March in Florida and Georgia

Jacob and I officially have a bright, silly, creative, beautiful TEENAGER! We were not surrounded with lots of kids this year to invite to a birthday party, but some of Audrey’s grandparents really helped us make it feel special!

birthday morning She requested an Apple Pancake, my mom’s recipe, for birthday breakfast!

Grampsy flew in to celebrate birthday week.

Grampsy with Girls sitting

Grampsy with Girls standing

outside mini golf We took Audrey mini-golfing before our annual hibachi feast.

Audrey playing minigolf

Grampsy and Audrey at minigolf

We rented a fun house with a pool and a game room in Orlando for the occasion!

Audrey with frozen drinks

GranMiri and Papa drove down too!

Audrey with her grandpas

…and Aunt Amy even stopped by with a yummy breakfast.

Having the fancy house meant we didn’t need to go out to find our fun. We did take a great trip to Kelly Park - Rock Springs. They had been closed all winter and we lucked out with them opening again in time for us to visit before we headed north again. It really is one of the coolest places I have visited in Florida!

walking at the natural spring

girls at Kelly Springs

floating down the spring

Audrey in the spring

Alligator sign at Kelly Spring

Grampsy and Lo floating

Audrey floating

Heading back to our boat in Georgia, we discoved the beautiful Apopka Wildlife Drive. blue heron There were so many birds! It was a bird watcher’s dream

egret flying

gator in the lilypads Also, a ton of gators

Lo pointing at the gator We decided to do the drive with the mini-van’s doors open so it would feel more like a real safari. It made driving past the aligators pretty exciting!

Cormorant NJ Lorelei Lorelei’s Cormorant Nature Journal

Alligator NJ Audrey Audrey’s Alligator Nature Journal

The orange groves were in full bloom. I wish I could somehow share the beautiful smell of orange blossoms filling the air here on the blog.

orange groves

Orange Tree NJ Audrey Audrey’s Orange Tree Nature Journal

Jacob and the girls A fun stop in Jacksonville on our way back.

Lo kissing Audrey

St. Simons craft fair St. Simons craft market.

Audrey has decided that she LOVES St. Patrick’s Day, because it is the day she was originally due on, so we really tried to do it up. We made shamrock quesadillas, watched an Irish movie (Legend of Kells), and went out for Irish food and live music at night.

Lo with shamrock quesadilla

turtles on a log Hiking through one of the state parks near our boat. We spotted lots of turtles.

The girls and I decided to take a field trip to Savannah to see the beautiful Forsyth park and do a little plein air art. We also treated ourselves to a tea party.

tea in Savannah