Fall is here!

I thought about posting these in several different posts, but you might miss something that way! So, here are a ton of pictures depicting our most recent days (which have been filled to the brim with excitement).

The above photo and the next one are here at our house and were taken today.



Let me get to our Florida photos that I've neglected for too long. We went out on Fran's boat in the Indian River in New Smyrna for a little fun. Sam loved riding in the boat, though he felt it was a little windy.


He especially enjoyed driving the boat with Fran and then, when we were anchored, with me.





We went to a "disappearing" island, which was really a sandbar that appeared and disappeared with the tide. It's quite a large sandbar though. We had fun practicing walking (yes, Sam is walking when he doesn't have somewhere he wants to be quickly - that's when he crawls) and playing Frisbee.



Here's a photo of Bill with David Hudson, his best friend from childhood. They were at Vickie and Dan Watson's acting studio in Lutz, Florida. I have some photos of Vickie and Bill, but they didn't turn out very well. Vickie just had a baby too - she's a teacher from their high school. Can you believe they all keep in touch this many years later?


Next I have a random photo of Sam playing the piano. He loved the one at Karen Hester's house. He could barely reach the keys, but loved making music.


By the way, for those of you who heard about the Medtronics recall on their defibrillator leads, Sam was no affected by it. Thanks for your emails and concern. Dr. Buck, our favorite doctor in the WHOLE world, called to let us know Sam is not in any danger. Thanks, Dr. Buck!

Moving on, we went to the fair last week with Adam and Kendall. We had a fantastic time - I just LOVE the fall in North Carolina. The weather has been unseasonably warm, but the fair made us feel somewhat normal for this season.

Here are Adam and Kendall. Adam's a real photogenic guy.

Adam took this one of Sam. We love how it highlights his beautiful curls and smile.

Here's one of me and Adam together. You might be noticing that I'm much thinner than days past. I'm continuing to lose weight due to the meningitis. I, obviously, don't have meningitis anymore, but the effects will be felt for a while. I still get headaches and neck aches and I have to eat a ton of protein just to break even with my weight. Hopefully I won't go down anymore.

Here's the family trying to make funny faces. I love the circular action of this photo.

We were in a tent eating our sausages when Adam said we needed to take a photo of the food for my father. He has books and books of his photos of food. Anyway, as Bill was taking the "normal" photograph of the sausage, he started getting very animated and directing Adam to "work it." This was the end result after about four or five very funny photos.

Our neighbors, the Jones family, along with some folks from our church, got some free pumpkins, bales of hay and mums from the fair. They set some of them up outside their house and I just had to get photos.

Here is Sam with Eden. She wasn't quite as sturdy as Sam was - she's a little peanut just like Sam and a couple months younger.

Hope you enjoyed the photos - I'm sure you'll agree that Bill is a fantastic photographer. He is such a talented man and I am grateful to be the recipient of his many gifts.

Disney World

We just got back from a trip to Florida where we went to a big conference and then took a few days of vacation. We had a fantastic time seeing Bill's old friends in Brandon. We were surprised at how many people remembered him from his music internship days, and even youth group days, at Bell Shoals. Everyone welcomed us with open arms. I can't stress how much we needed the encouragement and prayers that we got during the conference.

Afterwards with went to Winter Park to stay with our good friend Fran. We had an extremely relaxing time with him when we went to Disney and then to New Smyrna to see his parents. I'll post pictures of New Smyrna later, but for now, enjoy our pics from Disney. I will say this, it was exactly what we needed after the month we had!

Poor Sam didn't get much sleep the entire trip, but he really did enjoy himself at Disney. All the sights and sounds were a little overwhelming at first and we didn't actually get to ride anything until about two hours in. I had to feed him, change him...this and that got in the way of actually doing anything at the park.

I was so excited when I found out we could go around Halloween-time. I've never been to Disney during Halloween and was excited about the decorations. The greenhouse at Disney put small pumpkins (the size of a grapefruit) into a Mickey mold and made whole Mickey-shaped pumpkins. Here we are just before getting kicked out (we didn't buy tickets for the Halloween Bash after 7pm and had to leave - but don't worry, I got three free tickets out of it!).

Here is Sam having his first bite of gigantic turkey leg. He LOVED it. It was a bit too heavy for him to hold alone though.

Sam took an instant liking to Fran and had to be held by him on more than one occasion. Fran even volunteered to keep Sam while we went on the Haunted Mansion ride. We were a bit nervous leaving him about 50 feet from us while we were inside, but Sam slept most of the fifteen minutes we were gone. Phew. Fran knew just how to make Sam happy.

Sam and I went on the Winnie the Pooh ride, which used to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. It was essentially the same ride, only a story from Winnie the Pooh was being told instead. I was a bit disappointed, actually, but Sam didn't care one bit. He loved it.

Here are the guys just before they went on Splash Mountain. Don't worry, Sam didn't go with them.

We've had our hands full since we have been back. It's a special week over at Southeastern and we got to set up a display table yesterday. We went to the fair with my brother and his wife last night and didn't make it home till late. I'm a bit delayed in emails right now, so please forgive me.