Saturday was an Easter Egg Hunt up at church. This was the first time we participated at the one at Oviedo First United Methodist. We had traditionally gone down to Winter Park’s Easter Egg Hunt. The “hunt” was divided up into age groups and Izzy was the first one out of the gate. She ran around, but there wasn’t too many eggs for the pre-schoolers. She only found nine.

Next the First Graders and the Third Graders were going at the same time so Jennifer and I had to split up. Emily’s group ran around a playground and she found plenty of eggs over near the wooden play set.

Abby’s group was the most complex. Their eggs were buried and were well hidden. Abby was rewarded by digging into a bag of sand and came up with a golden egg. The egg contained a message saying that she had received a free trip to Vacation Bible School this summer.

Last weekend Jennifer’s parents flew in to help celebrate Emily’s birthday and to get their first look at our new house in Florida. We showed them around and took them to breakfast at The Townhouse Restaurant in downtown Oviedo. In the evening we took a trip down to Medieval Times in order to celebrate Emily’s seventh birthday. Since she loves horses so much, we thought she would enjoy the show. Everyone loved it and we had fun cheering on the red and yellow knight (who didn’t end up winning).

This past weekend, Jennifer and Abby headed out with Girl Scouts on a camping trip. They left Friday night and didn’t come back until Sunday morning. Fortunately the camp was just right around the corner, only about fifteen minutes away from the house. It rained Saturday night, but apparently the tents were well made and they didn’t get wet at all. They had fun doing crafts and shoot archery. Jennifer came back with a bruise on her left arm from the archery bow. They had a fun time, but were exhausted when they returned.

The weekend before Labor Day, I was watching Ken Burns who was a guest on Late Show with David Letterman. He has a new documentary on the National Park system. I came to the realization that I’m about to get really busy at work because of the new game I’m working on and that would mean that this might be the only time that we can go camping for the rest of the year. We drug the camper from Florida to Texas and back again, not using it for the past two years. One week notice usually isn’t enough time in order to get a camping spot. We were lucky. Jennifer just kept going up the coast until she found an open slot. We ended up with Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine.

I left a few hours early from work on Friday and Jennifer had the camper all ready to go. It took us an hour an a half to get there. We were pretty lucky again. We didn’t know that the gate at the campground closed at sunset. We were there about 15 – 20 minutes before they closed. It was that point that our luck ran out. Once we got the camper set up, we found that the air conditioner was no longer working. We knew something wasn’t going to be working since it was sitting idle for two years, but we were hoping it wasn’t that. I had the girls jump into the truck leaving Jennifer to continue to set up the camp. We used the iPhone map to find the closest Wal-Mart and went to look for some small fans that we could use. We found some and it help a lot to keep the air circulating in the camper.

The first day, we wandered around St. Augustine and visited the Lighthouse. Izzy was too small to go up, so we had to take turns climbing the long staircase to the top. Emily had no fear standing at the edge and looking straight down. It was amazing how far we could see once we were at the top.

The second day we spent most of the time at the beach. It was pretty nice that the campground was under tree cover, but the beach was less than five minutes away. The girls loved jumping in the waves and playing the sand. Eventually Jennifer and myself started cooking even though we kept putting on sun screen. We even had a few people tell us that it looked like we were getting burned.

When we got back to the campground we found out that we had a visitor. A squirrel (we assume) climbed up onto the side of the camper and ate through the screen in order to get to a pack of tortillas that we had sitting there. Oh well, we had no idea that the squirrels could smell that well. At least he didn’t get into the camper.

All-in-all a great camping trip. It’s always great to get away from it all and just spend time with the family. I highly recommend the Anastasia State Park camp ground. I know we will be returning.

I have some good news. This past week, Jennifer got a job with Coverings, Etc. as a sales person. They specialize in engineered stone surfaces, specifically recycled or as they put it “eco-friendly”. She’s pretty excited about it and will be going to sales training in Miami next weekend, leaving me with the girls for three days. It’s a commission job, but we think it’s a pretty good opportunity.

This week we moved our cell phone numbers to ones in Houston, so we no longer have our Florida phones. With this change, I upgraded to an iPhone. I’m still getting used to the interface and I don’t really enjoy using iTunes. It’s just too hard to use. I suppose it takes “Mac thinking”, which I don’t have.

This Christmas I had most of my family give me gift certificates to Amazon so that I could buy their digital book reader, the Kindle. However, I was going to hold off until the new “Kindle 2” came out so that I could get the latest design. Well, I got impatient at the end of January and decided to go ahead and order it. I was disappointed when it turned out that it was on backorder for over a month. This week I got the good news. The reason it was on backorder was because they were waiting for the “Kindle 2” to come out. I got an e-mail from Amazon saying that I would be getting the latest version of the Kindle in a couple of weeks.

After a few requests from friends, I bowed to the peer pressure and went ahead and bit the bullet. I created a Facebook account. I always figured, why would I need a Facebook account with my own family blog, but I now see the advantage. Just like I use Twitter, it’s a way to connect with old friends. In a week I now have 41 “friends” from people I know from EA, family, UT, and high school. It was cool seeing pictures from some people who I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.

For Valentines Day, we decided to take advantage of living in the same city as Jennifer’s parents. For the first time, we sent the girls over their the grandparents while Jennifer and I went out to eat. We went to our favorite place, The Melting Pot, which we discovered while in Florida. It’s a fondue restaurant, where you cook your own meal right in front of you in a boiling pot. It’s really good and very filling. When we got home, the house seemed pretty desolate. It was almost too quiet with the girls and the dog gone. I guess we’ve just gotten used to them in our lives. It seems weird when they aren’t there.