2010 is off to a roaring good start!

The Tylers are off and running this year. Doesn't it always seem that way? We always think we will recover from the holidays in January, but it is always full of activity and busyness as well!

Looks like we will be working our way backward. We ended the month with Caleb's 7th bday. He elected to have strawberry cake and had a vision of a cake decorated with fresh strawberries picked the day before! Such an easy wish to grant! (I wish they were all this simple) He was thrilled with the cards and gifts he received. A big thank you to all you who helped us celebrate. We celebrated on Sunday because Dan left Monday for Brazil for a couple of weeks. He will be gone most weeks to Mexico and North Carolina, popping home here and there to take a quick break.


Sat. we started a new family tradition of picking strawberries at Knaus Berry Farms in Homestead, FL. Here is Carson picking with our friends, the Brown Family, who introduced us to this wonderful place. The best part comes afterward with homemade strawberry shakes and homemade cinnamon buns still warm from the oven sold at the Knaus Family's stand right there. It is a local attraction and one we plan on participating in as long as we are here in South Florida!

Here is Carson. He did this all day at Disney's Animal Kingdom. We asked him what he was doing, and he informed us he was looking for animals. This was on our Disney Trip over MLK weekend. He really had a terrific trip and LOVED Animal kingdom on our last day at the parks!

Here is the family with Tigger and Pooh. We did all 4 parks. Magic Kingdom and Epcott with Dan. Then he headed home to work and we stayed a couple more days for Disney's Hollywood studios and Animal Kingdom. My mom got us a beautiful 2 bedroom condo that was perfect for our time not in the parks, and gave us enough space to escape from one another for an hour or two in the evenings. Although Sunday night the kids and I just played games and had a party for a few hours. What a terrific vacation and special memory building experience. Best of all, Dan caught the Disney bug and wants to go back every year. (We'll see if we can snag deals the match the good ones we got this year!)

Lastly, we started out the year celebrating Dan's 40th bday. We left for Disney on his bday and so celebrated the night before. We had his traditional lemon cake and opened his gifts. Thank you to all who contributed to his birthday scrapbook. He said it was one of the best gifts he has ever been given and was really touched at all who took the time to send a message. It turned out really nice with the pictures and I used a really simple digital scrapbook program so I was able to put it all together rather simply. The best was just how surprised he was--he ALWAYS knows what I am giving him ahead of time.

Here is a quick video of Carson helping make Dan's bday cake. Nothing too amazing I just wanted to start attaching video. Let me know if it takes too long to load, not sure if I am doing this all right. It took a long time to upload!