Yes, it's my birthday today. Not such a big deal once you're "old." :) 38 years. Wow. Where has the time gone??? It hasn't quite been the perfect day I'd hoped for, but we've had some fun just the same.

Last night was great. My mom and Girlie and I went to my favorite restaurant of all for dinner, The Melting Pot!!! LOVE it!!! It's not a kid friendly place for crazy kids like mine, and I knew Olivia wouldn't like it much, but I also knew Girlie would do better with me than Grandpa and that left him only 3 instead of 4, as it takes about 2 hours to eat there. She did wonderfully!!! We had 4 different staff come to the table to comment on how adorable and smart she is! I kept thinking, oh if you only knew! :) lol

Here's some of what we did today...


The cake after we went at it. It was very cute, with flip flops and palm trees!!! :)

We started the day at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. It's mostly a rescue operation and they have wonderful animals that you can view and interact with. We touched sting rays, watched sea turtles, and saw the dolphins, especially their "famous" dolphin Winter. Winter has no tail and is an amazing animal. She was rescued from a net which damaged her tail. The kids had a lot of fun!

Touching sting rays, Olivia was scared at first, but got the hang of it after a while.

Braeden leaned so far one time that he would have fallen in if not for quick thinking grandparents!!! He was SOAKED! (You can tell in the last picture.)

We then watched a video on their aquarium.


Here you can see how wet Braeden got!


After we went to a pub/restaurant called Dogwater. They serve your meals in dog dishes!!! The kids thought it was hilarious!
Then we went swimming again. Olivia unfortunately had to miss out. We found out this morning that not only has she lied to us every morning and night this trip about brushing her teeth, she got the toothbrush wet to look like she had done it! Unreal! We've worked so hard on the lying, and that was really what got to me more than the teeth. We've had some other issues as well, which I don't like to post on the blog much, so this was a topper and we decided she needed some consequences and missed out on swimming.

After that it was nap time. My dad and I went to thrift shops while they were sleeping. Well, I went to thrift shops, he drove with me and read in the car while I was in the stores. :) I found a couple things and spent $8.

Upon returning Braeden had not had the best behavior, so some of what I hoped to do, like finishing our craft which we still haven't done, didn't get completed. Maybe tomorrow... We had popcorn for dinner with a new movie I bought while out, then cake for dessert! What a dinner! :)

In a few min I'm taking off for an evening by myself. I don't get to do that often, so I'm leaving an hour before bed, going to mall to shop and go to a movie. :) Yay!!! Have a great day!