The Circus and some swordplay!

It's a little hard to concentrate on breakfast when...there's a girl under the table pretending she's a cat!!! :)
David and I had a good, hard run this morning! I had run the day before by myself (because Kelli bailed on me that morning -too tired to wake up) and had a good 6 mile run. It's always fun to run in new places! So this morning, David got up and ran with me, but he always pushes me because he's definitely faster! We did another 6 miles - harder, but still good! I love vacations when we get to actually run together!! :)

playing with dishes in the kitchen

We left the timeshare after lunch and drove back up to West Palm Beach for a little surprise that we had planned. We didn't tell the kids where we were going until we arrived and they saw this:

There was a Circus Holiday Show in town that week at the West Palm Beach convention center, so we took all the kids to go see it - and had a blast!! Caleb was totally riveted the whole time - never once squirmed or wanted to get down. The kids were just totally captivated! Callie either wants to ride elephants when she grows up or spin from her hair way up high in the sky!! :)

They were super excited - had never been to a circus, so they had no idea what to expect. It was technically not the "whole" circus - just a holiday show. It was sort of a scaled down version - only 1 ring instead of 3, for example. But it had everything and was awesome! 2 hours long with an intermission in the middle...

...which was needed to buy some popcorn and...

...swords!!

(funny story about these swords. We sat through one of those "timeshare sales pitches" earlier in the week - much to my mom's severe unhappiness - she hates pressure or sales pitches of ANY kind. David and I do it all the time - we know what to expect, it doesn't really stress us out at all. We sit through the presentation, nicely say no thankyou, and then collect our free gift at the end. Kelli and I were both going to get $75 VISA gift cards for sitting through their pitch and felt like it was worth it. It was a little nuts with all the kids there, but at the end of the pitch, Josiah said "when can we leave?" I told him we had to listen to them talk because they were going to give us $75 at the end if we listened to all the information. Well, that got Josiah's attention. He and Jacob then came up with a plan of their own - they asked if they could have some of the money since they sat and listened too! Smart boys, aren't they? So we told them they could each have $10. They used that to buy the swords! :) )

After the circus, we got to head over to Chris and Kristen's house. I hadn't seen their home yet and so they hosted everyone for dinner that night! I loved getting to see their first home - they've done such beautiful things to it, recently painted - it's beautiful! (much nicer than our little 500 sf apartment that David and I lived in when we first married!!)

Kristen's house is beautiful and immaculate - both things that make for a disaster with 5 little kids around. So as soon as they were done eating, we pretty much banished them to the screened in porch...where they broke in their new swords.

Joseph was trying to figure out what in the world these things were!

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt!!

Callie taking on Josiah

Uh-oh - another brother goes down...

...and the hands of Callie! (and I'm betting that those flower petals all over the floor weren't there when we arrived....)

Tired baby - full day!

Kristen is a wonderful pianist - she kept up with it the longest of all of us. I got her some piano books for Christmas and so she played a solo for us - a solo that she remembered playing years ago, and it really did come back to her! :)

Joe was willing to play a duet along with her if needed!

Thanks for opening up your home to us Chris and Kristen! It was wonderful spending time with them and seeing where they live! (and I'm sure that as soon as we left, the carpet steamer and Lysol came out to get the house back how Chris had it before we arrived!!)