One more evening at the lake

We spent Friday afternoon at the lake for one last bit of summer. Of course, it could be warm here until October or November so we'll see if this was the "real" last time.

Gabriel, enjoyed his usual picking up rocks and playing in the water.

Alena has changed so much since our first visit here earlier this year. Now she enjoys playing in the sand, walking (and falling) head first into the water, and chasing the ducks hollering "Ack! Ack!"

And, oh, the attitude of an almost three year old girl. From this:

to this in a matter of minutes. I just keep reminding myself of how easy this child was as a baby - good thing we love her so much.

End of Summer Fun

We had been saying all summer that we wanted to go see our minor league baseball team play and this past weekend we finally did just that with some of our good friends.

Mya enjoyed seeing Ozzie (the team mascot) more that anything and I don't know what's up with that silly smile. Check out the new tennis shoes - it doesn't get any more pink than that people. This was probably Alena's only smile for the entire time we were there. Well, not really, but she didn't find being up way past her bedtime and being confined in a very small space very enjoyable. Thanks to that we didn't make it for the full 9 innings.
These three best buddies would have loved to stay for all 9 innings as well as for the fireworks afterwards - they never get tired of having fun together.

Dressing up with a Conversation

We are privileged to get to watch a "show" put on by Gabe and Mya several times a week. Who knows what outfit they might have on for said show and here's a good example of what we might see: Gabe looking fairly normal and Mya dressed as a... (Both the pirate sword and the baton are often used as microphones in these shows.) We got a little bit of rain today and Gabe and Mya made the most of it.

Nae has taught Alena to shut her eyes on command (a real talent for sure) here she is doing just that at supper tonight.

Alena has always been a big "talker" and she really does respond to questions with her own version of an answer; too bad we can't understand any of it. You can hear in the video just why she likes to talk so much - she is trying to compete with the other two little people that live in this house. At the end of this video, Alena also does the eye shutting trick.

Shoes and Growing Up

Alena is looking like such a big girl these days...all 19 pounds of her. It must be the shoes making her look so "old."

Here's Mya in the same shoes two years ago.

Speaking of looking older, look at this big boy.

And our My-My is looking like such a big girl too.

We've gotten our use out of this little, free to us, slide.

and when Alena is bad this is where we stick her. Just kidding! she climbed in this tight spot by herself and then needed some help getting out.

Last beach post

I'm sure everyone has seen enough beach pictures by now, but I wanted to put these last few on so I'll have them in order. These were all taken on Friday, our last day at the ocean.

Mya playing in the sand which she really enjoyed. What she did not enjoy was being in the ocean; telling us one day, "The ocean is too wet!"I love the scowl on Alena's face.

Gabe showing off his sandcastle which he built with a little help from Mom.

On Friday morning my Dad's brother, Mark and his family joined us on their way home from vacation. We all headed out to the beach with our combined 9 children 7 and under. The men all dug out this cool "pool" which the kids played in until it was washed away.
I thought this was cute of Mya and RuthAnne looking into the viewfinder at the same time.
We are back home now after our wonderful vacation and settling back into routine. Nae went back to work today so real life has begun once again. It was nice to have a break, though.

Post from the beach (#4)

A few of our latest pictures. If you're getting tired of seeing these - sorry. It's a lot easier for me to go through them each day than to wait to the end. Especially since there are three different people with cameras - that's a lot of pictures.

Alena finally letting Grandaddy hold her. The water was great today! Here's everyone out in the water having a good time.

Grandaddy finally caught a crab today for the kids to see up close. Isn't this little guy ferocious looking?

We went to the NC aquarium at Fort Fisher this afternoon so these next pictures are all from there.

It took so long to get to the aquarium that we decided to just take the ferry on the way back since it would be faster. The kids, of course, loved riding on the "big boat" and it was a nice change of pace from being strapped in car seats for an hour. These last three pictures were taken from the boat.

Post from the Beach (# 3)

We've been amazed this week as we have watched Gabriel and marveled over how much he has grown up from last year. No longer a timid toddler, he has really enjoyed the ocean, sand and especially the pool . Last year he was so afraid of everything and didn't get in the ocean at all. This year he's riding his boogie board and having a great time.

Tonight at the pool he conquered another fear - jumping in the pool and going under water. He wanted me to take these pictures and put them on the computer so Ryan could see. So here you go, Ryan those few swimming lessons really did pay off as he swallowed half the pool tonight perfecting his jumping in and swimming skills. You'd never know that just two weeks ago he was hanging on for dear life refusing to be submerged under water.


Another big thing for Gabe today is seen in the below picture (sorry it's not that clear, the lighting was terrible.) There is a toy store here that sells marionette puppets. Gabe has always had a love for puppets and especially marionettes so last year when we were here I got him a couple small ones and put them up for his birthday. He has loved those little puppets and does shows for us all the time but he quickly started asking for more. I told him the next one he'd have to buy so for the past six months he's been doing little jobs to earn money and today turned all that in to buy another marionette so here is Kanga the marionette kangaroo. I really thought it would take him a long time to decide which one he wanted, but he made up his mind pretty quickly.

Mya showing off her new little necklace.

Alena was fascinated by the marionette probably since it is life size to her.

Post from the beach (#2)

We're having a great time here at the beach enjoying the sun and water so here's a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

These first few pictures Carrie took on Sunday evening just to have a few of everyone in regular clothes instead of bathing suits.

Alena did have a dress on (see below picture) but quickly got very wet so we opted for the redneck baby look and just stripped her down.

Four of the five cousins (Will was asleep in the carrier.)

Here's some pictures from playing today.

Post from the beach (# 1)

Once again, our plans were thwarted as we planned to leave for the beach yesterday at 4 am. This was a very loft goal as we had Bible school last week and everyone was exhausted and everything was a mess. However, after Alena was up all night Friday with a snotty nose we had to make a pit stop by the pediatrician Saturday morning. Thankfully, she didn't have an ear infection only four teeth coming in and thus we began our journey. 12 hours later we arrived here at Oak Island, NC. Overall, the trip went well despite the fact we were out of the car less than an hour. Here's how the kids spent most of their time.

Here's Alena after about 8 hours. At this point she was getting rather tired of being in her seat and decided to scream about the last two hours. Pleasant time, for sure!

It was well worth it, when this morning we woke up to the sound and site of the ocean out our bedroom window. Here are Gabe and Mya with RuthAnne enjoying the ocean view.

and here's cute Will enjoying the ocean view as well.