Good Bye Florida! Hello 27 Degree Utah!

We're home! Birthdays, Races, Disney, Beaches...I can't believe so much happened in two weeks. Here are a few cute quotes and things I want to remember from the last vacation we'll ever take:

*Zoe to Ella, "I assume Max is excited for Disneyworld." Assume???

*The feel of Panama City Beach sand, like walking on powdered sugar.

*My baby boy's first birthday!!!

*Seeing Andy cross the finish line!

*Zoe and Ella's screams of pure joy riding "Thunder Mountain" during the fifth time.

*Teenage girl to dad and brother, "Indians aren't real. They're extinct... like the dinosaurs." Whaaat!

*Petting, not just touching, a dolphin!!!!!

*Zoe waving to every single "child" on "it's a small world."

*Seeing people scramble as a hurricane rolled in.

*Wheeling and dealing with the scalpers for tickets...that was all Andy. "You pullin' my leg??"

*Mob boss getting mad at Andy because he can't give him directions, "You ask me about where I live, I tell you everything!" Italian hand gestures included.

*The size of the waves on Cocoa Beach! Holy cow!

*The girls faces when they met "the princesses".

*Watching Disneyworld's and Epcot's firework show every single night from our balcony.

*Building an eternal bond with our GPS girl, which Zoe fondly named Helena.

Things that I definitely could have done without this trip:

~The plane ride there!

~Maneuvering my giant stroller through sand and crowds for 10 hours during Andy's race.

~Carrying a 30 lb baby and a 40 lb diaper bag for an hour through Disneyworld in a complete down pour of rain while I looked for Andy and my stroller. (I've never been so wet.)

~Being treated like a terrorist while doing the above by a Nazi Disney employee because I dared try to stay past 7 p.m. and was forced to leave the park without either husband or stroller. And yes, it was still raining.

~Dirty Dick's Crab House.

~My birthday

And most importantly...

~ The plane ride home. Thanks anyway "Doctor" Maria.

So, I'll be archiving our pictures and adventures over the next few blogs. There will be a lot of pictures and stories to tell. Try to keep up, will you?

Zoe digging the beach but not the water. She would wade but not much else.

Max was the opposite. He was diving in face first and cried any time we tried to save his life.

The view from our place in Panama City. Can you believe it????

Iron Dork

Do me a favor and go to http://www.ironman.com/ on Saturday and put in number 449 on the athlete tracker.


Then stay glued to the computer as my times are updated each time I cross a "check point" or transition. Then, I'll feel your support and I'll swim, bike, and runner faster!

I start at 7am eastern and hope to finish 10 hours later.

Thanks, then.

Andy

Once upon a Halloween night...

It happened one eerie Halloween night. The moon was casting it's silvery beams, lighting up the House of Avery in a spectral glow. The rhythmic pitter patter of goblin feet as they crunched through remnants of unraked leaves was like a pulsating heart of the night itself, giving it a life of its own, feeding off of fears the way the little spooks were feeding off candy. This is when the door to the House of Avery creeked open, exposing those standing inside to the hauntings of that night. Those inside were two beautiful girls, shaking with anticipation of what this night was to do to them. What was hiding in those blackest of shadows? What were the creeping noises behind them? The images of the unknown were terrifiying! Even so,they hesitated but a moment...and then they attacked that night!

Pre Trick or Treating poses. We never did get a costume for Max, so here he is in one that is 4T. :) He only had to wear it a little while, he was too tired to go out.

I love this picture!

I'm definitely not meant to be a blonde!

Zoe lasted about 45 minutes, not bad for a 3 year old. She had a hard time keeping up with Ella who would run from house to house. She finally gave up and came home with me and watched Ghostbusters. But Ella was an animal! Andy finally had to drag her home before 9. Look at that haul. Andy got on map quest and figured out that she walked 3 1/2 miles! What a fun night.

Halloween Prep Time

For those of you out there who have been sitting on the edge of your seats, just dying to know what the Avery's have been up to next, well, I don't blame you. We are, by far, the most exciting family ever. So I apologize for keeping you waiting for our usual witty, enthralling and yet poignant posts that typically grace this page. I haven't had pictures up for a while because our camera broke. We have been taking "stills" from our camcorder, and they are not what you would call "quality". Despite this, for my own sake, I wanted to post our pre-Halloween hauntings, because it is our favorite time of year! Hopefully you can see through the haze...

We carved pumpkins while watching "Corpse Bride". The girls weren't too sqeamish to pull out their own "guts". I was very proud. And anyone that has driven by our house knows these pumpkins lasted all of three days before they became a moldy, withered blob of orange. Too bad too, they were our best yet.

Here's Max digging in and eating the pumpkin seeds. Pretty slimy! It's okay, he pooped them out later.

Decorating cookies at the UVSC carnival. Tinkerbell and a Garden Fairy.

Sir Chunks-a-lot here doesn't have much of a costume. Maybe we'll figure it out by the big day.

The girls showing off their painted faces with their buddy, Caroline. Such pretty girls!

Fall Leaves Explained

Zoe's take on the fall leaves: "Maybe the wind is talking to the leaves, but the leaves don't understand what the wind is talking about. So the sky goes (whoooooshhh) at the leaves cuz it is mad cuz they won't talk back. The leaves say, "Ahhhh, run for your lives! The sky is going to kill us! Run for your homes!" And (zoom) they are running down the road." And that is why the leaves are blowing in the wind. They are running for their lives apparently.

Another Zoe quote: "Dear Heavenly Father, You are so lucky I love you. Good-bye."

Remember....

I have come to the frightening conclusion

That I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous,

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration,

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides

Whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated,

And a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be,

We help them become

What they are capable of becoming.

~Goethe

Inspiration

Andy had me read this great book Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. This post is notgoing to be a book critique, but you have to understand the jist. It's about a 6'4'' big guy (um, Andy)who is getting beat to death from running (Andy again). No doctors are able to help him, so he begins to study the ancient Tarahumara people of Mexico (yes, like the restaraunt). These people are so incredibly fascinating!

They run for hundreds of miles at a time in nothing but bare feet or sandals and eat nothing but corn and chia (yes that kind of chia) and almost never get any injuries.

So Andy has started running barefoot and I bought him some chia. I also made fun of him for studying how Zoe runs and trying to copy her "technique".

(That's not dirt, it's blood blisters.)But then last night I finished the book and I had the strongest urge to go run 50 miles in bare feet. I wasn't making fun of Andy anymore (but still cringing at his blisters), that's how inspiring this book is. It made me stop making fun of my husband!!!Okay, so this did end up being a book critique, but it got me all psyched to talk about it. Go read it and go running.