A parade.

This picture is from January 2009 from last years Children's Gasparilla parade. I thought it would be the perfect activity especially since it was at the height of Jackson's pirate fascination. It is nice because it is alcohol free, unlike THE Gasparilla Parade that his held a week later. The kids loved it. They loved all the pirates, the beads, and the ride in the wagon. I disliked it because of the massive crowds, the exuberant parking prices, the 3 mile walk to the actual parade site from parking, and finally getting there and not being able to see much of anything because the crowd is ten people thick. The kids had a great time and that is the most important thing and it made it all worth it. However, I was sure I would never go again. And then this year's parade came around. I knew it, and I knew I wasn't going. Then 2 hours before the parade, I get a call from one of my favorite people. She has four passes to the children's parade that she can't use. As flashes of last years event explode in my mind, I can't pass up a chance to give another reason why I'm the greatest mom (lol) for FREE. Free bleacher seats, that is. Free bleacher seats that are on the opposite side of the massive, pushy crowd. So I take the kids inside, pack up their pirate gear, and take off. We get the tickets, get a friend to come, too, and make our way to parking...ugh. We get there and after a few amazing miraculous events, we score free (not illegal) parking! And its less than a half a mile to the parade! We got to our seats right before it started and the kids were able to have an unobstructed view the whole parade and score a neck full of beads and a smashing boa. Now that's how to do it right! Thank you (times a million) to the Pack family and John for the redemption of the Children's Gasparilla Parade... I may plan on doing it next year.

Dinosaur World

I've seen the sign. I've always been curious.

On Gasparilla Saturday, while everyone poured in to Tampa for the "Mardi Gras"-esque event, we headed out to that I4 exit and time traveled back 65 million years. We were pleasantly surprised.
Two main reasons why we went: Jackson loves dinosaurs and it beats all the other amusement parks in the area by half.
We started out just walking around the park. It has at least one hundred large life like dinosaur statues. Don't worry it's just a statue. Okay, so maybe they were life like but they were large like. Jackson pointed out that a lot of herbivores had sharp carnivore teeth - very unrealistic.

We found Lilly's dinosaur. They had a fossil dig, where the kids were able to dig in a pit for fifteen minutes and were able to keep 3 real, teensy, fossils. There was also a larger sand pit with a dinosaur skeleton underneath that we worked at uncovering for about a half hour. The last area we visited was the playground, and even though it was old, it was very large and the kids could've stayed and played another hour but then the rain came. Overall, we were there for a couple hours and had our moneys worth of fun. I highly recommend it if you have a child who is into dinosaurs and if you don't you should go there when your very bored, need to get out of the house and don't want to spend a lot of money.

Photog's

I LOVE looking at pictures, particularly of people. It doesn't matter whether or not that I know them. If there is a photo album or scrapbook in my sight, I will ask to look through it.

I just recently found a photographer that I love. Her name is Rachel Thurston. Check out her website. I absolutely love Lisa and Rodney's wedding which was featured in Real Simple Weddings magazine. I actually found her by google-ing my friends trying to find their blog that I simple can't remember the name of. I never found their blog (Lisa if you read this, please email me your link) but I did find this talented photog.

So who's your favorite photographer? Or maybe you shouldn't tell me. I need to go to bed earlier.