Good times and family visits

We've been busy over the past few weeks. The week before last, we trekked over to Ormond Beach to see Nana and Papa before Nana headed up to Maine with Granny Great for their yearly pilgrimage north. We had a great and full few days while we were there. Amelie got to show off her mad swimming skills in Nana and Papa's pool. She has really taken off here, even acquiring new skills on her own (swimming on her back, kicking off the wall and flipping around). It's hard to keep her away from the water of any kind.

While we were there, the Cornett side of the family, my aunt Cindy and cousin Sarah and her 2 kids Jack and Lucy came over for a visit. They are in FL for a couple weeks after having moved to upstate NY, so we were lucky enough to get to hang out with them at the beach. We've really missed them, so it was great getting to spend some time with them. Amelie loved hanging out with her cousins and immediately grabbed each one by the hand and lead them around "come on!" Later she would reminisce "Member when we went to the beach Jack and Lucy last night?" I remember.

We got to visit the Cornett's later in their trip when we all met up at Blizzard Beach. We had a full day of water slides, wave pools and rafts followed up by a big bucket of ice cream - not a bad way to spend the day!!

While we were in Ormond, we got to see Papa play a basketball game with his team at the local Y. Amelie loves basketball and was thrilled when Papa got to come out on the court. She even got to see Papa foul one of the players on the other team - how exciting is that! At half time, proud Papa walked Amelie by the hand and led her around the court to introduce her to each of the players. Each of the 6 foot + players were very gracious in shaking her hand and saying "It's very nice to meet you". Amelie knew what to do and held out her hand in return and smiled.

Later, we got to meet our good friend Connie Komatz for dinner, although mine and Amelie's trip was cut short since Amelie was just a little too tired from a very hectic day to want to sit happily in a restaurant. She does love to drink out of the fun cup that Connie brought for her though! Aunt Rose came down from Palm Coast the last day we were there and came in for a swim with us. It definitely was great seeing everyone!

Other stuff:

I'm always amazed when it seems like it's going to take Amelie a while to grasp something when she's struggled with it for a while and then, one day, she just masters it. Ging and Poppy gave Amelie a tricycle this past Christmas. Up until recently she had shown a mild interest in it. She would get on and push along with her feet on the ground, or try to pedal, get frustrated and be on to something else. Well, over the past 2 weeks, she is all over the place in that tricycle. Our floors are mostly tile which makes for a good track. She loves to say we're going to the store and go off in a flash to a different room on her tricycle. She'll say, "Okay! We're going to Publix!" Then, I have to follow her on her scooter and we'll stop in mine and Allen's room. We'll stop, I'll ask her what we need and she'll say something like "Milk and grapes". We then pretend to grab things off the shelf and put them in the trunk of her tricycle. Whenever she pretends to do something, she has to make a "pssht" noise to indicate movement. So, we "pssht, pssht" until we get everything into the cart. Then, she says, "Okay! We have to go to Target!" and we start the process over.

Amelie has turned into a little computer whiz. There are a few sites like pbskids.org and sesamestreet.org that have some games that are great for her age group. For a long time she'd play these games at our house, or while hanging with Ging and the adult would navigate the game. Now, she can operate the touchpad mouse to drag things along and click to get the answer right. She seems to also comprehend the objective of the game (e.g., in Curious George, where it shows a picture of something (like a truck) along with a smaller picture of something (like a lemon) and you have to guess how many of the smaller items you'd have to stack to reach the height of the larger item. So, this is a double whammy to me. Not only can she operate the mouse (and even hit the Esc key when the menu pops up if she accidentally hits the right mouse button), but she has more understanding of numbers than I initially knew.

Here are the pictures:

• Amelie, Lucy and Jack goof around
• Amelie shows off her duck umbrella from Nana
• Papa plays defense
• Amelie and Nana enjoy a drink
• Amelie does the meet and greet