Florida!

We spent last week in Florida; the first half in Orlando and the second half in Bonita Springs. We had originally thought about flying since the kids would be free, but after thinking through everything we would need to take, we decided to drive. I'm glad we did since we stopped in Jacksonville on the way through and back and visited with my dad. He also drove down to spend the day with us at Animal Kingdom. We went to Animal Kingdom on Sunday and it was a lot of fun. I wish I would have gotten more pictures but it's so hard getting 2 toddlers to stand still long enough for a picture. We saw a lot of animals on the safari and nature walk and the kids enjoyed meeting the Disney characters. They both now know who Mickey and Minnie Mouse are. The weather was gorgeous and the kids absolutely LOVED the pool, Amaya especially. It was her first time swimming and she had no fears whatsoever as you'll see in the pictures below. Logan enjoyed the pool as well in his own way by just floating around. Amaya floated for a little while but enjoyed the freedom of kicking and splashing by using the arm floaties. Saturday we drove up to South Carolina to visit some friends we hadn't seen in over a year and a half. It was fun to get to introduce them to Amaya and Logan and to meet their new little 3 month old. We are so thankful the kids traveled so well in the car for the 2700 miles of the trip. We definitely miss the weather but it was good to get back home into our normal routine. Here are a couple pictures from our trip.

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Amaya and I with Grandpa Hall. We tried a couple pictures with Logan too but he would not cooperate.

Enjoying the pool!

Playing ball with Daddy!

Picture with Goofy!

Meeting Mickey! Logan sleeps with a small Mickey Mouse so he was super excited! I love the thumbs up he is giving. :-)

What's new?

My goal is to update the blog once a month and to shoot for the beginning of the month. Well it's mid-February and I'm finally getting to it. Amaya has been home for 8 weeks now and yesterday was her 23rd month birthday! Only one more month and we'll have a 2 year old, crazy! We have had lots of exciting things happen since January. First, Logan started walking! At the beginning of January he began taking a few steps, and then would fall down and crawl. A couple weeks later he began taking 8-10 steps before falling down and after a couple days of that, he's been walking every since. He is much happier now that he can walk and he and Amaya are definitely playing more together as now he can keep up to her. Second, we found out January 19 that Logan and Amaya will have a baby girl cousin! Ryan's sister, Nikki, is expecting a little girl the beginning of June and we are so excited for them! Last, we have been potty training Amaya off and on since mid-January. We started up again about a week ago and she is really making progress. She's telling us when she needs to go (about 1/2 the time) and we've even moved her to the regular toilet. We're taking it slow and not pushing her but it would be great to have her out of diapers by the beginning of the summer!
A week from tomorrow we are leaving for a week-long trip to Florida! Ryan has a business trip in Orlando, and the kids and I decided to tag along. Our plan is to drive through the night Friday night into Saturday morning. On Sunday we are going to take the kids to Animal Kingdom. Amaya has been learning a lot of animal names and sounds so I'm excited to see her reaction to the animals. The rest of the week we plan on hanging out by the pool and going to the beach. We can't wait to get outside and soak up the sun, it's definitely been a long winter. I'll be sure to post pictures when we get back. I've posted a couple of new pictures below, but I find it very hard to take pictures of two toddlers who never sit still!


Logan walking around and getting into everything!

Amaya and Brady playing on the couch

The Stump, Mason, and Foust clan...we've grown a lot in just 2 years. :)

Happy New Year!

Here are some updated pics of our little ones. Amaya is continuing to learn more and more English which is very helpful in decreasing the amount of tantrums. She took a trip with just Ryan for about an hour out of the house a couple of days ago and did great! She definitely likes to get out of the house! (I guess who doesn't in the these awful winter months.) We are learning that she is quite the social butterfly. We took her to church for the first time this morning and she LOVED the attention. She smiled and waved to all the people that came up to meet her.

Logan is learning to share mommy and daddy much better and I think he is finally enjoying having a playmate. He isn't quite walking yet but can stand alone for 15-20 seconds. Every once in a while he'll take a step or two but then chicken out and crawl the rest of the way. He definitely has a lot of motivation to walk since he sees his big sister running around and getting to places much faster than him. He's also starting to talk more and I think it's mainly from imitating his sister. We are excited to see how our little ones are going to grow and change over this next new year! Enjoy the pics!

My sister bought them this ball pit for Christmas and they love it!

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Our family of four on Christmas day!

Hanging out with our friend Jackson on New Year's Eve!