The Next American Idol

Katelyn loves to play with the microphones at church whenever we get there early. Yesterday, she found one that was on. She thought it was the coolest thing to be able to hear herself through the speakers when she talked. It was so cute!

Memorial Day at Hanna Park

Hannah, Sophie, and Elias playing with the Elephant sprayer.
Mommy. Daddy, and Katelyn doing "Ring Around the Rosey" at the water park.
What a sweet family!
Elias was trying to figure out how to turn the faucet off.
No fence can hold me back!

Well, today is Memorial Day and also happens to be Misty Harmon's birthday. To celebrate both occasions, a group of us decided to have a picnic out at Hanna Park. It was a perfect day to go. It was sunny with a really nice breeze. Apparently many others had the same idea. The place was packed and there were cars lined up to the traffic light waiting to get in.

We had a great lunch of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, grilled corn on the cob, chips, potato salad, coleslaw, fruit, carrots, and of course birthday cake (made by master chef Chris Harmon). All the kids had a blast playing in the little water park they have there. They have a pirate ship with a slide and tunnel, water cannon type things, huge water sprayers and more! We opened presents, played on the playground and even had a friendly game of volleyball going.

After about 3 hours, Katelyn had had enough. She began her melt down so we began to pack up. It was a great day with friends and family.

As a side note, I want to say thank you for the men and women who faithfully serve our country. Even more so to those who laid down their lives so we might live in freedom. I am especially proud of my brother who served this nation for 20 years in the United States Navy. He is truly my hero. I don't say it enough, but I love you, Jeff, I'm proud of you, and I'm so thankful for you! I am so thankful to live in America. I truly tear up whenever I hear our national anthem. May God continue to bless America!

The Beach

Well, Katelyn and I had our first beach trip of the year yesterday. We met up with some friends and went and hung out at the beach for a couple of hours. At first she wasn't sure about the water. Once she figured she could kick it and make it splash up, she was set to go! She had such a great time.

We picked Elias up and took him with us as well. That boy loved the sand! I told Dean that boy was covered from head to toe. He just enjoyed rolling around, crawling on his belly, throwing it into his hair and whatever else he could figure to do with it. I'm just glad they had a good time. I'm thinking about making this a weekly trip. Anyone up for it? I'll post pictures as soon as I get them from Misty.

American Idol

We had some people over to watch the American Idol finale after church. We were recording it on the DVR since we knew we would be late. I personally thought it was one of the best reality TV finales I've seen. There were lots of great performances by the contestants and guest artists. I thought every one of us was going to pee in our pants when we saw the spoof with Jack Black, Robert Downy Jr, and Ben Stiller. I was rolling on the floor.

Anyway, one girl, Theresa, got a phone call a few minutes after 10. It was her grandma. Before she knew it, her grandma told her who won! We told Theresa if she blew it for us we would physically abuse her. : ) She made all the way to the end without telling us. I was proud of her.

Congrats David Cook! I was rooting for you (even though I would not have been upset of David A won)!

Correction

The website is actually www.pluggedinonline.com

Bella

Dan was so sweet! He arranged a wonderful evening out for us last night. We made dinner here, then dropped Katelyn off to spend the night with her cousin, Elias. We headed out to Village Inn for some dessert (I had French Silk pie and he had a sundae). It was nice to be able to just talk. Then we went and rented a movie called Bella. Neither of us had heard of it before but it looked really good. We read the review on www.pluggedin.com and Dr. Dobson said it was wonderful. There was no sexuality or language. It's rated PG-13 because of thematic situations. It's definitely not a comedy but it really gets you thinking about the sanctity of life. It was a wonderful movie and we really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it.

Catch Up #4 "The Final Chapter"

Looking back, I probably should have named the post VA Trip. That's all I've written about so far. Well then, let's get back to it. After stopping for gas, we get to the Norfolk airport about 5:30am. We checked our bags and headed in to find a place to crash. Some got coffee, some got a snack and others just sat and watched Backyardigans on the DVD player. Dean and I got stopped by security because of confusion. I forgot I had a bottle of juice in Katelyn's bag from the day before. There was some confusion between Dean and Tiff about what bags were getting checked and which they were carrying on. Needless to say, Tiff's gel, body splash, and lotion were victims of the search.

The beginning of the plane ride was great, Katelyn dozed for a little bit so all was quiet. About 30 minutes into the flight, we hit major turbulence. I've been on a lot of planes before and hit some rough weather, but nothing like this. Dean and Dan were turning shades of green but thankfully we were about to distract the kids so they didn't get scared. It was a crazy ride, but at least we made it back to J-ville in one piece.

We decided to take my mom to breakfast for Mother's Day. We had a wonderful time all together at Denny's. We exchanged presents and had some yummy food. After breakfast, Dan, Katelyn, and I headed to Savannah to see his family. Granny and Grandaddy and Sean, Brooke, and Connor were there too. It was so great to see everyone and spend time with the other side of the family.

We had lunch then took Katelyn to the pool. She is such a water baby. She loves to be in the water. It could be a pool, the hose, or even the bath tub. She just loves water. She had a great time jumping off the side into daddy's arms and the kicking to the other side to do it again. It was so cute to see her smiles. You know she was loving every second.

After we got back, we ate dinner and played together and watched the Survivor finale. After we heard Parvati won, we packed up our stuff and headed home. It was a mighty long day, but so worth every minute.

Well, that's our trip. Hope you enojyed reading and didn't get too bored.

Catch Up #3

Saturday morning we woke up and went to breakfast. In case you don't VA is famous for it's salt cured ham. So, we went to Mama Steve's Pancake House for some ham and pancakes. It was delicious! From there, we headed to the coolest playground I have ever seen! It was a wooden playground built to look like a pirate ship. There were zip lines, slides, rocket swings, tunnels, and so much more. We stayed for a couple of hours. The kids had a blast! The adults didn't have such a bad time either.

From there, we all headed back to the condo for naps. After while, the guys (minus my dad) took the kids to the indoor pool at the complex and my dad and the girls went to the huge outlet mall. It's more than 2x the size of St. Augustine. Pretty impressive. Everyone had a good time at their respective activity.

After while, we all met up at the Yankee Candle Store. The have a neat little section where they have candles to can dip in different color wax to make them your own. Katelyn made an orange moon and a blue cow. Katelyn made a red firetruck and Sophie made a rainbow butterfly. They seemed to really enjoy it.

From there, we headed over to the College of William and Mary to this old cannon. It's a tradition in the Spurlin family to take a picture on the cannon whenever we are there. Dean and I took one when we were in our preteens. Four years ago, all of us had our spouses with us (well Dan was my almost spouse; close enough). This trip, we had our spouses and our first borns. It's pretty cool to see the evolution of our family. That was full of fun and frustration. They had planted a tree right n front of the cannon so it was impossible to take pictures from the front. We had to improvise so we all got around the back of the cannon. I guess all that matters is the cannon is in the picture.

After that we headed back to the condo for a simple dinner of pizza and pasta (the alfredo pasta from Pizza Hut is really good!). We said our good byes to Jeff, Liz and Sophie and started to get ready for bed. Dan got this bright idea to go play putt putt at 10:30pm. So there we are, in the cold, with flip flops and Pjs on, playing putt putt. We had a good time and made lots of good memories.

When we got back to the room, my parents were watching the news. Apparently the highway we needed to take to the airport in the morning was going to be closed from 5am-7am, right smack in the middle of the time we needed to head out to catch our 7:30 am flight. After much discussion, we decided to just get up at 3:45am to be on the road by 4:14. We had pretty much everything packed and ready to go for a quick exit in the morning.

St. Augustine

Today was Dan's day off so we decided to just hang around the house for a little bit. Whenever Dan is home, Katelyn is attached to her daddy. Mommy does not exist. That being said, I had a chance to do some picking up around the house. It's amazing what you can get done when you don't have a little person attached to you.
We decided to head down to St. Augustine for lunch at Barnacle Bill's. It's a great seafood restaurant with awesome onion rings! We got a half order (which was still huge) for $1.95. We were very excited. Anyway, we had this huge fish, I'm guessing a swordfish, hanging over our heads while we ate. All of a sudden Katelyn turned around and saw it. She decided it looked hungry and needed some of her food. She kept offering but for some reason, it never took her up on her kind gesture. :)

After lunch, we headed over to this great playground across the street. It's not as good as the Williamsburg one but still pretty nice. Katelyn had a great time on the swings and the slide. We had to leave because Katelyn started turning pink. I hadn't brought any sunscreen since it was really cloudy in Jax. Needless to say, I now have a bottle of sunscreen in her bag for whatever outing comes next.

This evening Dean, Tiffany, and Elias came over for a dinner of BBQ chicken, potatoes, peas, and dump cake. We adults had a great time talking and the kids had a BLAST playing. By the end of the evening they were exhausted and ready for bed.

Catch Up #2

Well, my oldest brother, Jeff, turned 40 on May 5th. To help him celebrate my whole family decided to fly up to VA for a couple of days. Thursday morning, myself, Dan, Katelyn, and my mom flew out of Jacksonville about 8:30am. We were armed with snacks, books, juice, Backyardigans, and Bunnytown. We were ready for anything. Katelyn did amazingly well! She didn't cry at all. Once we got there, we got our rental car and headed to my brother's house. After lunch and errands, we checked into our timeshare. We have a beautiful 3 bedroom condo right outside old Williamsburg. It was beautiful. Then we went to a fantastic BBQ place for dinner, then back to the room. Dean, Tiff, Elias, and my Dad flew in and got to the condo about 10. All three kids (my brother has a little girl 2 days older than Katelyn) were bouncing off the walls. We got them to bed and we followed them shortly after.
Jeff had to work on Friday so we all just hung around the condo playing and having a good time until about lunch time. Jeff always talks about how he loves Red Robin. It's a burger restaurant with every burger you could ever imagine. It is my new favorite place. I had the Bonsai Burger (teriyaki sauce, cheddar cheese, and grilled pineapple). It was amazing!
After lunch, the guys took the kids back for their naps and the girls went to the mall and shopped for a while. That night we went to Jeff and Liz's favorite Chinese restaurant. They had everything you could imagine! Dan and Tiff were in hog heaven. Tiff never gets Chinese and Dan loves sushi, which he never gets. It was a winner all around. It had been a long day so we called it an early night.



The kids sitting outside Red Robin with their balloons.

All trying to share the bench at the condo.

Tiff trying to stronghold 2 of the cousins.

Dean and Katelyn playing airplane.

Notice Katelyn's (aka Elias') hat and her one shoe she is wearing on top of her footie Pj's.

Catch Up #1

Well, a lot has happened since the last update. I'm going to break it up into a couple of posts so it's not just one long, monstrous entry.

The first weekend in May, we had our girls weekend with about 85 girls, 11-14 years old. We had some awesome skits, fun games, and incredible time with friends. I had the opportunity to speak to the girls for about an hour on Friday night. One of my passions is to see middle school girls live a holy and pure life. The area I chose to speak on was modesty, purity in our dress. I shared with them what God has to say about our dress in scripture. I hopefully got them to understand the effect the way we choose to present our bodies on the guys around us. I think the one thing in that area that made them think was it's not only the 15 year old guy you like that's looking at you, it's the 65 year old man as well. Lastly I gave them some tips and guidelines to use when both shopping and getting dressed in the morning.

I know it's a touchy subject, but I've had countless parents stop to tell me thank you. Many of them parents of boys in our youth group. The Holy Spirit really worked through me that night and praise God for it.

The next morning Stephanie Little spoke at our mother daughter brunch. She talked to girls about finding our identity in Christ. She is such a gifted speaker and we were so blessed to have her with us!