Train Ride Back in the 1950's - Wordless Wednesday

The train we rode on at the Florida Railroad Museum.  It was 90 minute round trip ride.

Jason eating his chocolate chip pancakes before the ride.  So happy and excited.

Nana with Scott (my nephew), Faith and Jason.

The redneck house on the railroad.  In the pool, a guy was wearing a cowboy hat.

Kids falling to sleep.  1 Kid down.

All the kids asleep.

They had a shoot out between the stations.  Here's Jason with the sheriff.

Wordless Wednesdays - Day at the Beach/Park

Help mom!

Mama, the tree has got me?  Help Help

Time to help sis out..but lets dig for gold first

Its got me for real now

Hey dude I'm awesome

Doesn't he look like he's praying?

Perfect Day

Just leaves

Fourth Mother

Today was an odd day.  Jason has days where I think he is just pushing me as hard as he can.  Sometimes I wonder if it is to push me away completely.  He has gone through 4 mothers at this point.  I'm the 4th.  It can't be easy on him to know that.  I want to be his mother.  I want to give him whatever he wants.  But sometimes it is so hard.  I know he is only pushing because he still can't trust in us.  He's so afraid to just accept us as his family.  So many people have let him down so far in his little life.  It's truly sad.

I knew that his preschool teachers said that he had social issues but I didn't realize how bad they were.  At least I found out how bad when we went on vacation.  The first night Jason and Faith slept in their own room.  I told them to come to me when they woke up.  Did I really expect that they would?  Ok I delusioned myself and did.  They didn't, of course.  So Jason gets up and starts flipping any light switch that he could.  This is what I heard happened:


Brother in law said:  Don't mess with the light switches.

Jason:  I can do what I want.  You aren't my boss.

Brother in law said:  Your mom doesn't allow you to do that.

Jason:  I don't have to listen to you.
My sister and I took them to a couple of beaches that day.  They played in the sand for a while. 

There is no joy bigger than seeing your child being a carefree child.  This was the very best part of the trip.  Watching them play gave me the peace that I needed.

While we were visiting the beach, we also checked out a bird sanctuary.

Here is my sister explaining to Faith why all the birds are caged up.  This bird sanctuary actually rescues the birds and they stay here until they are well enough to go on their own if ever.  Here are the Eagles.  It was fascinating seeing them up close.

I find this picture hilarious.  Kids can be so focused.  They didn't even look up for the picture.  My sister is.  But my kids are focused on the A&W Root beer in front of them.

It was an absolutely beautiful sanctuary.  I found it funny in one of the pictures; you can see the birds outside the fence.  They had been pardoned but they come back to sun their feathers. 

Chatterbugs start up

Well when we made it to Florida.  I always (did I say always?) stop at the Welcome Center right over the border.  Nobody has better orange juice than them.  Nobody.  So we stop and I take some pictures.  Woohoo we are in Florida.

As you can see it was nice and warm.  We still had on clothes for winter.  I was having a serious hot flash.

We were so excited to be in Florida.  As you can tell by the excited smiles in the picture below.

Before you ask, no we did not cordinate our colors at all.  It just happened.  The kids are holding the orange juice in the one picture. 

Note to Self:  I must not include any pictures of me in my picture count for my 101 Things to Do in 1001 Days blog.

Here's my mom with the kids in front of the Welcome Florida Doors.  Now I had to get in on that so we got more pictures in front of the welcome sign.  See below.

And finally all of us together.  I hope that my pictures aren't boring you.  I just thought of all those videos relatives force you to watch.  Maybe I shouldn't do this lol.

Perry Georgia

The first night we arrived in Perry Georgia.  We stayed at the Rodeway Inn right off I-75.  It was quite a nice hotel.  It was $44.99 which mom and I split.  The beds were really soft.  They had a free continental breakfast.  Here are a few pictures that I took:

This is where we had our breakfast.  I made waffles for everyone.  Jason was a mess when we were done eating.  Go figure I gave him the stickiest thing.  But I figured it was the most fulfilling as well.

This is the outside of the hotel.  It was a really nice one.

Here are the kids pretending to have fun at the cafe table outside.

As you can see by their faces, they were not having much fun.  They wanted to get on the road.

So here is the four of us just before we left for Florida.  6 hours 31 minutes to go and I get to see my sister.

This is the clerk that helped us sign out.  Now I found out that my mom told her about the blog.  Only thing is she told her the name of my blog was FamiliesMakeHearts so I doubt she finds me.  We were way down the road when she told me that.