Trip to South Florida

A week and half ago, we went to South Florida for Mike's sister and brother in law's 25th anniversary celebration. On the way down, we decided to stop for dinner in Downtown Disney and let Daniel get out of the carseat to burn off some energy. It was a very good decision!

Daniel LOVED it and it was a fun way to do a little Disney on the cheap.



On the way back to the car, we walked through one of the stores and Daniel kept saying, "ooh, wow", there were lots of different Disney characters on the ceiling and he was loving taking it all in!



Daniel's cousin, Hannah was SO excited to see him and she was a big help while Carol and I worked on making the cake for the party.





Here is the cake, it is not professional by any means! I made the gooey butter cake for the bottom layer and it sank, just like I knew it would, but it tasted really good. Carol made a white butter cake for the top layer and we put raspberry preserves between the layers. We frosted it with buttercream frosting and then covered it with fondant. I wrapped each layer with 1.5inch grossgrain ribbon and secured the ribbon with a pearl tipped pin, then piped on butter cream frosting to make swiss dots all over the layers. Carol placed her original Lladro bride and groom cake topper to the side of the cake (we were afraid it might fall off the cake and didn't want it to break). The cake is sitting on top of the silver cake pedestal used for Mike's and my wedding cake.



We stayed with Mike's brother, Doug, sister in law, Christi and boys, Gregg and Jack. The boys were so sweet with Daniel, my heart was melting watching his cousins interact with him. Christi pulled out some of their toys from when they were babies for Daniel to play with, he especially loved chasing thier dog around with a toy fishing rod.





Doug and Christi are excellent cooks and always feed us SO well when we come to visit! They have a beautiful fish tank that Mike LOVES!



Nani and Pa with all their grandchildren, Hannah (13), Daniel (16months), Gregg, (12), Jack (9), Josh (18), Emily (11).



It isn't very often that we have an opportunity for our whole family to get together & take a great picture! I love how Hannah and Pa are looking at Daniel in this picture.



During the party, Hannah danced beautifully to "I can only Imagine", she did a great job! We had a wonderful trip and enjoyed time with our family despite Daniel being sick the whole trip, we spent our last day (Valentine's Day) enjoying a picnic lunch and walk on the beach and boardwalk before driving back home.








We are looking at the Goodyear blimp passing by.