Fall has arrived!

ok... So I left off at our arrival at my brothers. It was sooo good to be somewhere that was familiar to me. I hadn't seen my brother and his family since when they came to Maine way back in 2004. Before that I hadn't seen him since we left Florida to move back to Maine in 1999.
His kids have grown up so much! Between getting older and growing really tall it was hard to believe these were the same little kids I had seen a few years back!
So we settled in and as I said my brother wanted to take us out to eat. I love him for that as he is very thoughtful that way. But we said nope that we were tired and just wanted to rest. So we ended up having pizza delivered to the house.
The kids wanted to go swimming but I chose not too. I was to tired. My brother has a very nice pool which is of course heated. Most pools down there are heated and inside screened in areas. His pool has salt water in it so it's a little different then a Maine pool.

A few days after settling in we decided it was time to explore the area and see what else had changed since we left. The first place we went to was our old house. I was surprised to see it was still there. The trees around it had grown up a lot and some of the fruit trees were cut down. The place looked like it had gone downhill over the years. I missed living there and the way it was when we had it.

The next day we decided to take a ride over to HoneyMoon Island. It is a wonderful state park that has the pretties beaches and seashells up the butt! One of there beaches is all seashells. You can walk and find seashells of all different sizes and colors. We spent the whole day walking the beach and having some good family time. We were suppose to take Hunter with us but things got turned around and he didn't get to go. So we decided to go back over there in Chrismas Eve and take him with us.

The next day we met up with Monica and the kids at DownTown Disney. We spent a couple hours with them walking around and seeing the sights. Some things had stayed the same since I had been there and other things had changed. One area the kids wanted to check out was Lego Land. When I use to work at Disney I worked the Noon to 9 shift. Upon getting out of work myself and a couple of friends use to go over to Downtown Disney and hang out. We would go over to Pleasure Island and watch a movie or go over to Lego Land and play with the Lego's and see what we could build. Back then Lego land was a lot different then it is today. Back then it was all outside and they had the bigger lego's. You could sit there and really build with them. Upon going this time it was a little bit of a disappointment. Lego land had changed. No longer were there bigger legos, they had the smaller ones and there weren't that many to a work station. They did have an area where the kids could build a lego car and race it down a little slope. That was cool as Ash helped Sage, Rachel, and Hunter build there and we watched as they raced them down the little hill. Logan decided he didn't want to be part of it. He still is very shy and there were a lot of people there. I was surprised to see that they still had the lego sea dragon in the water area. They had also built so many more. Inside the lego store was pretty cool. They had all the different lego sets for sale. Anything from pirate sets to starwars vehicles. One wall towards the back of the store was all individual legos. They had about every color you could think of and every type you could think of. There was flower lego's, wheels for building cars, Fence legos and all other kinds. We filled up a large cup almost like a large soda cup of different legos. That way Logan has a better variety. Back here in Maine you can't find some of those legos unless you but them in some sort of set and you are going to pay a lot of money for that.
After Downtown Disney we decided to follow Monica back to her place and have lunch. It was nice to be able to sit down and have some time with her and the kids. We made plans that Ash would spend the night there so Monica followed us back to Paul's to get Ashleys stuff. We visited for a little bit at Paul's then she had to get going to get Andy from work. We agreed to meet that Morning and pick up Hunter and Ash and head over to HoneyMoon Island.

Hunter had a blast over there. He loved picking up seashells and putting them into his bucket. He found a dead crab that was still whole. He tried to put that in the bucket and bring it home but I told him that Mom probably wouldn't be to happy with that and that it would stink. So he threw it back into the water. He found some really big shells that he liked the ends of as they were a bluish green color and had like a rainbow effect if you held them a certain way. He found many of those and broke the ends off to bring home. We ended up building a sandcastle and he had a blast with that. We had lunch at one of the lunch areas in the park. Then played on the playground there. He had a blast!
It was a good family day over there. I really recommend HoneyMoon Island as it's a very nice place and quite affordable. It only cost $5.00 a car to get in and they have everything right there that you might need. They have a food area too where you can buy hamburgers, hot dogs, whatever you want. They also have a beach area for the dogs. So that's nice too. How many kids get to go to the beach on Christmas eve! We all had a good time.

A couple days later we ended up going over to Christmas(Christmas is the name of an actual town in Florida.) We went over and saw Chris's old boss Jerry. Chris talked to him for about an hour. He offered Chris a job again. Chris told him that we are just visiting. Jerry told him to think about it and if he decides to come back down there to let him know and he would hire him back.

Tammy and the kids left the day after Christmas for North Carolina. Her parents have a place over there and they always go over for a few days after Christmas. Paul decided to stay home as it's his own time to do his own things. Usually it involves a get together with his buddies and catching a basketball game. So we got to spend a quiet dad sitting around the pool and swimming. Paul ended up taking us out to dinner to eat. We went to Outback. The food was really good! Paul got Chris good as he told the waiter that it was Chris's birthday. So the waiter and some of the servers came out and sang happy birthday to Chris. LOL!!! It was hilarious! Paul is known for doing things like that.

The next day we set out for Panama City Beach to see my parents. That is a 6 hour drive as it's up on the panhandle of Florida.


To be continued......