Colin is loving "Critter" books lately and this is one of Colin's favorite Critter books. More impressive than this video is he "reads" most of it when the book isn't in front of him.

I'm completely behind in posting these pictures. We've been busy but also like usual we took quite a few pictures (although nothing crazy since we were so incredibly busy) and I know I'm going to have a hard time deciding. I just haven't wanted to take the time to decide what pictures to post. So I'm going to do it in stages. I'll start with a run down of the trip and add just one picture for each day (probably the same ones as my Project 365). I'll upload more pictures and an entire Disney post in the following days.

Flew into Orlando on Wednesday and drove down to Tampa. Nathan and Erika, Mike's friends, stopped by the hotel and we were able to spend some time together before C and I went up to our room. Mike, Nathan and Erika went out and celebrated St. Patrick's Day.
We had planned on going down to Clearwater on Thursday but cool weather quickly changed our plans. We started heading up with a stop in Lakeland where the Detroit Tigers have their Spring Training. Colin met Rick Porcello which he could have cared less about but we thought it was pretty cool. From Lakeland we finished our drive up to Jacksonville. We finished the night out (late especially for Colin (10.30!!)) hanging out with old friends in an old fave of mine, La Nop.
Friday's plan changed with Colin getting a craptastic night of sleep, so Mike graciously gave up golfing with the guys to watch Colin. I spent the morning and afternoon getting pampered and spending time with some great girls. Got back to the hotel in just enough time to rush to get ready to head to the church for the Rehearsal. Rehearsal was followed by a wonderful meal complete with a fire ... literally. We started in poor Cliff's dad's house!
Saturday was the big day. The entire reason for the trip - the Wedding Day!! The day was perfect. As cliche as it sounds, there is no other way to explain it other than perfect. Beautiful wedding, fabulous weather, great company.
Sunday we spent the morning in Jacksonville having a morning brunch and then went back to Angela and Cliff's house to open presents and just spend some time together. We headed back down to Orlando around naptime and checked into our 3rd and final hotel of the trip.
Monday was Disney! It was ridiculously more busy than we anticipated but had a magical time. Colin loved every minute of it and still talks about going to Mickey's House. And then gets pouty sad. "No more Mickey. No more Goofy. No more Donald Duck. No more Pluto...."
Tuesday we headed home.

In one week we took 4 flights, drove 900 miles, witnessed a beautiful wedding, danced a little, spent a magical day in Disney and spent countless hours with some of our closest friends. It was a great albeit busy hectic week and I'm grateful for every minute of it.

We took our first trip of the season to the Frederik Meijer Gardens to see the Butterflies. We went Tuesday night, the only night it's open late, so it was fairly busy. Busy+very active/curious toddler=very few pictures.

We've had some warmer weather and beautiful sunshine the past few days. Colin had his first bike ride outside this year. To say he loved it would be an understatement. To say he threw a world class fit when he had to come inside would also be an understatement.

Short-ish video of said bike ride.

Here's how car rides go lately:

This way Mommy. Go thisa way. Green Go. Big M. X! X Mommy X!! Red light stop. Where's green? Green hiding. Ohhhh there you are! Big truck. Yellow square box. Blue M. Little e, Big S, Y. 1 car, 2 car, 3 car ...

and so on and so on and so on.

I've been on a new recipe kick lately. I'm loving reading cooking blogs and seeing what's out there. Had a (small-ish) freezer baking session last weekend with hopes to do it again before our trip to Florida in a few weeks. {Photo posted on Project 365 as well}

Successes:

• Soft Baked Tacos. One of my recipe successes was the baked soft tacos from my freezer baking day. Super easy to make, froze well, and easy to pop in the oven and then eat. Definitely will make again.
• PB&J Bars. We weren't super crazy about them the first night while they were still warm-ish. I brought probably half of them into work only to realize how much we loved them later.
• Monte Cristo Stack. 8 layers of warm goodness.
• Monster Cookies. Found a recipe on allrecipes.com. Stupidly didn't bookmark it. Praying I'll find it again and remember the modifications I made to them. They were one of the best cookies I've made. Ever.
  
  There was another great recipe but I'm stumped as to what it was right now. Anyone have a great (new?) recipe?