Sarah's visit (Larry's first post)

Sarah says that this is "our blog", so I'm gonna post a little about Sarah's visit down to Florida.

Sarah flew down here on Thursday and arrived here Thursday afternoon. The purpose of the visit was to meet Joseph and to help me paint my living room/kitchen/dining room. It's one big room in the house that has some old paint and I've patched some holes in the drywall. When I picked her up from the airport, we went by Home Depot to pick out some paint. I brought some pillows from my small couch and a sample of the laminate flooring I will install to make sure the new paint matches. We picked out a few samples of colors we liked and headed home to decide. On the way home, we stopped in a small restaurant for some sushi. I let Sarah order because she has a good idea of what we both like and she enjoys it when I just let her pick out the flavors of sushi. She claims that she likes ordering because she gets to choose everything that she likes, but I really know she chooses things that I will enjoy as well. When we got home, she cut the paint sample papers into strips that would help us decide. It didn't take long for us to decide on a color. After picking out a color, we did some cleaning. I'll fully admit that organization is my strong suit and cleanliness is my weakness. Sarah looked in my fridge and found it in much need of cleaning, so we went through and threw away lots of expired items that I've just left in there until it starts to crawl. Once the fridge was clean, Sarah played some of my games on my PS3. She played Call of Duty and Rock Band. It was fun to watch her take a part in my hobby. After that, we decided to pick my son, Joseph, up from daycare. I told Joseph that when I come to pick him up, Sarah would be with me. He's seen Sarah on webcam and they've talked on the phone, but they've never actually met in person. When we got to the daycare, Joseph saw me and wanted me to pick him up. He looked at me and asked "Where's Sarah?". I pointed over to where Sarah was standing and he saw her and immediately held out his hands so that he could give her a hug. It was such an adorable sight and I knew they would hit it off nicely. We were going to meet my best friend, Jason, and his wife, Lydia, for dinner at Chik-Fil-A, one of Joseph's favorite places to eat. This will be the first time that Sarah would meet Jason and Lydia. We ate dinner and everyone had fun. Joseph even wanted to sit in Sarah's lap to eat his dinner. After dinner, we let Joseph play in the playground at Chik-Fil-A. Then we went home, gave Joseph a bath, read him some bible stories, and put him to bed. Then, we watched some of Last Comic Standing and headed to bed after a very busy day.

Friday, we woke up and took Joseph to daycare. On the way home, we went by Home Depot to pick up some paint and painting supplies. The paint machine was broken at Home Depot, so we picked up the painting supplies and went to Lowe's for the paint. They recommended that we use a primer first since the new paint is a little lighter than the current paint on the walls. We stopped off and ate breakfast at IHOP before heading home for some good painting action. It took a couple hours to put all the pictures away and tape off the ceiling and baseboards in preparation for painting. We got some of the primer painted and headed out to eat at a little sandwich shop near my house. We went back home and kept painting the primer on. We got 75% done and had to run out and get Joseph from daycare. Joseph wanted tacos, so we got a chicken wrap from Chik-Fil-A for Sarah and tacos from Taco Bell for Joseph and I. We watched the Jonah Veggietales movie that Sarah bought for Joseph when we got home and put Joseph to bed. We finished painting the primer on the walls. Sarah claimed that she wasn't a very good painter, but she did just as good a job as I did. She's very good at rolling paint on the walls and also very good at doing trim work. She also did a great job of taping everything off. We didn't finish painting the real paint on the walls, but I should be able to knock it out in a day. When Sarah comes back in Thanksgiving, I should have the walls painted and the laminate flooring installed on the floor.

Saturday, we woke up and had some breakfast. Lowes has classes where little kids can build things for free, so we went to do that at 10am. Joseph built a little tetherball game with Sarah's help. I video taped it all and it was very funny to watch. They gave Joseph a little apron and some safety goggles. They used a little hammer which was funny to watch them trying to hammer these little nails into the wood. The top piece was a little loose, so I took the hammer when they were done with it and tried to finish the job. In doing so, I actually broke the top piece of wood in 2 pieces. Joseph was quick to say "Dada, you broke it.". After we were done at Lowes, we went to the Children's museum where Joseph got a chance to show Sarah all the cool stuff he likes to do there. We went to Wal-Mart to do out shopping for the dinner party we were going to have that night. We ended up making so much food for 6 adults and one 3-1/2 year old. Everything tasted wonderful. We had a veggie tray, fruit kabobs, chicken wings, meatballs, cheese and crackers, and some mini-lemon meringue tarts. We had Jason and Lydia and Jason's parents over. Everyone had fun and really enjoyed the food. Then we put Joseph to bed and everyone played a little poker. We cleaned up everything and went to bed. Painting is very tiring work.

Sunday, we woke up and watched Thomas the Tank Engine on TV with Joseph while he ate his cereal. We went to church where the pastor talked about the movie, Hancock. He's been talking about some of the movies that came out in the movie theater lately and some things that we can learn from them. The title of the series is called "God on Film". We talked about Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and Prince Caspian in past weeks. This week, we talked about Hancock and the fact that he had an image problem where everyone thought he was a bad example even though he had superpowers. The pastor had 5 mirrors on stage and explained that everyone bases their personal image on one of 5 things, their parents, peers, culture, significant people, or God. His underlying message is that we should base how we see ourselves on how God sees us because if we live our lives based on anything else, we will end up disappointed. It was a very good series and I enjoyed the lessons the pastor took from each of the films. At church, Joseph made a lion mask out of a paper plate and they talked about Daniel being thrown in the lion's den. After church, we took a trip to the beach and an outside shopping area that I wanted to show Sarah. We collected some shells and ate at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. We all had a great time. We drove to a park close to my house that Joseph and I like to go to that he calls Castle Park because it has a huge castle that kids like to play on. Unfortunately, we needed to leave to take Sarah to the airport. It was a sad time for us all. Joseph was very sad and didn't want her to leave. Fortunately, Sarah and Ava will be flying down in about a month to visit with my parents.

I took the picture above of Joseph while we were leaving the airport. It was so sad. He kept saying "I miss Sarah" and "I want Sarah to come home with us" all the way home. I'm sure he's looking forward to meeting Ava in about a month.

Thank you baby for visiting us. We had a great time.