Sea World, A.K.A. Stroller Drama

Since Brad's sister Sarah is  here, we wanted to do something fun and take advantage of all the attractions so close in Orlando. We decided to go to Sea World for the weekend.

We fed the dolphins





Ella loved the "Aunt Claire's"


Then we decided to go to the Shamu show.



That's when everything went south. When we came out of the show our stroller was no where to be found. We had left it in the stroller parking area with the other 1,000's of strollers. I was pretty bummed since it was by far my favorite of the 6 strollers I've bought and sold looking for the perfect one (gotta love craigslist). We wandered around for about 45 minutes as we made our way toward guest services to report it stolen. I kept my eyes out hoping I would happen to see it and sure enough, I saw a girl walking by with it. I ran up to her and asked her where she got it.  She made up some story about buying it when her son was born at Babies R Us.  I told her mine had just been stolen and it looked just like mine.  She had taken all my stuff out of it but there were things on it that made me confident it was mine. She started getting really nervous, yelling at her kid and making up a bunch of stories that didn't make sense. We asked her if she would just stand still long enough so we could get security to help us sort it out. She just kept walking and said she really needed to pee and would we just stop following her and let her go to the bathroom. We said sure and followed her to the bathrooms. She took the stroller with her because she had her kid in there and all her bags on it. Brad sent me off to look for security while she was in there. About 15 minutes I came back and she had not come out. I went in to look for her and sure enough there was another exit that she had gone out. By the time we got security to notify the front gate she was long gone.

I was pretty bummed, but we learned some valuable lessons.  1. Don't take a nice stroller to Sea World and if you do, lock it up. 2. Write your name on anything valuable like that.  If I would have had my name written on it, I could have taken it from her right away.

Guest services was nice and gave us some VIP seat to the dolphin show. I have to say, it was much better than the Shamu show which was pretty boring.

Iowa, Phoenix, California

Way back in August we took a trip to Iowa for Brad's grandma's memorial service.



We spent the weekend listening to his mom and grandpa reminisce about growing up in Sioux City and visiting all the places they lived and worked. This used to be the hardware store that his grandpa owned.





This was a diner across the street where they would have lunch


It was nice to meet lots of Brad's family


Ella found a playground she enjoyed


After Iowa, Brad headed home and Ella and I went to Phoenix for work.  The next weekend we took a little trip to LA to see Claire and baby Will.


We actually saw Brad at a bluegrass festival there since he had flown to LA for the weekend for work.

Florida in Black and White

Wow, it's been a long time! Part of the problem is that I haven't been taking as many pictures and the other problem is lack of time. I like the idea of taking pictures with my film camera, but in reality it's kind of a pain to make sure I have film, develop it and then get it scanned in. I do like the way they turn out though. And it's a feeling of accomplishment to develop the pictures yourself. It still amazes me that throwing a bunch of chemicals in a tube with film can make the images appear.

Anyway, enough rambling. We did another two week trip at the end of August. I'll write about that in another post, but here's the catch-up photos before that. Before Elizabeth left we went to St. Augustine, Florida to see the oldest town in America. It was a really cool town, with a neat old fort. It made me think that maybe Florida is not that bad after all.








 Here's a picture I snapped of Ella waking up the other day

She is still so much fun (not that I'm surprised). She likes to dance around her room to Antsylvannia and Sic Em On A Chicken, loves to snuggle and still carries stuff with her everywhere she goes.

Arkansas and the 4th

Ella and I traveled to Arkansas for my cousin Hannah's wedding. It was a really great weekend with all the Geer side of the family.
Here we are with my grandparents


Here's a tree the family had planted in honor of my grandparent's 60th anniversary



My aunt Ande, my mom and I


My brother and his family


All the cousins together


Brad and Elizabeth stayed in Florida and helped our friends the Bryan's move into their new house. We're so excited to have friends again!

The weekend before we went to Arkansas was my birthday and we did a bunch of fun random stuff. We visited the home of Missionary Flight International in Ft. Pierce and saw the DC-3's they use to transport people and supplies back and forth from Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Phoenix-California-Florida

In May Ella and I went to Phoenix for a couple of weeks to work and see family. While there we got the chance to drive over to L.A. with my friend Molly for our friend Claire's baby shower. It was so fun hanging out again! From there Johanna left on the train to go back home to Idaho :(
Ella ate a HUGE bean burrito and I was worried the whole trip back about the bathroom stops we were going to have to make.


We were also able to spend some time with Brad's grandma who passed away just a couple of weeks after we left. We were thankful that we had the chance to see her one more time. Ella really enjoyed playing with the red balloons she had.


We will be heading to Iowa in August for her funeral.

Since returning from Phoenix we've enjoyed hanging out with Brad on the weekends. Here she is showing off her first chocolate Dunkin Donut.


Here she is dressed up for work


She only forgot her shoes and had to stop and pick her nose on the way


Before Johanna left we met a friend at the mall and had lunch and took a train ride around the mall


Since I don't have my nice camera any more and I'm not ready to spring for a new one, I followed in Johanna's footsteps and bought an old film camera. It came with some old film (which is not generally a good thing) so the first pictures turned out pretty grainy. I have also taken some black and white ones and just developed them myself last night. I need to go get them digitized now. I've come to the conclusion that this isn't saving any money and is definitely not saving any time. But I guess it's kind of fun.






My mom came for a couple weeks and it was so nice to have her here. She sure knows how to take care of everyone and she's fun to hang out with. She made me a pre-birthday cake and we celebrated a little early.

While she was in town I decided to get my hair chopped off. It feels so much better!


Now Brad's sister Elizabeth is here for a couple of months. We celebrated her birthday a couple days after she arrived.

The Girls

When we were in Arizona back in February, we used a Groupon I bought for a photographer. Since all the guys were gone we made it a girls session and I like the way they turned out.