THE CROSBY SHOW: Family

Just before fall really stared there was a cold snap, in August.

We started the fall season off by going to Florida for a week and a half. We needed to wrap a few things up at my Dad's house and we took his ashes to the Florida Keys. We decided that if we were going to drive to the Florida Keys from Virginia we were going to make a pit stop in Sanibel Island, FL for a few days. So, the week after Labor Day, when all other children we starting school, our family was on vacation in the Gulf of Mexico. It was such a great time for our family to relax, have no agenda, and enjoy each other's company after the months of inconsistency and separation we had.

We would go to the beach every morning for a few hours and then head to the pool to cool off before going to the condo for lunch and rest time.

Caleb would take his morning naps on the beach while we played. We would dig a hole in the sand, cover it with a towel and set up an umbrella to shade his fair skin and bald head from the sun.

After feeding Caleb in the morning I headed out to the beach for some sunrise pictures. The fisherman were out so early and their boats were scattered all over the shallow waters.

Ready for the beach

Caleb didn't love the sand:

There were so many beautiful shells:

More morning sunrise pictures:

Check out this fisherman's hat!

Notice the spit up?

So did Rebekah!

While we were on the island I mentioned to Sam that I had always wanted to see the sun rise and set on a beach in the same day. So, he convinced me to go to the other side of the island and watch the sunset. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! There was a storm coming in and the clouds were amazing. I was pretty nervous the whole time because they looked pretty intense (and it was a bad storm) but we made it back to the condo just as the bottom of the sky fell.

I have this picture blown up, framed, and hanging in our basement:

We planned our trip to take Dad's ashes to the Keys around a trip that he and his friends already had planned. When I learned of his passing I called one of his friends and asked if we could join them. My Dad loved the trips he took with his friends to go diving and said he wanted to have his ashes put in the water there because it was where he had the most fun in his life. So, on a rainy and dreary Saturday afternoon my Uncle Bob (Dad's brother) and Aunt Mary met my family and my dad's friends in Islamorada, FL. The sun started to show itself late in the afternoon and there was hope for a better-than-expected boat ride. We met at the dock about an hour before sunset, talked, heard stories of past diving trips, looked at pictures from when my dad was single and I probably wasn't even a though in his mind, and enjoyed the good memories we had of him.

We chartered two boats to take everyone out to a reef where they would dive. It was beautiful. There is a lighthouse on the reef that was built in 1873 called Alligator Reef Lighthouse (click the link to read more about the reef and lighthouse... it's very interesting). Once we got to the reef I asked Sam to speak and some of dad's friends spoke about Dad too. Then we put my dad's ashes in the water, like he had asked me to do so many times before. It was surreal. There were tears all around and in those moments of grief on the way back to the shore I was all the more thankful for my happy little girl who was enjoying her boat ride to see the light house.

When the boat stopped at the reef there were hundreds of purple jellyfish. I've never seen anything like this other than on TV.

We came home to life in full swing. We had a church family fellowship soon after our return and it was good to start life in VA again.

Rebekah loves reading (quite loudly) to Caleb. He still thinks she's funny.

Caleb's first mode of trying to crawl was lifting his arms and legs off of the floor and shaking them all at the same time in hopes to propel forward. It didn't work.

Rebekah decided to show him how to do it the right way. Still didn't work

In October we met some friends and went to a small apple orchard.

Sam and Rebekah went on their first official Daddy/Daughter date to see Disney's Princesses on Ice with a group of other daddies and daughters

Our Fall craft project was to paint trees using Rebekah's hands as the trunks and her fingers as the leaves. To my dismay, Rebekah learned about making the color orange in preschool that week and instead of using on finger to make red leaves and one to make yellow, she mixed the colors and then used her entire hand to make leaves. It took a lot of self control to let my free-spirited child enjoy her style of painting.

The week of Halloween we met some friends at a pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins. It's something that our family has done every year since we've had Rebekah and I'm glad that we can continue the tradition in VA.

The great thing about dress up clothes is that for Halloween we don't have to buy costumes during the season when they are so pricey. The morning of the 31st I sent Rebekah downstairs to her dress up basket and said she could pick out whatever she wanted for Preschool "imagination Day"/Halloween. She wanted to be a fairy.