Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Trifecta 2010

Every year we come to a special set of holidays that my husband has dubbed "the Trifecta". It's a one week period that includes Mother's Day, our Anniversary and my Birthday. When we got married on Mother's Day weekend, one week before my birthday, I worried about those holidays getting lumped together and eventually forgotten, so I stressed that they were, and always would be, seperate and distinct holidays. Well, my overachieving hubby has turned the Trifecta into a national holiday of sorts, each year surprising and spoiling me. This year was no different! And since I'm way behind on blogging, there's a lot to catch up on here! :) (Sorry in advance if you get WAY overloaded on Hipps with all these posts... if you need, take a break and come back later to finish! ;)

Happy Trifecta!!

Tea for Mother's Day



Georgia got a very special book at Christmas from aunt Jen called Tea for Ruby about a little girl who gets invited to have tea with "the Queen" on Sunday and is asked to bring her very best manners. "The Queen" ends up being Ruby's Grammie, and they enjoy a delightful tea party together where Ruby does indeed use her very best manners.
SO- for Mother's Day, we thought it would be fun to invite our own little girls out for a Tea Party! Mom, Georgia & I were joined by Aunt Laura, Magi & Emma at The Kittridge House for a fun tea time. They offered a bounty of sweets & sandwiches, fun hats & boas for the little girls to dress up in, delicious tea in darling pots, and a charming atmosphere. We decided this would be a wonderful new tradition!





I'm a Happy Mother!




I feel so blessed to get to be a mother. I consider it a blessing and I know the Lord is working thru my children to teach me many things- unconditional love, discipline, trust, hard work, and patience, to name a few. Thank you, Lincoln and Georgia, for being my sweet, beautiful gifts, and for your wonderful cards and goodies on Mother's Day! And thank you to my sweet husband, who helps me in so many ways be the mother that I am, who provides so I can be at home, and who truly spoiled me this Mother's day with an amazing gift- an embroidery sewing machine! :) I am so excited to learn to use it!! And thank you to my Momasita, who has taught me so much about being a mother thru her example all these years. I'm so glad I get to have this journey alongside her now!

7th Anniversary

Larry and I celebrated 7 years of marriage on the 10th! It has gone by so fast and yet so much has happened. We both feel incredible blessed to be married to our best friend, and still enjoy each other so much. We pray the Lord would just continue to knit us together as one, with Him and each other, as we continue this journey together!
Although our anniversary dinner was not too romantic, it was fun- we went out to eat with the kids to Bahama Breeze and discovered Georgia loves coconut shrimp! We even had to order a second plate for her- unheard of for our picky eater! It was a great meal, then we went to the local "Dairy Joy", a tiny, walk-up ice cream shop, for dessert. They have a perfect kid-sized cone for Georgia, Lincoln shared mine, and daddy had his own! The kids were wired after that, but it was a fun time! (Doesn't Lincoln look so cute dressed up in his little tie! ;)



We Have Liftoff!

When Larry had asked me if I wanted to do anything in particular for my birthday, I mentioned getting away together for a night to the beach. Well, you know he always goes above and beyond! (Sometimes there are definite benefits to being married to an overachiver! ;) So instead of "one night at the beach", he planned a space shuttle launch, then 2 nights at Daytona Beach (about 3 hours from Tampa). It was great! And you'll see later that his good deed was rewarded!
Did you know that there are now only 2 more planned shuttle launches? Very sad, I think. What are kids going to dream to be when they grow up if not astronauts?? And this was the last launch for the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which made it even more special to get to see it go up.
If you see these pictures and get a hankering to see one of the last 2 launches yourself- be prepared! For the TRAFFIC, that is! Our 3-hour drive across the state to Titusville, FL, which is across a bay from Cape Canaveral where the launch happens, was a 5 1/2 hour drive, bumper to bumper. It was not fun! We had planned to arrive around 11:30 for the 2:20 launch, but instead barely made it at 1:45! Thankfully we found parking quickly and a spot of grass to sit on. There were probably hundreds of thousands of people there! It was really neat to see the crowds! We waited and waited, then finally, counted down the last minute... then BLASTOFF!! 20 seconds later- it was over! That quick! But it was a really neat part of history to get to witness!
Waiting... cameras ready!

This was our view of the shuttle...

3,2,1- Blastoff!









All that's left- a trail of smoke...

Proof we were there- if you look super-close, you can see the smoke trail in the reflection in Larry's glasses!

Daytona Beach

After the shuttle launch we got back in the traffic to get out of Titusville and headed north a short ways along the Atlantic coast to Daytona Beach. We arrived to our beautiful Hilton hotel before dinnertime. My favorite part of the hotel was that it was on the beach, and in the rooms, the bed faced the water, so you could open the doors to the balcony and lay in bed and see the waves! A great way to celebrate to Trifecta!



For the Guys...

And now we come to a posting just for the guys... Ladies, get your husbands and tell them this is for them! There ARE a lot of pictures, but I think that'll be ok with them!

So, the day before we were leaving for Daytona, I was looking online for things to do, places to eat, etc. And the Lord decided to reward Larry's good behaviour to his wife by making this particular weekend that we just happened to be going to Daytona... Jeep Beach 2010! It is an annual gathering of all Jeeps across Florida for showing off, playing in the dirt, etc etc. Kinda like "Bike week" but for Jeeps! And, just to UP the manliness, it was being held on the infield of one of the most famous Nascar tracks, the Daytona SuperSpeedway. Of course I told him we could go check it out! I guess having many Jeeps in the family all these years has rubbed off on me too!

It was very cool to be on the infield of that huge track...

especially while they were running the Petty Racing Experience, where real race cars zoom around the track!


We decided this is what Larry's Jeep wants to be when it "grows up".

There was a playground for the Jeeps.



Before you start to think I must have taken a picture of every Jeep there, know that there were literally hundreds of Jeeps, just row after row of them!

There were Big Jeeps...

and Really Big Jeeps!

Jeeps that looked like trucks...

Jeeps that looked like airplanes, because they has so many buttons and switches on the dash!

Jeeps that looked like new but were really old, like this "beautifully restored" CJ7 (as I was told!).

Jeeps with serious snorkels...

An enlisted Jeep...

and a Jeep dressed to enlist.

Blue Jeeps...

Green Jeeps...

Orange Jeeps...

and a really cute Red Jeep!

And finally a Jeep that LOOKED like a Jeep- with a little mud on the tires!

Jeeps with cool doors...


and this is what a Jeep HUG looks like....



And some Jeeps had some really great names on them...
"Toyota Recovery Vehicle"

"This Side Up" with arrows toward the top...

"The Mistress"

and, my favorite, "Empty Pockets Jeep Club"!

The whole weekend there were Jeeps all over Daytona. It was really funny to drive past a hotel and see nothing but Jeep Wranglers in all the parking spaces! On Sunday they had a "Jeep parade" down the beach, since Daytona is one of the few beaches in the country you can drive on. Our Banana Boat felt right at home with all these cousins!

And after seeing all the Jeeps, we toured the Nascar museum, which was really pretty interesting. Daytona Beach was one of the first Nascar tracks, as they drove a 4-mile loop down the beach and back around on the road. We saw Earnhardt Sr's car, and raced in a simulator- apparently neither of us are natural racers, though Larry did better than me! We finally made it back to the beach and spent a few more hours relaxing in the sand!