Hello 5:00!

After 2 soccer games, a ten mile run, and a trip to Kroger I can't think of anything better!!! Kudos to Dee for the chair recommendation :)

Spring Break

Since we are all (except for Matt) now slaves to the school calendar, the Schroeder family decided to take advantage of Spring break and head south for a week.  After much deliberation (and many hours on VRBO) we decided on our old standby-Navarre beach.  It's such a perfect beach for us...very family oriented, minimally developed and man! are there a lot of good shells.  And once again, it did not disappoint.  However!  Before I report on the trip, I want to back up a bit to fill you in on why this particular beach trip was so well timed.

About 3 months ago, after yet another incident of Chassie/Matthew/Ben dirty paws all over our 'used to be white-ish' carpet, Matt and I decided that this was the year.  We were finally going to replace all of the carpet in our house.  We had not ever done it and it was really, REALLY grody.  And then Matt had the brilliant idea to have it installed while we were already out the house for spring break and that way we could just come home to a newly carpeted house.  Sounds amazing, right!?  

And it was!!  HOWEVER.  Did you know that if you get carpet replaced, it's not like you can just leave your house as it is and then come back to find it just as it was except for the new carpet?  Because you can't.  Apparently the carpet places don't want to have to mess with things like, all the random junk that has collected under your bed in the five years that  you have lived there.  Or the seriously overcrowded closets that belong to the children and possibly the adults as well.  They are happy to move big things (emptied dressers and disconnected television shelves),  but not all the random stuff.  And as it turns out, we have a LOT of random stuff.  Which I found out in the seven hours it took Matt, Me, Nana and Dee to collect, box, and find new, temporary homes for all of said junk.  HOLY BANANAS we have too many things.  

BUT!  We did get the job done, and because of all that unpleasantness just prior to the trip, we were especially glad to go to the beach.  Somehow seven hours in the car didn't seem so bad....

And when we got here everything was just perfect.  The kids were so thrilled to be at the beach...the weather was amazing (75 degrees at the beach is great.  Hot in the sun, but the breeze cools you right off), the heated pool was perfect and the Target was just close enough.   We made the most of all of it:

Matt-horsing around in the pool with the kids during an evening swim.  I opted out...decided to take pictures instead of freezing :)

I don't know who had more fun...Matt or the kids ;)

Easter morning sunrise

Little sillies!

And of course the beach trip would not be complete without nighttime crab hunting!  

Someone had made a couch out of sand-we couldn't resist the photo op!

One of the best parts of our trip was going to the Gulf Breeze zoo.  It was one of the best zoo's we had ever been to-it was HUGE and there were so many animals.  The first part of the zoo was a petting/feeding area where we got to feel goats, llamas, guinea pigs, and our very favorite...the giraffe:

He was so sweet!  Very very gentle and even Ben could easily feed him!

And the zebras!  Pea was especially happy about those.

Part of the zoo was a train ride around the 50 acre wildlife preserve-

We got even closer to the zebras!

So so much fun!!

The weather was a bit uncooperative toward the end of the trip, and since we were anxious to get back to the new flooring, we cut our vacation a day short-which was good because it gave us a little more time to put the house back in order.  

Overall, it was another great trip though.  And we are all really looking forward to the St. Simon's trip!