This February, we went to Florida again! This is part of my great plan for enduring our harsh North Carolina winter. We plan our visit to our lovely Florida family for the time of year when it's best there and worst here. Thanks Mom and Dad for taking us in! We love you! There were several important components to this trip. First of all, we did it--we took our first family trip to Disney World! These first two photos were taken immediately upon our arrival and we were SO EXCITED.
Later on, the girls changed into their uniforms for most of the rest of the visit . . .
Except they changed back into their normal peasant garb for a trip on Splash Mountain. We love this photo.
It was really an emotional day. When we met Belle, Ella was so overwhelmed with not knowing how she should act when meeting another princess that she sobbed all the way through the line right up to her initial greeting, but Belle was ever so gracious and Ella was able to muster a dutiful smile for this photo. Sweet girl.
It was a loooong day. This is the walk out of the park. It was about 8. We hadn't eaten dinner. So we topped the day off with a trip to a restaurant before finally getting in the absolutely mandatory per mom, post-Disney bath around 10. Nora was beside herself and had to be carried through the whole thing. But ahhh the memories we made. They both wanted to go back the next day. Thankfully, we could not.
It was off to Grandma and Granddaddy's house!
We had a great time visiting our cousins, playing at the beach etc.
Ella is the oldest of all the Malone cousins, and the youngest, Isla was less than a month old at the time of this visit. About 2 minutes after this last beach photo was taken, Jacob fell down in the surf causing much terror and 3 grownups (Meg with a babe in arms) running to save him. He was fine. But a lot of our visit involved, "where is [insert toddler name]?" "So anyway as I was saying, last week we . . . [preschooler name] stop that!" Again. We made a lot of memories and it was so wonderful to be together.
The girls also did their annual flower planting with Granddaddy while Susanna and I watched.
And when we got home, it was practically to a new house! While I had been down south, Paul had been diligently tackling a huge house project and really it was almost complete when we arrived. This photo is from the morning after the plastic came down. Hurray!!
We are still working on getting the finishing touches set up, and then I will take some nice pretty photos of what the space looks like now. We did get some new couches, pictured below in the store.
And there you have it! That took us halfway through February at least!
