a visit to the sunshine state

arwyn and i decided to go down to visit her great grandparents in florida from feb 5th to feb 13th. we spent the majority of the time with her great-memere (my dad's mother) who lives down there year-round. we also paid a quick visit to her great-nanny and great-djagie (my mom's parents) who spend the winters in FL and come back up to CT for warmer weather.

i was nervous about flying down alone with arwyn for her first flight but she did very well. here's a pic of her checking out the plane.
















arwyn with great-nanny and great-djagie.
















we paid a visit to nature preserve where they rehabilitate sea turtles and other sea creatures.
















we took a ride on an airboat to view alligators then watched an "alligator wrestler" who let arwyn touch the alligator's belly!































we also visited butterfly world - here's a nice shot of one landing on arwyn's hand. and a nice pic of arwyn with her great-memere.

trekking back up to bar harbor

after all the madness of the holidays was behind us we were glad to get the chance to go visit our good friends, the Reinholdts (who i'd like to point out are just as behind in blogging as we are - but they've got better excuses than we do). missing greater bar harbor as i do, the prospect of sitting in the car for that long really didn't bother me too much. i knew we'd have a great time (which we did) and we were really looking forward to finally seeing the end result of Eric & Laura's hard work on their new house. it was great to see just how much Henning and Sig had grown, and how much Arwyn enjoyed playing with "the boys" - as she calls them. perhaps we will find ourselves living in Maine once again at some point? for now, we'll have to try and visit these guys as often as we can. i look forward to our next gathering. thanks for being such great and accommodating hosts!

PS - the house looks awesome, guys. i'm really impressed.

a little catching up from the holidays

wow, so here we are again - a little behind on things...lorri made me promise that i wouldn't write elaborate articles but rather would just post a few videos and pictures in the interest of getting caught up, sharing these memories with you, and moving on - and no longer feeling overwhelmed with being behind on the blog. of course that doesn't mean i can't write at least a brief introduction, right?

this series of pictures/videos is from a number of different occasions - first, we celebrated an early Christmas at my Mom(Nana)'s house. then we have Christmas day at our house and then with Lorri's family, after that we took Arwyn on the train to NYC to visit Rockefeller Center (and the tree) and then my Dad (Grandpa) & Patty came up to visit after New Year's. i think you'll be able to match the pictures with the occasions but if not, it should still provide a nice snapshot of the great holiday season that we enjoyed with our families. don't worry, families - i've got tons of video that we can watch anytime you like :)