Before school questions!

My little tradition...same questions, new year.  

Grady:

1. What is your favorite color? Black.  No gold and purple (Panther colors.)  
2.  What is your favorite toy?  Play Wii and my Kindle
3. What is your favorite fruit? Cantaloupe
4. What is your favorite TV show? Chima Racing
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Chili
6. What is your favorite outfit? I don't know....
7. What is your favorite game? Chima Racing
8. What is your favorite snack? Graham crackers dipped in milk
9. What is your favorite animal? Kitties
10. What is your favorite song?  The Edge 
11. What is your favorite book? Ninja Turtle book
12. Who is your best friend?  My sister
13. What is your favorite sport? Basketball
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Jump on the trampoline
15. What is your favorite drink?  Lemonade
16. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Scratchy
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Pancakes with sprinkles
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday?  A cake that you make.  And Casey's pizza.
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Meterologist

Kingsley:

1. What is your favorite color? Pink and purple, mostly pink.
2.  What is your favorite toy?  Princesses!  And Kinects
3. What is your favorite fruit? Bananas
4. What is your favorite TV show? Princess and the Popstar
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Turkey and cheese sandwiches.  (Mom note:  This is all she ever wants.)  
6. What is your favorite outfit? Dresses
7. What is your favorite game? The Leappad - I like to play with my "pet"
8. What is your favorite snack? String cheese 
9. What is your favorite animal? Kitties
10. What is your favorite song?  Let it Go
11. What is your favorite book? Frozen book
12. Who is your best friend?  Miya
13. What is your favorite sport? Swimming!
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Ride my bike and Jump on the trampoline
15. What is your favorite drink?  Sprite
16. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? My B's
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Sandwiches (??  Hahah)
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday?  Mc Donalds
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Supergirl.  No!  A princess!  

Florida

I have the best brother in the world.

The first week of August, we had the opportunity to stay with him and his kids in his three bedroom, three bathroom timeshare in Florida.  The resort, Orange Lake, is absolutely gorgeous.  There are four water parks within the property and we spent most of our time exploring those with the kids.  We also saw a magician, ate a couple of dinners out, got in a date night (!) and just relaxed in general.  The kids did AWESOME and got along so well.  The four of them even slept in one room the entire week and loved it!  Here are some pictures.

Florida bound!  The kids first flights...they loved it and did such a good job.

It's so bright out here!!!  How do we get a good picture?!  :)

 This magician was AMAZING!!!!  He impressed kids and adults alike.  He had Grady and Braden write their names on playing cards....and somehow the two cards became one!  He then gave us the card and told us to put it under someone's pillow that night to REALLY impress the kids.  Hahahah they were BLOWN AWAY when it was found again right before bed!  We also ran into him randomly at Disney Downtown, and the kids were again, in shock.  Haha.

 Pic with my love at dinner one night.

No one was impressed with my taking this.  I personally like it though.  :)

The one big adventure we were going to take was to Legoland.  Thanks to the Lego movie, the kids were all sorts of excited to go!  However, we had some vomiting in the rental car on the way there, so we ended up turning around and doing a chill morning at the condo and then a 3D movie and ride. It all worked out....it was HOT out that day and I'm not sure Legoland would have been all that much fun.  

 

Some pics from Downtown Disney.  Hot when we got there, but on our way out, we got stuck in a downpour!  What do you do except grab a seat at an outdoor bar, order a drink, and listen to live music until the storm passes!  :)

Celebrating Braden's 7th birthday, Florida style!!!!  

Heimann Family Picture, 2014!  Coming to a Christmas card soon.  :)

Florida Date Night!

The trip was fabulous, minus two incidents of vomit in the rental car.  (But no fees for it, so that's great!)  Other little hiccup was the cancelled flight on the way home.  Got out of Orlando ok, but got stuck in Atlanta.  Flight was supposed to leave at 3:03.  It was delayed, delayed again, and delayed again before it was finally cancelled around 5:30.  We then waiting in lines for FOUR HOURS (yep, four hours) before getting rebooked and a hotel room for the night.  We were THANKFUL for that room.....everyone was cancelled and stuck so it was actually great.  We left the next day at 3:15 and took the scenic route home....our direct flight turned into a tour through Ohio and Detroit before finally ending up in Cedar Rapids.  We got home, finally, at midnight on Saturday....were supposed to arrive around 6:30 on Friday night.  UGH.  Josh says it will be awhile before he flies again.  I think that's fair.  :) 

Starbucks before the last flight out.  I said on Facebook this was the prettiest picture of the trip.  I meant it.  

All in all.....it was awesome.  <3

Best anniversary weekend EVER!

Josh and I just celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary.  10.  Years.  How is that possible?!  I'm only 26!  ;)  We originally had grand plans to fly somewhere tropical.  We discussed Hawaii, Mexico, or perhaps "just" Florida, Texas or California.  We were then invited to go to Florida with my brother and his kids the first week of August.  As Josh doesn't have much (well, technically any) vacation time, we needed to scale back the anniversary plans in order to make them both work.  So we decided to do a long weekend away somewhere fairly close and ended up with Minneapolis.  We put our a couple of pleas for knowledge to our Facebook friends...what should we do for fun while there?  We went with a list of ideas and relatively low expectations....and had the best time!

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Downtown.  It was close enough to walk to everything, and recently remodeled.  The room (a King suite) was fabulous and modern and gave me great decorating ideas for OUR house.  (I now know what kind of couch I'm getting, for one thing.)  Loved, loved, loved.  Putting that in here so we remember where we stayed for our next trip.

Here's a breakdown of other fun things we did while there:  Ate supper outdoors/people watched.  Went to the Shouthouse Dueling Pianos and were on stage in the first five minutes.  (We had NO idea that was a thing.  SO freaking fun.)  Wandered the downtown.  Wandered the downtown some more.  Rode the lightrail to the Mall of American, and saw the Vikings new stadium on the way.  Walked the whole mall.  Ate at Dick's Last Resort (where apparently the severs are just supposed to be rude to you the whole time.  Again, we had no idea.)  Took a nap.  Sat in the hot tub.  Walked to the Target field to see where the Twins played.  Photobombed a picture.  Found out the photobombees were from Cedar Falls.  Hung out with them for the next three hours.  :)  Celebrated at our hotel with a new bride and groom.  Ate a free breakfast at the Hen House.  Got our kids souveniers.  (From Target.)  Hit up an outlet mall.  And finally...listened to comedy all the freaking way home. Because with no kids in the car....we could.

It was SUCH a great trip.  I want to go back.  Like, next weekend.  :)  I want to take my babes this time though.  I swear they grew a little bit while we were gone.  Grady even jumped off the high board at the pool!  Love that brave kid.

Here are some pictures....we mostly had the phones away and just enjoyed it, so there aren't really many, and a few are on Josh's phone. But...enjoy.

new friends.  

Love him.

Haha.

 

Swimming lessons!

One of our many summer activities!  Kingsley was scared for the first few minutes and from them on, has loved it!  She's even jumping off the board now.  :)  Grady is also taking to the water really well and is learning strokes and brags to me about how he can do turns in the pool.  I love that they love it!

Also - do yourself a favor and make THIS banana bread today!  It makes two yummy loaves and is a great way to use up those extra bananas!

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter 
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 T. milk
• 3 ripened bananas
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Dash of salt
• 1/2 bag chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix butter and sugar until creamy and smooth.  Add eggs and blend.  Add milk and bananas and blend.  Add remainder of ingrediants and mix until just moistened.  Pour batter in two greased loaf pans and bake for approximately 50 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.  

First lost tooth!!

It was a BIG day at the Heimann house!  Grady lost his first tooth!  We knew that it was coming...his permanent teeth have been coming in behind the row of baby teeth, and they needed some space!  Josh kept trying to get Grady to let him pull that sucker out...Grady, to his credit, let him try a few times but got scared off mainly because of Katelyn and Braden's reactions to it.  (Ok, mine too!!)  :)  The very next day after Josh tried to pull it, Grady was just wiggling it around on our way to Great Grandma's house.  He said it came out of it's slot and he couldn't get it back in....it had fallen out!  Some pictures from the proud boy!

Summer is flying by!

And I wanted to document some fun things that we're doing!  Sorry - not the most exciting post, followers.  (Do I still have followers?  Haha.)  I want to get better about using the blog to document memories for myself.  Here are some from our recent camping trip!  We only went one night but crammed a lot of fun in!

 Fishing!  Kingsley was the only one that caught anything.  Like usual.  :)

 Sparkler fun!

 Love this guy.

Whoops!