Seriously, is this not an adorable picture!  In the midst of prep for her birthday celebration, I looked over and there was Caitlyn just LOVING on her brother. 

The beehivers love birthdays and get into all of the things that make it special for each of them.  The hurdy gurdy, the bee from the cake and the card.  "Shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo-bah, Happy Birthday to Ya!"

Caitlyn is!

Caitlyn had a great birthday.  Gymnastics meet on Friday, family fun and date night with Daddy on Saturday, church then lunch out and presents on Sunday.  She chose lunch at the mall food court because she wanted to spend her birthday money at Build-a-Bear.

Kevin signed up for the Chick-fil-A Daddy Daughter date the day before Caitlyn's birthday.  She was SO excited.  She dressed up and Daddy bought her a corsage. They had a blast.

We have started going to the Gator Gymnastics meets. The kids - all of them - love it!  All the kids and Kevin get in for free, so we only need to pay for me and any other adult who comes with us so it's a pretty cheap family fun night.  Of course, that is unless we eat there. The first thousand fans at the Georgia meet were supposed to get light up sunglasses.  We got there an hour early (skipping dinner at home) to get them and we were still half an hour too late to get a pair.  So we didn't get the glasses and paid a fortune for dinner and drinks for the five of us.  But we are still enthusiastic fans.  Here are some of the highlights...

Caleb made the big screen with this last video.  Crazy kid.

Okay, as a disclaimer, we have not yet received Cameron's official acceptance into Cornerstone but we are following the administration and faculty's lead and assuming he's in.  :)

Cameron's first Cornerstone shirt came in the mail the other day.  We saw shirts on sale for super cheap and grabbed them while we could.  When it came and I opened it he jumped up and down.  I thought that was super-cute.  He's really excited about being at school next year with his brother and sister and...Mrs. Tahfs!

I love our home.  I love the fact that I can step out onto my porch and forget that I'm in Gainesville.  It's almost as if we live in the country.  I love walking my kids out to watch the birds, check the pond for tadpoles, feed the turtles, watch deer, catch lizards, watch the bats at dusk and I even love the fact that we have two gators out there right now.

I was thrilled the day we realized we had otters.  We haven't seen them as much this year but it was fun to discover a new animal in our backyard and start teaching the kids about it.  We typically will see wild turkeys out by the main room but we were surprised to find them in the back yard the other day.  Not just one, but six.  They came out from the woods at the corner of our property and then made their way completely around the pond.  I watched carefully with my camera because I wondered what was going to happen once they stumbled upon the gator across the way.  Turns out they walked down the bank to check out the gator and then moved on along.  Apparently the lack of interest was mutual because the gator didn't even move his head.

After the Fernbank Museum and lunch at a local sandwich shop we headed over to Stone Mountain.  Kevin and I haven't been back to Stone Mountain since before we were dating and the kids were excited to go.   We wanted to get tickets for Snow! but there was a strong chance of rain all weekend so we didn't want to pre-purchase tickets.  Of course, the rain held off most of the weekend and tickets were sold out once we got there.  But we made the best of it!  We walked around Stone Mountain and then went to our hotel. 

The hotel was great - indoor and outdoor pools, large chess and checkers on the deck, in-house spa (which I didn't use), buffet meals (which is a whole other story!) and a great view from the balcony!

    By the time we got to the hotel and got our stuff into the room we could see the rain making its way toward us and we knew it was a good thing that we didn't hike up the mountain after all.  But the rain came slowly and lightly so we headed out to the pool and deck to play some games. 

   Kevin, Caitlyn and Cameron chose checkers and Caleb and I played a monster game of chess.  By the time we finished our games the rain was a little bit more than a drizzle and it started to get cool.  So we stood over the fire pits for a little while and wondered how fun it would be to be there over the summertime. 

   The kids were dying to get into the pool so we headed upstairs to change into our suits and hit the indoor pool. 

Once the kids finished frolicking in the pool we got them cleaned up and headed to dinner.  This was hilarious.  Our kids have never really experienced a buffet.  I mean, they've had a pizza buffet or small breakfast buffet at a hotel but never a real dinner or breakfast buffet with lots of choices.  They sat down to dinner and all got the buffet.  Mainly because Cameron was free if we got the buffet but would need to pay a la carte (and the a la carte food options were the same as on the buffet) and Caleb and Cate were at the kids' price which was pretty cheap.  They loved looking at the dinner options and thought the dessert bar was amazing.  So we all had salad, a bit of main course and a little bit of multiple dessert choices.  It's like we opened up a whole new world of dining to them!

After dinner we had a movie night courtesy of our personal DVDs, Kevin's laptop and the convenience panel on the side of the TV center.  The rollaway bed fit perfectly in between the other two beds and the kids thought it was the coolest little movie nook.  We couldn't finish the movie before we started falling asleep so we had to finish it in the morning.  They didn't mind and it was kind of nice because it was raining all morning.

All in all a good trip and we're looking forward to coming back.  The question is just whether or not we can wait until late fall/winter or if we'll check it out in the summer.

As members of our local museum we also get in to museums all over the country.  One of those museums is the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta (as well as the Science Center there, too).  We drove east from downtown and headed toward the musuem.  Our kids love museums.  We got there at about 10 and stayed for a couple of hours.  We could have stayed longer but wanted to head out for lunch and then move on to our next location. 

Don't get me wrong,we love the museum in Gainesville and are thankful for the things that are available to us here but we love going to larger cities and seeing what they have to offer.  The Fernbank Museum is in a gorgeous area of town and the entrance is rather impressive.  The exhibits were good and we didn't even get to all of them.  There's a great kids area and an IMAX theatre.  We'd definitely go back again.

The kids got a "winter break" of sorts.  Okay, so they got a day off and a Home Directed Study Day.  But that was enough time for us to take a long weekend to Atlanta.  We've talked about it for a long time and finally just went.  We drove up late on Thursday night after Kevin got home from work and got in to town just before midnight.  We decided we'd hit up the Georgia Aquarium, the Fernbank Museum and Stone Mountain.

We were excited to look for Caleb's favorite interest at the aquarium.  Ever since seeing it on a PBS show about the Monterey Bay Aquarium and on Wild Krattz he's wanted to see a Giant Pacific Octopus.  We didn't get to see it's full body, but we did see one of its tentacles moving from underneath a rock.

Caitlyn has been studying penguins at school while they've been reading Mr. Popper's Penguins.  We read it at home so that the boys would be able to enjoy it, too.  We loved seeing the penguins at the aquarium and crawled underneath in the tube to see them up close.

At lunchtime Caleb took the camera and started taking his own photos.  Most of them are blurry, but he wants to make his own scrapbook of sorts from the trip.  My little marine biologist in the making!  Here's a pic he took of us at lunch.

We had a particular mission on this trip to the aquarium.  Mrs. T, Caitlyn's teacher, has a friend whose parents photographed a previously undiscovered fish and it was named after them.  It is the Pseudanthias Bartlettorum and Cailtyn learned about it in class.  So we just had to find it and take her picture with it.  Here she is once she found it.

We were really impressed with the aquarium as a whole.  In the morning it was seriously crowded with all the large groups in from schools and local competitions, but once it cleared out a bit it was really nice to move around and check out all the nooks and crannies in the exhibits.  In the river area there is this amazing display that runs right through and over where you walk. 

Here are some gar fish that were swimming above us and Cameron lounging by the piranha exhibit.

Caleb was excited that there was a frog exhibit at the aquarium.  All kinds of frogs.  There were huge toads, milk frogs, tree frogs and his favorite...poison dart frogs.  This is the best picture we got.

We got one good family picture - thanks Georgia Aquarium for taking it when we got there! - but got these before we left. 

If you haven't been to the Georgia Aquarium, we say "Go!"  It's not cheap, but it's lots of fun and the kids loved it.  If we lived within a couple of hours we'd absolutely buy an annual pass.  I can't wait to go back!