Anyway, this layout is my first design team layout. WHAT? Yes, you saw that right. Scrappin' Memories asked me to be on their design team. Is that cool or what? So here it is what do you think? After getting home I realized that in the original 5x7 picture I had cut off a little to the left taking off some of that red and green. I'll probably fix it when I get it back or go to the store next.
Austin has found a new friend. This is Stormy. Austin is smitten! The other day I asked him what he was doing and he said he was playing hide and seek with Ashley and Stormy. So he finds Stormy first and then he says, "Come on lets find Ashley." I said, "OK I'm coming" He said, "I was talking to Stormy."
He wants a cat so bad. It almost makes me want to get one, but not quite.
We went to Disney yesterday. It was loads of fun! It was extremely hard at the end of the day when they all fell asleep and we had to hold them and try to get them to the car. Greg held 2 of them and every now and then one would just lean backwards. Some people standing in line with us for the tram would help every now and then. When we got close to the tram and then couldn't get on- another couple said, "Here take our spot." We were so thankful! We lost Austin's shoe along the way. We got the kids in the car and Greg went back to look for it. I flagged down a security person and she went and picked him up and they found the shoe together. We got back to the house at 2:00 AM. AY! AY! AY! I was trying to keep Greg awake by talking to him, but I was falling asleep after each word. He kept slapping himself in the face- he really had me worried, but we got home safely.
Today we went to the St. Augustine beach. OH IT is SO beautiful here! WOW! The kids played in the sand and ran into the cold water and then ran away from it.
Tomorrow we are going to Kennedy Space Center. I've never been there. I am looking forward to it.
And for the record I am so counting these 20 pages in my scrapbooking goal. :)
After school on Thursday, I met Dana and her boys at a nearby park with a playground. She wanted to get a good picture of her boys, I hope she was able to get it.
Mason wanted to throw rocks into the lake. He is so fascinated with the water. 
Austin and Ashley on the otherhand really just wanted to play on the playset. We had to take turns b/c the lake and the playset were too far from each other for me to watch both.
Austin and Braxton didn't want to get dirty, so they stayed at the playset, while Mason, Dalton and Ashley made it to the little creek. It was VERY muddy. I'm glad in a way that I had my CROCS on so I could wash them off easily, however when that mud oozed in through the holes and around my toes it was pretty nasty! 
Mason and Ashley found sticks and pretended to fish.
And as you can see little Dalton fell in the mud. He actually fell in the mud about 3x! He is such a boy! He is so cute! He enjoyed it, didn't mind being muddy at all.
I had never been there before, I really enjoyed it (Especially the wagon ride). I learned quite a bit. I learned Andrew Jackson was good to his slaves unless they disobeyed and then he was quite strict with them. I learned about his faithful servant, Alfred. What is really neat about him is that he lived on the property and stayed on as a tour guide after the home was made into a "museum". 
This is where he lived. 
We took a wagon ride tour. Austin, Ashley and Izabelle got to sit up front since there was no more room in the wagon. Mason was a little disappointed in having to sit in my lap, but he didn't complain. I learned something very interesting about horses. 
Did you know they go through cycles like women do? The horses that were pulling us had PMS. I asked if they tend to get PMS at the same time like women living together do. And she said, "yes, plus these two are sisters." Anyway, they were a little grumpy and knocked one of the tour guides down earlier in the day. The owner of the horses was also our tour guide and she kept them in line well.
These are 2 of the slave houses. They had about a 20'x20' room per family dwelling. Many of them had five and sometimes as many as ten children living in that small area.
Then we toured the mansion. It was really incredible seeing everything. But it was hard on the children. (my children that is) They were being so good, but we were told not to touch anything or talk loud. That was quite a task for 3 four year olds. They were happy to get out of the house and I was too. I know that my children made some of the tour guides nervous, even though they were being very well behaved.
Then we walked through the gardens and saw the little graveyard where General Jackson, his wife and family members had been buried. 
This big gazebo looking grave is where the president and his wife were buried.
The kids were quite hungry and tired, so it was time to take them to eat. They had ran and ran all over the grounds laughing and exploring. As we were leaving, Austin said, "I never want to come back to this place again.".
Look at his face. Does that face look like he didn't enjoy himself? He's doing a little happy dance on the cellar door.
I have to say I was slightly disappointed. I thought it would be touring the whole plant and seeing how the machines work, but it wasn't. They said they used to do that, but since 9/11 they had to stop for security purposes. So our tour consisted of going in a room watching a small "funny" movie, opening the curtains to see the workers packaging the ice cream bars and
then into another room to eat some free ice cream. The kids asked if they could come back again sometime, so they must have enjoyed it.
Check out the boys milking the cow:
