Gator Parade

What is better than a Friday off from work, spending the day with your family, and getting to see the University of Florida's Gator Parade? I am ashamed to say we have never been to the Gator Parade before!! We only live 30 minutes from Gainesville but yet had never taken time to go see it. Well today we did!

We arrived about an hour before the parade. It was a beautiful day outside. The wind was blowing and the sun was shining! We were able to find a spot across from the The Florida Book Store in a nice shady area. Chuckie had packed my lawn chair and I was ready to relax.

The biggest parade we've ever seen is the Chiefland Watermelon Festival Parade and it typically isn't that big. It was exciting waiting for the parade to start. I couldn't wait to see the "real" floats! I'm going to post a few pics for everyone to see.

We had a great time as a family. Brandon video taped the whole parade. It was about 1 1/2 hours long if I'm remembering correctly. The floats were awesome!! This to me was a real parade. After the parade we went to Wendy's for Colby and Brandon and then Chuckie and I had Bono's. We just figured out that Bono's has a drive thru!!

I am very thankful that we were able to spend time as a family and that Colby and Brandon wanted to spend time with us. They are 19 and 17 so I feel pretty special that we all went together.

University of Florida's Homecoming Game!!

Brandon and Kelly went to the Florida Gators Homecoming Game Saturday Oct. 17, 2009. They had a blast!! They met Connie and Mike and they all rode together. Mike has front row parking so of course they let him drive!! That sure saved a lot of walking. After the game they went back to Mr.and Mrs. Cdell Fletchers house and hung out. I'll will have to find out from Brandon which seats they had. So I will update this later. I knew if I didn't start on this well months would pass before I would publish this post!!

How to Swap Used Books: PaperbackSwap.com

How to Swap Used Books: PaperbackSwap.com

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I'm trying to contemplate how my life is changing. In just a few months our youngest child will be graduating high school. Just how has this many year gone by? It seems like it was just yesterday we were bringing Brandon home from the hospital (Alachua General, which is now closing it's doors; it opened in 1928!) with his big brother, Aunt Karen, Aunt Amy and his Dad in tow. If you can believe this because I still can't....When we left the hospital, I wanted to go to Target!!! Was I nuts??? I guess that was the deep down shopper in me!! Something very sweet happened while we were in Target. I had Brandon in his carrier sitting inside the buggy. Colby (only 2 1/2 years old), climbed to ride on the end of the buggy and looked at Brandon and believe it or not Brandon smiled back at him! Brandon was only 2 days old. Yes it may have been gas, but I like to believe it was Colby and Brandon forming a brotherly bond. It just completely melted my heart!!!!! Thank goodness for memories and we have those to look back upon our life. I am following a blog and the lady posted this question and she told what it meant to her and then asked her fellow bloggers to post what it meant to each of us:

What the heart once owned and had, it shall never lose."Henry Ward Beecher
How about telling me what it means to you?
Have a wonderful day!!