Our Florida Adventure

The Mize Family

Gainesville, Fl

2010

Home of the Florida Gators

Wild Horse on our Nature Walk

Wild Buffalo cooling off in water

Natural History Museum

Heston at the Skate Park going over the "rainbow"

At Disney World

Our new Florida Friend

Well our time in Gainesville, Florida has expired. And just let me say it’s a great place to live. From our first week here till our last, we have enjoyed Florida and what it has had to offer.

Our Florida adventure has brought with it many new experiences. We have enjoyed an array of adventures, like adventure in going green, nature adventures and of course Disney adventures.

Our going green adventure came more out of necessity rather than choice. Our Florida home was on the third floor so therefore using the reusable grocery bags was a must!!! We quickly found out toting plastic bags up two flights of steps was quite tiresome. The reused grocery bags hold more and have nice handles for carrying on your shoulders. Good bye plastic; hello going grocery bag green. We also started recycling while here in Florida. Our kitchen was very small and there was not a lot of room for a big trash can. We started dividing out our plastic, paper and metal for recycling. Our apartment had a really nice handy place to store these items. One step at a time we are doing our part.

Our adventure in nature here in Florida has just been awesome. From our first week, with our family rescuing a crane to our last week witnessing wild buffalo we have just been amazed at Florida’s wildlife. During our first week at our Florida home at the Lake Crossing Apartments our family found a crane that had a string wrapped around it’s beak. It took us a couple hours to catch and detangle the caught bird; but we did not mind, it was all apart of our Florida adventure. Our apartment sat around three lakes and we were always amazed at the number of turtles it contained. We took a walk on the La Chua Trail during our lasts days in Florida. We were on a mission to see alligators. Well to our surprise not only did we find alligators but we also saw wild horses, buffalos and an array of beautiful water fowl. We enjoyed our little three mile hike even though it was about 100 degrees. Thanks to our great recruiter our Florida home had a wonderful pool to splash on hot days like this one. We’ve seen friendly squirrels, beautiful birds of every kind, ducks, noisy armadillos, wild horses and even snakes; but I believe the weirdest thing was an alligator crossing the street, witnessed one afternoon by Johnny on his way home from work.

While in Gainesville we took the opportunities to visit Mickey Mouse. Our family made the two hour trip down to Orlando four times to visit Disney. Our family loves Disney, what’s not to love. It’s the happiest place on earth. Some of us made a 5th trip to take cousins, Connor, Kaylee and Hannah also. They enjoyed it sooooooo much. Connor loved the Buzz Light-year ride, Hannah enjoyed seeing the Princesses and Kaylee enjoyed the pool.

Gainesville is a collage town to the University of Florida. The collage hosted several events at the universities museum that we enjoyed participating in. The collage had a graffiti wall that the college kids kept painted. This wall changed often. We thought it would be a great back drop for our “Gainesville Family Picture. We painted our family’s name on it. The boys had a ball spray painting legally.

Here is a list of some of our most favorite things about Gainesville.

-Publix Grocery Store (loved the bye one get one free weekly specials)
-Fresh Market (great place to bye candy by the pound)
-Little Cease’s ($5 hot and ready pizza)
-Possum Creek skate park
-Lake Crossing Apartment Homes
-Brenden and Joey ( new Florida friends)
-Natural History Museum (at the Universities of Florida)
-Las Margaritas Mexican Restaurant (Best salsa ever, YUM YUM!!)
-Florida Welcome Center (they always handed out OJ and Grapefruit Juice)
-Disney World (only about 2 hours from Gainesville)

*************************************************

Taking our family to Disney

Aunt Sandy, Hannah, Connor, and Baby Kaylee

A Princess kinda day

Fireworks at Disney

Connor's Favorite Ride, Buzz Lightyear

Heston's Big day!!!

The Bible says in Romans 10.….

“That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord, “ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to same. “ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile- the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Johnny and I are happy to announce the Salvation and Baptism of our son Heston Jerald Mize. Heston understands this verse from Romans and commits his life to the Lord. Heston has asked the Lord to come into his life. The next step was to be baptized. So on June 6, 2010 Heston was baptized to celebrate his decision of following Christ.

Heston was baptized at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Cordele, Ga by his granddaddy, Rev. Fred Jones. My dad was very honored to be able to baptize one of his grandchildren. This was a great day for Heston. He had invited those close to him to come and celebrate with him. His aunt Sandy, and cousins, Hannah, Connor and Kaylee were able to be present. His Mize grandparents with cousin Alissa traveled down from north Ga to attend. And of course my parents, Fred and Sara Jones, Little Beth, Paulette, and Korbin.

Heston was very excited about his decision and was thrilled to show his family, friends and guests what he had done through baptism. It was a day to celebrate !!!