Monday, July 23, 2012

Rosemary Beach 2012

 We had the most wonderful week vacation at Rosemary Beach with our dear friends the McMurry's and Konop's! Before I get into all of our beach fun, I have to give a little update on my iron man! Beckett is now 7 months old, which in itself, is hard to believe! He is now sitting up by himself, but will still topple after a while. He is also eating food like a champ! He loves his oatmeal with bananas, peas, carrots, and sweet potatoes. He is up to eating 3 meals a day because if you have food in your mouth, he wants it! He will just stare at you while you are eating like "Hey! Where is mine?" His pincher grasp is also developing so I don't think it will be long before he is able to feed himself table foods! On to Rosemary Beach! I actually drove down there with the 2 boys by myself because Greg had to work a couple of days and met us there on Wednesday. I was really dreading the drive and thought it was going to take us forever to get there because we were going to have to stop so often, but it could not have been smoother! We only stopped once at McDonald's. Jackson got to play on the playground, while I fed Beckett and then we ordered our food and ate it in the car. We left around 8:45 and and arrived at the beach around 2:45. We had 7 kids in our house and they did great! They swam at the pools, yolo boarded and built sandcastles at the beach, and of course, frequented the sugar shak for an afternoon treat! We had the perfect location with a playground right across from our house and minutes from pools, beach, and the dowtown area. I definately think this will become an annual tradition!
 As soon as we got to our house, we put on our suits and headed to the pool! Sam and Jackson loved playing with his cars together!
 Spiderman made it to the beach as well!
 Beckett by far was the biggest attraction on the week. The kids were all very sweet with him and loved to be around him!
Who knew I was so popular?
 Playground time! Thank goodness the playground was right next to us! We were able to feed the children dinner and send them over to the playground while the adults had a relaxing dinner on the porch. It was perfection!
Sam by far was Beckett's biggest fan. He would sing to Beckett and soothe him if he was crying. He asked me when he could babysit Beckett and we have made a deal. I told him he could when he was 12 but he had to tell me how much he would charge now. He told me $20. It is now written and I am holding you to it Sam!
Anna and I decided to take the kids out for dinner and went to a tapas place that had chocolate fondue! The kids loved it! Jackson particularly loved the marshmallows!
Hmmmmmmm
 Jackson trying to fish his strawberry out of the chocolate.
 Keeping his buddy company :)
 On Wednesday Daddy finally made it, and I have to say I was very glad to see him! It is definately not easy to try to take care of 2 in the water! We went to Panama City for a pirate cruise! The kids were so excited! Here they are waiting to board the ship!
Sitting on the pirate ship waiting for it to set sail!
And we are off! You can see the amazement in the kids faces.
The pirate cruise was a 2 hour cruise packed with entertainment for the children. First up, water gun fight! At first, Aidan and Jackson were not sure what to do...
 But it didn't take them long to get into the action!
 The beautiful mommy to be! We were so happy to get spend a couple of days with Cortney and Scooter!!
 After the water gun fight, the boys had to mop the deck!
 Then it was time for them to get their pirate hats an swords.
 Beckett even got in on the action and even got a skull painted on his leg.
 Yo ho ho!
Pirate Aidan and Pirate Jackson preparing for battle!
 After the sword fighting, all the kids had to run downstairs and find the treasure map. Once they found the map, they had to look out on the water and find the X. They found it and helped pull up the treasure. Here they are all patiently waiting for them to open the treasure chest and pass out the loot! Not only did they find some treasure, but we also got to see some dolphins.
After the pirate cruise, we met our friends Kristin and Christine for dinner in panama city. At this point our party now included 20 adults and 11 children!! Whew! We survived dinner but that was our last dinner out!!
 While we waited for our table, all the children were sitting at the bar drinking Shirley Temples. Too cute!
Beach fun! The boys loved building sand castles and digging holes.
 The architect helping with the sandcastle construction :)
 Sam and his little buddy.
 Yolo board fun! Thank you so much Cortney and Scooter for letting us borrow your Yolo boards. The children and adults had so much fun! Jackson got to the point where he would even stand up and ride the wave in. Future surfer?
Time for our afternoon Sugar Shak treat!
Decisions....Decisions...
No matter how long they would look, they all ended up getting this huge gummy snake!
 Jackson loved his first snow cone!
 A little postdinner entertainment. The kids decided to take the placemats and turn them into hopscotch.
A favorite while on the beach. Digging a huge hole! They actually dug so deep that an sandcrab had his home dug up. Luckily, it was when Jonathon was digging because the crab was not happy!!

What an amazing week filled with precious memories!!!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

4th of July!

 Whew! Happy 4th of July!! What a busy celebration!! It started off with hanging with friends swimming at the country club party, then we had a cookout with friends at Angie's house, then we did sparklers at another friend's house and ended it with watching fireworks at another friend's house. That's right....we had 4 parties to attend and managed to attend all of them without any tears shed! We had so much fun celebrating our Independance with some of our favorite people!! This first picture is Jackson getting ready to get his face painted. The lady told him to hold his chin up, so this is the face he made the entire time. He looked so darn cute! Of course he had to choose Spider Man!
 He then waited patiently in line for a balloon....and it's spider man.
Swimming with Payton.
 One balloon wasn't quite enough, so he decided to get back in line for a sword.
Party number 2 in the meadows! How all american can we get? Picking apples on 4th of July!! Believe it or not, Angie has an apple tree that is filled with hundreds of apples. The kids had so much fun climbing the ladders, picking the apples, and then eating them.
It was really funny how they all lined up. There was a girls line and a boys line :)
 Yummy apples!
Every year I make a flag cake and this year was no different. The kids were so excited to eat it!!
 Party #3...Sparklers on Maple Street!
Jackson was not so sure about the sparklers!
Much better when they are not lit!
Sam decided to give Nathaniel and Jackson a ride around the driveway in the wagon. You can tell by the looks on their faces that he would gain quite a bit of speed!
Finally Party #4! Firework watching on Wright street. We had a perfect view and the kids were all contained in Jeremy's truck!
Beckett even made it up to view the fireworks!
 They were so mezmerized! Despite the fact that we started our adventure at 9 am and ended it at 10 pm....the kids did great and had a wonderful 4th of July!
Happy 4th of July everyone!!