Christmas! We have been having so much fun this week and I have so many pictures to share of all of our adventures with all of our visitors.

Before Christmas, we had our friends in town for a few days to play as they were on their way down to south Florida. I had to work until Friday, but Greg and the kids had a great time. They went to the Science Center, the park, and we made s’mores on the front porch after dinner one night.

As the Mangos were leaving, my parents, Michael and Rachel were arriving for Christmas. I ran 10 miles with the girls on Christmas Eve before we were off to church in the afternoon for our candlelight service. My favorite.

After putting milk, cookies, and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer, we woke up on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought and exchange gifts. We spent the rest of the day playing with our new toys, inside and outside.

We headed to Light Up UCF on Tuesday to ice skate! It was the first time ice skating for the kids and the first time in a very long time ice skating for the rest of us. Crosby didn’t like it, but Kenley loved it! We went back out a second time and it was hard to pull her away.

On Thursday, we got to meet up with our friends who were visiting from Canada! We had a perfect morning. We had breakfast at Townhouse, then went strawberry picking!

The rest of the week included drinks at the Brass Tap, dinner at Tijuana, gelati at Jeremiah’s, swimming, trips to the park, donut making, and shopping. We’ve had such a good week!

We had a wonderful Christmas and a great week with family!

1Dec2016

advent calendar activities {2016}

Posted in Family by Kendra G.

Welcome to another season of Pinterest Christmas!

My first project for the year was to come up with activities to fill the buckets of our diy advent calendar. I am so excited for all of our fun activities this month. When I sit down to make the list of activities, I always have my calendar out so I know what fun things we already have planned so I can fill those buckets first. Next, I fill in the remaining weekend days since those days are good for more time-intensive activities. I fill in the remaining days with activities that worked well in the past, or with new ideas from Pinterest. This year, my friend Lindsey shared her list with me, so I borrowed some of her ideas to mix in some new ones.

{1} Find Sprinkles the Elf [on the Shelf]
{2} Mail Christmas cards
{3} Go to Disney Springs to see the Christmas decorations
{4} Build a gingerbread house
{5} Make reindeer chow
{6} Have snowflake pancakes for dinner
{7} Get a blizzard at DQ
{8} Wear Christmas pajamas and read Christmas books
{9} Listen to Christmas music
{10} Build a “sand” man at the beach
{11} Donate toys and clothes to others
{12} Kenley shops for Crosby’s gift
{13} Drink hot chocolate with marshmallows
{14} Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas cartoon
{15} Make a Lego Christmas ornament
{16} Family movie night: The Polar Express
{17} Crosby shops for Kenley’s gift
{18} Go to Sea World to see the Christmas lights
{19} String popcorn for the Christmas tree
{20} Drive around and look at Christmas lights
{21} Celebrate Christmas with friends
{22} Roast marshmallows over the fire and makes s’mores
{23} Make Christmas cookies for Santa
{24} Go to the Christmas Eve service at church

Some activities are small compared to others, but I don’t want to over commit ourselves or feel like we are rushing from one thing to the next. The point is to enjoy the Christmas season together as a family and that is what we intend to do! You can see our previous activities here and here.

Keep an eye out for other fun projects coming soon as part of Pinterest Christmas and don’t forget to check out Misha’s projects at Emerald City Diaries.

You can also see past Pinterest Christmas projects here.

Happy December!