Text Box: The year began kind of cold, and then we found out that Madeline’s leukemia was at a troublesome enough point that we needed to begin treatment, so that wasn’t good. On the plus side, we found out Alicia was pregnant, so our family would be growing. Our first family event was Mel’s birthday, and then we did the gender reveal for the new baby. From there on, the majority of the family events seemed to revolve around Myles and then Amaya. There was a unique event in November, though, when three of my siblings came to town for a long weekend. We did a couple of special things and mainly just hung out and/or competed in some sort of sport. It was a great weekend. We did spend way too much time in hospitals during the year, so hopefully we got that out of our system for a while. Text Box: 2023 Text Box: Home Page

Shortly after the year began, the Paynes told us that Alicia was pregnant. Then we went to Cape May Café the next night to celebrate Mel’s birthday the way he likes to celebrate it. A few weeks later, we had a gender reveal gathering at our house.

Jan

Feb

Apr
Family 2023-2032

St. Patrick’s Day and Myles just loving his Mimi.

Mar

Easter came and Dana found herself celebrating it in New York. Myles joined us for Easter service and then hunted down all the eggs on our lanai. He also took a nice formal photo at his daycare.

May

May meant Mother’s Day and Alicia’s birthday, and we celebrated both of them somewhere on Disney property, including going to the new Roundup Rodeo restaurant at Hollywood Studios.

Jun

Alicia had complications with her pregnancy, so she had to be careful. That didn’t mean we couldn’t have a little sprinkle.

Jul

Summer was spent preparing for our newest family member, in whatever way we chose.

Aug

Myles’s life was about to change forever, so we made an effort to make him feel special before the baby was born. The time was getting near, though. On August 16, Alicia and Mel calmly went to the hospital. It was C-section day. After she was born, Myles and Madeline got to see what was going on inside through an opaque/clear window. Mel held up the vital statistics and Myles and Madeline both held her. They named her Amaya Dakota Payne.

Dana had her own adventure, going to Sicily with Adventures by Disney. She was technically working on the trip, but it was also very much a vacation.

The three of us tried new places to eat, like Akershus at Epcot.

Sep

Amaya turned 1 month old

Oct

Myles liked going to Home Depot to make projects. The Paynes also like the pumpkin patch. Karen and Steve met Amaya, and Dana met Daniel Radcliffe while she was in New York once again.

We visited Angie and Scott in their new home in Lakewood Ranch, and ran a 5k the next morning. We then went to Siesta Key and met up with our TMI family: Terri and Betsy.

Nov

My family came to town for a long weekend. We had fun competing and eating together.

Dec

In December, I had surgery to repair a hernia and remove a lipoma. That night, we went to Epcot and I got pushed around in a wheelchair.

Myles turned 4 and they went to Sea World to celebrate during the day and then Madeline and I joined them in the evening to wish him a happy birthday.

On Christmas morning, Madeline said she wanted to go to the ER instead of to church. Her shoulder had been hurting her for a while, but now it was too painful to bear. She spent a day and night at Advent Health Celebration, but then they moved her via ambulance to Advent Health Orlando South, where she ended up having surgery. We finally were able to celebrate Christmas as a family on the 29th.