Summer Fun

The best thing about our house is the big back deck. It makes a great play area for the girls. Right now it has a good sized blow up pool. Jasmine's dog Travis like the pool, too, but he jumped out every time I went to take a picture!

We had lunch outside and mini rootbeer floats.

After they'd been outside most of the day, we came inside to play with little people toys.

 

Jasmine on a Mission

Since our motto is, "It's all about the journey," we try to make an adventure out of any trip. Jasmine's journey to Teen Missions for her summer mission trip was no exception.

We stopped at Wakulla Springs very briefly. It's a beautiful place, and you can even jump from a 20-foot  platform into the springs, which we have done on previous trips. I am not a fan of heights, so I stand at the back of the platform, look straight ahead and run off the platform. This is often accompanied by a rather rude word. :)

 We stopped at the railroad square in Tally equally briefly, and since the prices were crazy, our big purchase was a large chocolate chip cookie for $3.75.

 We continued on to Orange Park Mall to meet up with Jasmine's birth mom. There is a game area at one end.

She got Ravenclaw Vans (Expensive shoe brand) while there.

 We drove just a little further to St. Augustine.

The next morning, we spent two hours going through shops in St. Augustine. I only  know it was exactly two hours because that's how much parking I paid for.

We then headed down to Daytona Beach to their flea market which has over 600 shops. We did a bit of shopping there before going on to Titusville for the night. The next morning we signed in at Teen Missions on Merritt Island.

With three college aged leaders.

There have been just a few pictures of her during training.

Her team leaves for Honduras on July 1 or 2.

Days Five and Six

I am home now and late posting pictures of the last two days. It went by far too quickly.

On Day Five I went to the NYU Dental Clinic. That was not my choice, but I had been dealing with some very serious tooth pain. Well, tooth #2 has to come out, but I did not opt for them to do it there, so they prescribed antibiotics. Meanwhile, Jasmine and Tyler were exploring some stores nearby. We talked about biking through Central Park again, but we'd lost a bit of enthusiasm. So we decided to go to the Lego Store and created our own Lego people and purchase them.

I really wanted to find the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, and we ended up going quite late, and it was dark. So we walked around in the dark trying to find the pond because we were told the statue was by the boathouse. We found it!!

The final day we went to Prospect Park. They had a zoo, so we went to it. We were mostly taken with the Red Panda.

Tyler turtle!

Red Panda

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our suitcases and start the trek to Newark. We took the R train to Barclay, caught the #3 to Penn Station NYC, bought tickets for the NJ Transit to the Air Train, then took the air train to Delta. If our plane hadn't been delayed an hour, we would have missed it! Then our suitcase was 10 lbs over, so we pulled all the shoes out and carried them on the plane!

Now we're home and packing the twins for camp on Monday for five days and Jasmine for her summer mission trip.

New York City Day 4

We started the day by taking the Staten Island Ferry to Staten Island. It's free, and it goes right by the Statue of Liberty.

It was pretty windy.

Once we were there, we realized it would take up a lot of our day to get transportation to the mall and back, so we hung around near the dock for a while.

Matching Doritoes

We shared a Gelato

We had tickets for Madam Tussaud's, so we headed back to our hotel, then to the wax museum.

We had fun posing with the wax figures. Can anyone identify all of them? I sure couldn't! But of course we only took photos of the ones that meant something to us.

I think this one looks most realistic of all my pictures.

 That is the end of the Madam Tussaud's photos. The musicians below were in the subway station. I find the subway a very interesting place.

We were walking through NYC looking for a store when Ty saw the firehouse that was in Ghost Busters.

We went to the 9/11 Memorial pools but didn't take any photos! So this is it for the day.