All About the Smiths

Josh and I had the great opportunity of going to visit his parents in Florida for Christmas this year. The trip was awesome and for me a welcome reprieve from the snow and cold of Illinois! We flew down on Christmas Eve and flew home on New Years Eve. I was slightly worried about how Cynthia would do flying, but she was great! We ended up hanging out at the airport for 5 hours on Christmas Eve and she was an angel the whole time! She slept our first flight down and was awake during the 2nd flight, but played nicely the whole time. On the way home, she basically slept the whole way!!

Cynthia enjoyed getting to know her Smith Grandparents better and we all enjoyed the opportunity to visit with family. Josh's sisters Julie and Jenny were also home!

Here are a few pictures from our trip. You can see more here.

Well, we're home now! We had a great time on vacation, but we're all very tired! We packed lots into 9 days.

Because I'm too lazy to post pictures here, you can go view them on Facebook!

Vacation Pictures

New Family Pictures

Josh's DC Pictures part 1

Part 2

It's that time of the summer. VACATION!!

Friday we're going to Freedom Celebration up at Northland. Then we're leaving Saturday morning to fly with my parents to visit my brother Mark and his wife Krystina for a week-long vacation!! Melinda will be joining us on Sunday and then David will join us on Thursday.

While gone we'll be spending a few days in Washington DC playing the role of tourists then we're heading over to Mark's house near Virginia Beach to spend the rest of our visit!!

All of the McMillen clan will be there so there are sure to be some fun times had.
I think sometime in there we'll make a trip to the beach and a trip to the zoo. Beyond that, no plans. We're going to have fun with each other and hopefully do some swimming!

I'm excited for Mark, Krystina and Melinda to see Cynthia again. They haven't seen her for several months.

Have a Great 4th of July!!


PS: No, the picture really doesn't have anything to do with vacation, but no post is complete without including Cynthia!

Josh's parents were here visiting last week. We had a great time with them and I think they enjoyed getting to know Cynthia again.

On Friday we went on an adventure with them! The plan was to drive down to Iowa to visit relatives. Well, because of flooding in Madison and several places in Iowa we were detoured several times and spent 11 1/2 hours in the car that day! Cynthia did so great in the car and wasn't really fussy until the last hour of the trip. But I must say that we were SO ready go get to Josh's Grandma Smith's house that evening!!

We enjoyed our trip and Cynthia got to meet lots of people which of course she enjoyed! Here are a few pictures from or trip.

Josh, Brad Bladine and I are spending the weekend near Kansas City, MO with our friends Elisheba and Carolyn. The guys had an interesting find earlier today.






Yes, you saw that right, they were having fun "modeling" in some exquisite fur coats! (Those coats probably haven't had that much fun in years!!)

I'm sure there will be more exciting pictures from our weekend coming soon. So come back soon!!

He was swimming in a tank at the Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

 

 

We enjoyed our lunch with Janelle and her little man, Aaron. It's so much fun to catch up with college friends that we haven't seen in a while.


 

These are pictures of Josh's Nephew's and Niece. We enjoyed playing in the water with them. Douglas is the older boy, the girl is Crystal and the younger boy is John. Douglas was a bit too brave and liked to venture out a bit too far! Crystal is like a little fish and loved being thrown in. John's favorite part was splashing in the waves.



 

Josh had never heard a Parrot talk before. This one was pretty fun!!

Although this Monkey might look big, he's was actually pretty tiny. I don't remember how old he was, but I think only a few weeks. He was soooo cute! I wanted to hold him :)


Sometimes, I think I'm more kid than adult! My favorite part of the zoo was feeding and petting this Giraffe!

 

We took our first vacation (well, besides our Honeymoon!) the first weekend in August. We went to Fort Walton Beach, Florida to visit Josh's parents and sisters and also to get away and take a break from work.

We flew in to Pensacola on Friday, August 4th and then flew home on Tuesday the 8th. Yes, it was a kinda short trip, but very much enjoyed!

We were able to do several fun things during our short visit. On Saturday Mom & Dad Smith took us to visit the Santa Rosa Zoo then in the evening we all went to the beach together. Monday we had a day to ourselves and we went to Pensacola and visited a college friend, Janelle (Benson) Miller and met her 1 1/2 year old son Aaron. Monday afternoon Josh took me to the Gulfarium in Fort Walton. We watched a Dolphin Show (great fun!!), a Sea Lion show (kinda lame) and several other shows. At the end of the day we stayed and watched the Dolphin Show for a 2nd time because we (mostly me) had enjoyed it so much.

Here are some pictures that we took during our visit to Josh's family the end of July.



This is a picture of Josh and I, Josh's mom is in the red dress. Grandma Smith is the one in blue. The other couple are Grandma's good friends Bob & Pat Miller.









Josh was able to get some neat pictures of some beautiful flowers in Grandma Smith's yard.