Day 3

Monday morning, we woke up, ate breakfast, and jumped in the pool.  The guys and Mimi went to play golf and the rest of the girls and the kids swam!

Lily and her chipmunk face...cute!

While we were swimming, a little visitor hopped by.  Beth caught him and the girls got to hold him.

Our house was right on the intercoastal waterway.  We get to watch a lot of cool stuff come by...fishing boats, barges, military ships, sailboats, and even dolphins!  Drew loved watching the SHIPS come by!

The kids had a little snack...

...and then were back to splashing in the pool!

When the guys and Mimi got back, we took a little break and...

...then headed to the beach.  The kids were sooo excited to finally BE at the beach!

Tripp and Grace immediately got to playing!

Charlie and Carter were 

taking it all in.

I love her smile and giggles so much!  She loves being chased by the waves!

Mimi letting Carter experience his first wave. He already has the surfer stance down!

Poppa helped Grace boogie board!  She did great!  She only did it once, but at least this year she smiled the whole time!  Last year, she cried when she got off and wouldn't go near him again.

This is a classic Carter pose!  He loved watching the water and licking the salt off of his hands!

Me and my beach bunny!

The kids played hard!

Once Carter had enough and we found our keys, we picked up pizza from Lillian's, ate dinner, and went to bed!

4 more days left...

I'm baaaack!

Ok...so I took a two week blogging break.  One week for a vacation at the beach (woo-hoo!) and one week to recuperate and get ready for school.  Today is my first day back to school...this summer went by WAY too fast!!!  While I am sitting in in-service this week, I thought you might enjoy way too many details about our vacation.  Sound good?  Ok, let's get started!

Days 1 & 2

My AWESOME parents rented a super fab house for us (9 adults and 7 kids) to stay at in Perdido for a week!  So, on Saturday morning we stuffed our car full and hit the road!

Way too many hours later, we were unpacking our suitcases in our beachy bedroom!  The girls went to the grocery store (ugh!), we ate dinner, and went to bed.  The next morning, we woke up to yucky rain!  We hoped and waited and hoped and waited for it to stop, but it didn't.  We have gone to beach every summer for the past 6 years and this is the first time that it has rained that long, so I guess one rain day in 6 years isn't so bad!  Grace, Beth, Lily, and I decided that we were going to the outlets in Gulf Shores.  We got some pretty awesome deals and had a great ok time(the air went out in the car, it was too foogy to see out the windows, there was a Gap giftcard incident, we didn't remember where we parked the car, and it was raining).  A few hours later, we were dry and meeting everyone for dinner at Zeke's Landing. We ate at Shipp's Island Thyme and we had a great Thyme!

After dinner, we walked around the docks, feed some fish, and checked out the last catch of the day!

Look at how sweet our little Carter man is!

He is standing in this picture!  Not sure what we were thinking!?!  He CAN'T stand up!  Proud parenting moment there-"here stand up on this bench above the ocean and let me take your picture for my blog." 

Oh, and we tried to start a flash mob!  If only we had of practiced first!  We could have done it!

When we got back to the house, the kids went swimming.  Grace likes to follow Andrew around the pool.  He has this "I am awesome with water" confidence!  So they both raked the water.

And poor Jenna!  It didn't take long before those tears turned to smiles!

to be continued...

(I know you can't wait!)

craft Tuesday

This week for craft Tuesday, we made octopuses (sp?) out of toilet paper rolls.

Step 1: Dig a toilet paper roll out of the trash can.

Step 2: Paint the toilet paper roll.

Step 3:  Eat the paintbrush.

Step 4: Cut slits along the bottom and curl to make tentacles. (I think ours have more than eight...Oops!)

Step 5: Add eyes.  We used googly eyes, but you could use paint or markers.

Step 6: Punch small circles out of fun foam and glue to your octopus.

Step 7: Pose for a picture with your octopus. 

Why is he so big?

Step 8: Make an ocean habitat for your octopus to live in.

created by: Grace

Sprinkler Park

On Monday, Grace & I met Steph & the boys and Beth & Lily at the sprinkler park.  We had a lot of FUN; even if it was insanely HOT and my sunburned back still HURTS!  

LOVE it!  Grace always backs into the water...she doesn't like to get water in her eyes.

Lily is trying to teach Grace how to hold her breath in case the water gets in her face.

I guess she needed a break from the heat.

But, not for long!

Grace is assisting Lily in drinking from the sprinkler gun. 

Now, she is helping Tripp drink the water.  Hey!  It was HOT, OK?

Charlie even got down to play a little.  Of course, Grace had to immediately get in his face (She LOVES babies!) which meant Tripp had to also!

Drew and Grace shared the "red water" for a little while!

We had fun playing with the water and our friends!  We will definitely be coming back on a little cooler day.  We might even bring Carter and let him splash too!

P.S.  Carter said "Momma" today!  I'm sooo excited!  He's my favorite little man!