Vacation Fun

Parasail, Anyone?

What to do when you're in the mood for a change of scenery? PARASAILING! Nick decided to give it a try (I've been a few times before), so we seized the opportunity and DID IT! A perfect day for flying. :o) We were hoping to see some dolphins in the water while we were up in the sky but no such luck. We did see a couple of sea turtles swimming by as we were coming in for a landing, so that was pretty cool. What fun!!

Sea Turtle Alert!

It's sea turtle nesting season here in Marco ... I think the season runs from May - November. In all of our years of coming here, we've seen plenty of turtle tracks and nests but NEVER have we seen a live turtle. They typically come up to the beach overnight to lay their eggs and are long gone before sunrise. Not the case this morning, though! One lone turtle apparently got disoriented last night and she was still SLOWLY making her way back to the water when we were on our morning walk. She eventually did make it back to the water, so that was a relief. We couldn't get close enough to take good pictures, but here are a few of the shots I was able to get:

Some of her tracks:

All in all, a GREAT and EXCITING way to start the day!

Having a wonderful time here in Marco!

Fun in the Sun

Having a great time!

Back to the Beach We Go!

Yep - we're back in Marco Island! Our favorite little slice of paradise! We left Wednesday afternoon and arrived on Thursday around noon. HOT temps + lots of sunshine = PERFECT BEACH VACATION! Love it, love it, love it!

Will try to post pics soon!

Hip Hip Hooray! SUMMER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED!!!

A Little of This & A Little of That . . . .

Lots going on lately! Let's see . . . to start off, Carly's class held an adorable little program in honor of Mother's Day - they called it "Muffins with Mom", so I'll let you guess what they served us for breakfast. Carly is quite sure that the muffin I just so happened to choose out of the many dozen that were offered was one SHE actually helped to mix up and pour into the little muffin tin. :o) Yes, I'm SURE it was. Here are a few pictures from the program:

Next on the list of happenings is Nick's participation in the Sectionals track meet! He ran the 400 this year. He had a good run, placed second (by a fraction of a second - it was neck-to-neck) in his heat, but didn't place in the top 5 overall. His 4x400 relay team ended up going to state - Nick was an alternate. (He and one other boy battled for a place on the team throughout the season.) He was thrilled with the opportunity to go to state, to say the least. Nick didn't get to run, but he was there for all the action during the two day meet. Unfortunately, one of our runners fell during his leg of the relay, which ended up costing us big time. Based on their times from past meets, the coaches expected our guys to come in 3rd but as it turned out, they came in 9th. Oh well - there's always next year! :o) Here are a couple pics from the Sectional meet:





Aunt Diane and cousin Jen were in town last weekend to visit Grandma for Mother's Day, so we took advantage of their time here to sneak in an evening at Lucca (pizza! beer!) and then we made our way to Von Maur to browse at the flower girl dresses. Jen's wedding is just a few months away - Carly needs to start practicing her princess walk down the aisle! LOL. Not sure yet which dress will be THE ONE, but Carly looked darling in all of them. Not that I'm biased or anything! See for yourself:

And that pretty much brings you up to speed on life in our household. We're going into the last few weeks of school THANK YOU GOD! Summer can't come soon enough for this Mom!

Here's to Spring time, flowers, sunshine and warm temps!! Bring it on!

It's All About Alex . . .

Seems like the last couple of weeks have been all about Alex! He turned 17 on May 3. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. Weren't we just leaving the hospital with our bouncing 11 pound baby boy? We blinked and then . . . BAM . . . here we are with a 17 year old. Amazing how time flies.

Last weekend, we officially began THE COLLEGE SEARCH. Yep, I successfully procrastinated as long as I could get away with it. Probably had something to do with not wanting to admit that my baby is going to be a senior next year. I think that's called "denial"?! But with the college flyers, pamphlets, letters, etc pouring into our mailbox these days, we finally decided to get started. He took the ACT in April and will take it again in June. He has a solid score, but wants better. We are behind him 100% because a higher score means more scholarship money and scholarship money is a necessity when you are looking at small, private schools! :o)

Our "college search tour" began with a visit to Augustana College in Rock Island, IL last Friday. They rolled out the red carpet for us, including an admissions interview for Alex, a tour of the campus with a very energetic and enthusiastic female coed, a 90 minute meeting with a professor in the Biology department (Alex is leaning toward Occupational Therapy), and lunch with a male student who we all greatly enjoyed. The campus is beautiful and, as I told Mike, I would be proud to send my money there. Of course, we'll be bankrupt and working 3 or 4 jobs each when that day comes, but where there's a will, there's a way! ha. To those of you with young kids, SAVE BIG NOW! Whatever you are saving isn't enough! Seriously! :o)

On Saturday, we traveled a few hours north to visit Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. Another gorgeous campus, located right on the shore of Lake Michigan. You should see the killer views from the dorm rooms! Another impressive school, to say the least. This visit was in a "group visit" format, so not nearly as personalized as our time at Augustana was. But informative, all the same. Fortunately, we hooked up with the son of a friend of mine, who is a current student at Carthage, so we got some behind the scenes info and a brief tour of the Kenosha area. All in all, you have to try REALLY hard to find anything not to like at either school. At the end of our weekend tour, Alex ranked Augustana #1 and Carthage #2. We'll be adding to our list of schools visited in the coming weeks, so check back periodically for updates! :o)

Oh, and yeah, I have to admit.....now that we've finally launched this quest to find the PERFECT school, it IS rather exciting and fun! :o)