So Worth the 20 hour drive

Last week we drove 20 hours to Oak Island, NC to spend a wonderful week with my family. We had such a blast with my parents, my brother and sister and their spouses, and my six wonderful nieces and nephews. I tried to take a lot of pics, but most of them aren't great. Here are a few of my favorites:

The whole crew in front of our house:We are Stone 1. There are also four other houses of my relatives (Stone 2-5) within walking distance of our house.

My sister Cat and her family:

Our immediate family:

My brother John and his family:


My oldest nephew Michael and a jellyfish he caught in his net:
My dad and my niece Lizzie reading together:

My parents and all eight grandchildren:

Feeding the seagulls:

My niece Madeline just loved the seagulls:

We went to Jungle Golf. My nephew was on one hole and hit the ball so hard that it bounced to the next hole and went in. Hole in one!:

N had fun "golfing" too:

The rock band:
These giant shovels were the huge hit of the week.

N LOVED them:

B and J in the ocean:
I love the expression on J's face. He loved boogie boarding or as he called it "surfing."

The crab Michael found and later released:

N flying a kite on the beach:
SO high!

My boys heading out into the ocean:

My family has been going to this same beach for years (over 30) and I just love it. It feels like my home away from home and I love that my boys love it too. Can't wait to keep going back for years and years to come.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary this weekend. Having parents that are still happily married seems like such a rarity these days. I feel so very blessed to have such loving parents and even more blessed that they love each other so much. Anyway, here is a picture of my parents from their wedding reception.


I love this picture. I love the way my mom and dad are looking at each other with such love and joy. I love that that they have their drinks in hand and are ready to party. This picture just captures the essence of my parents and that makes me happy.

My parents have taught me so much about life and how to live it. Many of those things are related to how to treat others and how to love and support someone.

B and I will celebrate our 11th anniversary this August. I feel so blessed to have him. I can't wait to celebrate 40 years with him. I'm hoping we'll get to celebrate 50 and 60 years too.

Anyway, thinking of my parents tonight just makes me feel very blessed. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for all that you do. Oh, and be ready to party in ten years because there will be a party to celebrate your 50th!

Movie Monday Redo: In case you were wanting more...

More swimming movies. :)

J diving for rings:


He's gotten so confident with his diving skills!

J swimming:



Hasn't he improved a lot even since the last video? So proud of my J!

And, last, but not least, N and J swimming. Yes, N started swimming on his own yesterday.



It's just the early stages, but I am SO proud of my little 3 year-old.

And, now, I promise to not post anymore swimming videos--at least not for a week or so :).

Movie Monday: Swinging Edition

A short movie of the boys enjoying our new swingset on Friday night. J has gotten to the point where he can sit down, start pumping his legs and get himself really high all on his own. He LOVES it. If you get N started, he can do some pumping and keep himself going. Life is good!

Meanwhile, I set my beer down to make the video and Pepper knocked it over and spilled it. Then she started rolling around in the spilled beer. I got a video of the end of her antics.



I love how she starts licking the beer spot in the end. Nice!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Bad Words

J has recently gotten back into a PBS show called Wild Kratts--a pretty cool show as children's television goes. Two brothers go around learning about and rescuing wild animals. An amazing female inventor helps them by making creature power suits that help them use the same powers animals have. J's learned a lot about animals and loves to pretend to be Chris or Martin with "creature powers."

Anyway, he was doing this yesterday and decided he really needed some creature power disks. I looked on the Wild Kratts website, but couldn't find anything so I did what any smart mom does--I googled "Wild Kratts coloring pages." As I browsed through the results, I saw it--a Draco creature power disk. Perfect! I clicked on the image and all hell broke loose on my computer. Some program started running, messages with scary words appeared and my computer started scanning itself. The last virus we got that almost killed our whole computer pretended to be a program scanning for viruses so I freaked out and turned off the computer. When I went to start it back up (trying to find the "go back and boot up from previous date option"), my computer started scanning drives and I freaked out again and just turned it back off. Now I'm working from the laptop I bought B for Christmas when he switched jobs before the-move-that-never-was.

Anyway, so that's my excitement these days. Needless to say I wanted to say many bad words, but amazingly only said "crap" a number of times. I guess this whole motherhood thing is starting to help clean up my potty mouth ;).

I was going to blog about my twisted stitch boatneck tank I'm designing and knitting, but I won't be able to upload pics. I am knitting bottom up and have about 6 inches done so far. Not the fastest progress, but not bad either. Hope to get some pics up soon.

Hope your life is going a little more smoothly than mine these days. Take care and happy Thursday. TGIAF! (Thank Goodness It's Almost Friday!)

More Family Fun!

Last weekend B's sister and her husband and children came to visit from Oregon. We had SO much fun! Here are some (a LOT) of pics.

My sweet niece Isla (who just turned 2) at our neighborhood splashpad:

My sweet nephew Oscar (almost 4) enjoying N's watering can:

Uncle Chris spraying N (sorry this one is blurry as Chris's expression is priceless):
My swimmer, J:

Isla LOVED the splashpad:

Walking home:

On Friday, we went to the Dallas Zoo.

Isla:

N checking out the Galapagos tortoises and a squirrel:
N picked out his own outfit today. He said he wanted to be a rainbow. :)

We checked out SOAR, the new bird show at the zoo. It was really fun.

Chris, Isla and N watching the penguins:

A hawk! One of the many birds who soared right over our heads:

Chris and Isla watching the children's favorite bird--the parrot who sang Old MacDonald:

We actually got a decent photo of all four children!:

Oscar and J outside of the African Savanna:

N checking out a lion outside of the Serengeti Grill:

Isla and the lions:

J pretending to be a lion:

Feeding the giraffes!:



Isla and a cheetah:

On Friday night, we went to Randy White's Barbecue (actually really good and very family friendly) and DQ for ice cream.

Isla:

N and J:
Oscar:

Can you tell that I am a little smitten with Isla? She was just so photogenic this weekend.

We are so thankful that our family ventured all this way just to spend a long weekend with us. SO MUCH FUN!

Movie Monday: Swim Lesson Edition

Last week J and N were doing swim lessons. It is AMAZING how much progress they have made in one week. Just had to share some videos from their lesson on Friday.











and a bonus video of N jumping to B:



and I can't resist including this photo because it cracks me up: