Bye Florida, bye Feliciano's

Nico's mom told me my time in her house has extended more it was expected. She apologizes because I should be in another kids house by now, but she hasn't been able to ship in time.
We are going to mama's casa for one last time before I leave. This is actually Nico's house.

She also wanted to share with all of you where she goes to school. Florida State College.

This is in our way to Mama's casa.

And this is the Buckman bridge which goes over the St. John's rive that surrounds Jacksonville. (she also collects Victoria's Secret dogs) She says she keeps them in the car because they are amazing to entertain the kids with.

Here I am at Mama's casa

Here is Nico helping papa with his truck.

Here I am watching Nico play with his toys at mama's casa.. He is the only grandson and Aylin is the only grandaughter on both sides.

The time has come. It is time for me to go visit another Junie. It is not easy for me to say bye, neither it was for Nico.

Movies night at Citi

Nico's daddy invited us to his company. He said they do this Family Movie night once a month. The movie for this month was "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs".
This is Nico playing with me while we wait for his daddy.

Here we are watching the movie... Nico loves corndogs.

And this is Me with Nico and Nico's mom.

Well, it was kind of late by the time that we came out of the movie and since cars are so good to sleep... Why not take a nap while we get home?

 

Mmm... Nico's mom also wanted to share her new hair cut, which also happened this same day. ;)

A trip to...... WORK??

This lady is seriously crazy..... She told me she's taking me to her job, because that's where she spends up to 45 or more hours a week, so she thought it would be cool to take to me to work with her. Is she out of her mind???
At least she had a friend for me, this poor guy must spend a lot of hours alone... As you can see she also likes pencils... Crazy. She told me her sister, who works with her, gave her this bear.

She has a lot of interesting things in her office, I also realized she loves Christina Aguilera, so she let me use her glasses and read a magazine.

WHAT???? She actually put me to work!!! BTW: She works at this bank called Wachovia, or Wells Fargo, however you want to call it. She does collections on mortgages and some auto loans.

Time went by actually pretty fast... It wasn't as bad as I thought. 

A trip to Nico's school.

This morning Nico's mom said Nico should take me to VPK (voluntary pre-kindergarten). Here I am in the car ride to school.

Nico's school is provided by daddy's work, Citibank. It's called Bright Horizons and he's been there since he was 2, Aylin has been there since she was 6 weeks.

Here I am at the entrance of the building

This is Ms. Lee, she's the lovely receptionist, she knows every single kid's name and enjoys when Nico and Aylin come to the center. She was very excited to see me and hugged me :)

Every morning Nico has to clock in the computer with a special secret code, he didn't even tell me what the code was. Nico explained to me this is to protect all the kids and only the parents are allowed to clock them in. You also must have a badge to come in.

The building is divided into 3 different houses, Beach, Tree and Space, which then divided into little classrooms. 400 kids can go to the center, and they can only be Citibank employees. Nico and Aylin are in the Tree house, which is divided in 8 classrooms (Maple, Magnolia, Birch, Willow, Dogwood, Banyan, Cypress, and Palm). Here we are walking down the hall to go to Tree house..

Nico's room is Willow, and Aylin's is Dogwood (Nico was in this room as well when he was 2 years old).
Here I am in the room, if you look behind me you can see Nico's cubby, where he actually had to leave me because they don't allow your own objects in the room, you know how non-sharing-four-year-old could be.

And this is Ms. Mayra. She's known Nico since Dogwood and is one of Nico's teacher. His other teacher is Ms. Tricia.

Here is Nico in circle time... You can hardly see him (good job Nico's mom) but on the back you can see Ms. Tricia

My 1st arrival in Florida

It is so dark in here... I know when the mail man carries me, but then I felt some lady taking me out of her mail box, but she didn't take me out of this package for 24 hours!! She explained to me it was 10 pm and Nico (the kid that I was about to meet) was already asleep and I will have to wait for the next day whenever she came home from work.


I have no idea where I am, but I feel a little warmer... Some days.


So here is Nico taking me out of this box finally!!


I don't really know what it's going on, all I hear is Spanish!!! He's yelling "Un Mico!" Apparently that's Spanish for "A Monkey!"

So they finally tell me who they are and where I am, I'm at the Feliciano's in Jacksonville, Florida!!

Nico was very excited because Annalise's mommy sent a box of Chocolates with me.



Annalise's mom: Nico's mom says thank you for the chocolates, we all enjoyed them, they were delicious!!



I also met Nico's little sister, she calls herself Princess Aylin, and she loves to carry me like a back pack.


Nico's mom said it was about time to go to bed, she said we had to have a good rest because the next day it was going to be a new year. Nico took me to bed with him, we got a long really good right away.


The next morning Nico made me breakfast with their new kitchen set.

And he told me we were going to mama's casa (his grandmother's house) because they would spend two nights there because his mommy and daddy had to work over the weekend.

And for the first time I get to see Florida!! It is so sunny! Very windy but sunny.


Here I am watching Nico and Aylin play with papa (Nico's grandfather)


Oh this sun feels so good!!!!!

Miles Says Goodbye to IL

Because of the snow I got to meet Annalise's cousin Adrie. She lives in Maryland and comes to visit the Schmidts at Christmas time. I got to wrap my arms and legs around both of them at the same time. Then they ran in circles all over the house with me. When they calmed down I got to enjoy Christmas number 6 -- the gift exchange between the two families.

Annalise's mommy said I had to leave because it was time to go to some place much warmer. Annalise began to cry and cry. It was very sad.

A kiss goodbye

One last picture with Annalise and her mommy

Traveling the state of IL and more Christmases

It has been quite a week. Miles has traveled from South Beloit to Chicago to Peoria to the Chicago suburbs and is now back in South Beloit. Had it not snowed a ton today he would already be on his way to a new state too. (We promise to put him in the mail by Monday!)




On Tuesday the Schmidts took me to downtown Chicago to see Christmas lights. Before we saw the lights Annalise's daddy took me to get my picture taken in some fun places.

Here we are with the huge buildings in the background. To the left you can see the Oceanarium which is part of the Shedd Aquarium. Annalise goes there a lot...almost everytime they go downtown. It's really cold out and snowing.

We walked across the "street" and now here we are. Way in the distance you can see Soldier Field where the Bears play. Annalise's daddy is a fan even though they are having a pretty awful season.

Here we are at the Kris Kringle Market in Daley Plaza. They had all sorts of booths selling items and food. We didn't stay long though because the snow was turning to sleet/hail and it was not nice at all outside.

We walked a few blocks to Macys to see the Christmas tree inside and the store windows that are decorated to tell a story.

This is Annalise and I viewing the tree inside. It is in the Walnut Room (a restaurant) but the store has a viewing section on the floor above which is where we are.

We went to another floor and saw all the toys. Annalise really wanted one of these.

After the toys and dinner we went outside to see the windows. This is Annalise's daddy, Ian, Annalise, and Annalise's mommy's friend from highschool Katheryn.

The window story this year was all about what happens to the letters kids write to Santa. There were all sorts of elves and some random robots.

Annalise's mommy insisted that we take a picture here under the Marshall Fields sign since she says she will always think of it as Marshall Fields and not Macys downtown Chicago.

Before we walked back to their car we stopped at the Old Navy which in Chicago is three floors high! Annalise insisted she should ride in the stroller. All of the sudden Annalise's mommy realized that Annalise wasn't complaining at all. That's because she and I were fast asleep!

Here we are in the car again headed 3 hours south to Annalise's Grandma and Grandpa's house in Peoria.

Ahh yes, here we are in the car again. Now we are in Peoria looking at lights. Before all the big huge floats park here for people to look at they are in a lighted parade.

Here we are just before the exit. It is raining and cold yet Annalise's daddy said we needed to get our picture taken.

This is Christmas celebration number 3 at their Grandparents' house.

Annalise got a double doll stroller.

On Christmas Eve we went to Annalise's grandpa's church. He is a pastor. His church is really far away so I got to enjoy another car ride.

Christmas Eve is also Annalise's daddy's birthday. We sang to him and had cake after church so we got to stay up WAY past bedtime!

And you'll never guess where we went after that... oh yeah...it's the car again. Time to drive 3 hours north to Annalise's other Grandma's house. She lives in Schaumburg which is home to Woodfield Mall and very close to a Junie named Andrew

Here we are Christmas morning. Did you know this is our 4th Christmas celebration since I arrived in IL?

Here I am with Annalise's family, her aunt, uncle, and baby cousin.

Here I am at Christmas #5 at Annalise's Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house. There were a lot of people here.

At the end of the night they have a sing along. Annalise's daddy plays trumpet, her mommy's cousins sing and play violin, her aunt plays piano, and her great aunt sings. Anyone else who wants to join in does as well. They have been doing this since Annalise's mommy was at least Annalise's age. It was cray yet fun!

I was supposed to leave IL today but the snow came again so the Schmidts did not make it to the post office. Annalise's cousins from MD are arriving tomorrow for Christmas #6. Now I get to take part in every Christmas celebration they have before I leave here on Monday.