Our Home

I thought it was about time I shared with you all our home here in the states. 

Obviously we have lived in another house but that was rented off a lovely couple who moved back to England for a few years. This house however is ours! We are the homeowners and everything inside and out is ours. We moved in back in December (about 10 days before Christmas!) and as the previous home was rented fully furnished we had literally no furniture whatsoever (apart from Calleigh's room). 

It was hard, especially at Christmas, but we tried to do it room by room and slowly it began to look more and more like home to us! 

I'll share a few photos of our house and then later on down the line more about our move and how we made this house into our home! 

The first two photos are of our main seating area. This is where we spend most of our nights watching TV. The fireplace is gorgeous but it is a work in progress, I really wanted to make use of it over winter but it doesn't have any glass or safety yet so it's pretty much just for decoration at the moment. 

This next photo is the entrance from the front door and the stairway. To the left is Calleigh's playroom and to the right the dining area (see below photo). The door you can see leads down to the finished basement.

Upstairs has four bedrooms. This photo is the master bedroom which has his and hers walk in closets and an en suite bathroom. 

This is another upstairs bedroom that we are using a Paul's office. This room connects to a bathroom that also connects to one of the other bedrooms as sort of a shared bathroom area between the two. It's pretty cool!

The third bedroom is Calleigh's. She has her own en suite bathroom too! The walls are adorned with My Little Pony and she is also really into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles recently! 

The forth bedroom is our guest bedroom. It's kind of basic at the moment as we haven't had any guests yet but it's ready and waiting for any family that come to stay! It has a walk in closet and a bathroom too (that connects to the office). 

This is our master bathroom. I love the TV over the bath it has come in really useful!! 

Back downstairs and to the kitchen. This was one of the rooms that made me fall in love with the house. The kitchen is huge and I love the breakfast bar. Calleigh and I always have our breakfast and lunch sat there.

Another one of the reasons we liked this house was the finished basement. The property we rented previously didn't have this and it's such a big thing in America that we really, really wanted it. We haven't made use of all the rooms down there at the moment, there is still one room completely empty but it is a work in progress and we are happy with how it is at the moment. We have a pool room which we intend to install a bar at some point (hence the boozy pictures) and another room as the game room and finally another playroom for Calleigh. We try to keep Calleigh's toys confined to this room but it doesn't usually stay like that haha! 

There is also another bathroom downstairs with a shower as well so we may convert the empty room into another bedroom, we are not sure yet. 

There is obviously a backyard too but I haven't any photo's yet. Although now spring is here and the weather is a lot warmer we are spending much more time outside so there should be some photos soon! 

Outfit of the Month: March

Dress- Next Direct 

Seaworld.

Calleigh had been so excited to see Shamu since we told her we were going to Seaworld. For weeks before the trip she would randomly shout out to us "Who are we going to see? .. Shamu, Shamu, Shamu!" It was adorable.
The instant we arrived in Florida she wanted to go and see Shamu but we managed to get her to wait one more day as it was already 3pm and after a long drive all we wanted was some food and a soft bed!

As I mentioned in the previous post (you can read it here) we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn as part of a Seaworld package so our tickets were included in the hotel stay. We were thrilled to find out that Seaworld was just a 5 minute walk from the hotel so we didn't have to drive and pay for parking.

That morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then planned to walked across to Seaworld. Before we left we picked up our complimentary express passes from the lobby and a nice lady gave Calleigh a Seaworld backpack with a Shamu teddy inside- she loved it!

When we got to the park it was so quiet. We did have to wait about 10 minutes for the park to open but it didn't bother us. Our first stop was going to be Dolphin Cove but unfortunately it was closed for renovations. I was really gutted as I always loved Dolphin Cove when I went as a kid. Nevertheless we didn't let it bother us too much so we moved on to the new Antarctica and took Calleigh on her first ride of the trip, Antarctica- Empire of the Penguin. It was still early so there was no queue and we went straight in. We took the mild ride as Calleigh was too small for the wild ride. It was a gentle ride that followed the life of a little Penguin called Puck. At the end of the ride we exited through the Penguin enclosure. Calleigh loved watching the penguins but we couldn't stay too long as it was so cold in there and Calleigh was shaking like a leaf!

We then made our way to the Dolphin Theater to catch the dolphin show- Blue Horizons. After we had sat down we were informed it was going to be a bit of a different show as the dolphins were not co operating very well and the trainers couldn't go in the water with them. It was still a great show and Calleigh was in awe watching the dolphins jump out of the water!

After the show we went to see the Sea Lions. As we were stood there watching them from behind the glass I asked Calleigh if she wanted to get some fish to feed them. She said yes after she had finished finger painting. I was so confused about this answer until I saw her with her finger in large pile of white bird poo! "Noooo Calleigh!! That's poo!" I shouted. Even after we had washed her hands she went on about it all day, looking at her finger and talking something about poo haha!
So anyway we fed the Sea Lions, Calleigh's attempt only made it to one of birds that hang around that area and after that she didn't want to do it anymore.. The birds were kind of aggressive!

We then made our way to Shamu Stadium, stopping for a drink and a snack on the way. When it was time for the show we took a seat in the reserved seating section (another perk from the hotel package) safely away from the splash zone! Calleigh was so excited and it was great to see her joining in with the crowd and all the ooohs and ahhhs when the Orcas jumped. Her favorite part of the show was when two of the whales kissed each other, she still goes on about it now.

After Shamu we took Calleigh to see the Polar Bears after the Wild Arctic ride. These were another animal that she was really excited to see, but sadly we were informed that the last one had passed away a few months back. We did still get to see the Beluga Whales, the seals and the huge Walruses! Calleigh was amazed by how big they were. One of them was just hanging by the glass, bobbing up and down out of the water, and Calleigh happened to notice his.. er.. bits. She asked me if it was his belly button or if he was doing a poo. Not wanting to explain what it really was, especially in front of an audience, I settled with his belly button. To which she told me how big and cute it was haha!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around and enjoying the warm sunshine. We picked up some bits at the gift shops and lastly we saw the Turtles and the Manitees.
By four we were all knackered and started our walk back to the hotel. Calleigh was talking about it all night and kept saying we will go again tomorrow.
She had such a great time!

Our Holiday to Florida

After what seemed like the longest winter ever we decided to book a holiday to Florida to get a bit of sunshine. This post will just be a run down of our trip and then I'll go into more details on another post!

We took the same drive as last time on the way down, stopping for one night in Atlanta to break up a long car journey. 

The trip down to Atlanta was the hardest, we got stuck in a lot of traffic and it ended up taking a lot longer than we thought. It was over 11 hours and we didn't arrive at the hotel until after 9pm (because we headed east we lost an hour crossing through a time zone). We promptly went to bed so we could get an early start on our drive to Florida. That was a much better run thankfully and we arrived in our hotel in good time. 

We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn at Seaworld as part of a Seaworld Vacation package so our tickets were included. Calleigh had been beyond excited to Shamu for weeks so we were really looking forward to that! 

We didn't do much the first night, just unpacked and chilled in the hotel.

The next day we got up early, had breakfast in the hotel and then walked to Seaworld (it was a 5 minute walk from the hotel!)We were there for the whole day and had a great time.
I will write about our time at Seaworld in another post!

The next day we didn't do much, just took a drive around and hung out in the pool. Calleigh loved playing by the pool, she is still a little bit afraid of water but it didn't stop her playing in the shallow end, even though the water was freezing!
That night we took Calleigh to Downtown Disney and she got to play in the fountains again and we also took her in the T.Rex centre and she dug for some dinosaur bones, or more precisely, buried my foot in the sand.

We really wanted to take Calleigh to either Disney or Universal Studios but we just couldn't justify spending the money when we realised that Calleigh was still a bit too short for most rides, so instead we planned on going to Aquatica and booked ourselves a Cabana for the day!
It was the best plan ever as Calleigh absolutely loved it there! Her favourite was the wave pool and playing on the sandy beach. She didn't go on any slides with me but she did have a float around the lazy river. I think she enjoyed it, even though she gripped onto me the whole time with her death grip haha!

That night we also took Calleigh to play Mini Golf, it was fun although she just cheated the whole way round by picking up her ball and putting it inches away from the hole.

On our last day we took Calleigh to Seaworld again to see Shamu one last time. We didn't stay as long this time as she happened to find the water fountains and played in them until she was soaked through!

This time Calleigh also went on her first roller coaster- The Shamu Express. It was hilarious, she got off and said to me "Phew! That was so fast!".

The next morning we got up early to get a good start towards our next stop. Even though it was our last day in Florida we still had some holiday left. The road we took home was a long route through Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Look out for another post with more about our journey back!