Spring pictures

I was sad all Easter morning because I had intended to bring the girls' easter dresses to take beach portraits...I forgot them. And for some naive reason thought it would be easy to take beautiful pictures of kids on the beach. I forgot about 2 things. Sand. Water. :)

spring break---the Emerald Coast-2

Here are the rest of the shots. In no order, the beach at night and finding an AMAZING sand castle, sno cones, Rosemary beach strolling, the bungee jump thing, and whatever other fun things we took pics of.
Just to recount so we can remember details...
We loved that everyone rode around on bikes and wished we had ours. Brooklyn and Tyler kept going way far out in the waves and freaking mom out, until Jeff would go out with them. As we were trekking home we saw that the purple and yellow flags meant Medium waves... CAUTION and purple = dangerous marine life, sharks or jellyfish... nice. No wonder we were the only ones out that far. On Monday at the beach we had the beach to ourselves and had a shell contest. Brooklyn picked up a huge shell---which was actually a BIG LIVE CRAB, and barely recovered from the fright. It was fun to come upon the incredible sand castles on Sunday night. Church in the strip mall was different. Having two couples at breakfast in the hotel on the drive there tell me our kids were well behaved-PRICELESS.

spring break---the Emerald Coast

It was SOOOOOO fun! here are the pics from the little camera. We stayed at Seacrest Beach, which is part of a charming little stretch of beaches they call 30A. They are Alys Beach, Seacrest, Seaside, Rosemary... maybe one more, nestled right in between Destin and Panama City. It was very family friendly, not at all the usual spring break college crowd you think of. Perfect and clean---actually it's where they filmed Truman Show, that gives you an idea of what it's like. Rosemary Beach was probably the most charming, architecturally wise- made to look like a little European city. So darling. We fell in love and I'm sure we will be back. more pics from the other camera to come.

Easter dinner 2011

Since we're going to be in Florida next weekend, we had our Easter dinner on Palm Sunday...not too bad a substitution. We enjoyed the company of our sweet friend Mireen (her husband was off shore) and her two kids Avie and Julius, who are great friends to our kids. The ham was perfect---brown sugar,pineapple and clove laden (I actually can't wait to make homemade Hawaiian pizza tonight with the ham), I made homemade french scalloped potatoes...mmmmmm, salad, rolls (which is how my kids survive) veggies, fresh strawberries, and a delicious key lime pie to top it off. That pie was GOOD--even my husband couldn't keep his hands out of it! When you have to squeeze 20 miniature limes, it better be amazing :) Actually I read a tip about using the garlic press to squeeze them, which was a fantastic idea. It worked wonderfully, but there were still 20 of them. :)
We are ever thankful for Easter and the miraculous events surrounding it. The infinite Atonement, and the beautiful resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

garden beauties

sisters

This is Lily's smile minus her first lost tooth...it fell out dramatically. First it broke in half, and she swallowed it, then the rest fell out, and she swallowed that part too. With nothing to show for, she left a note for the TF. TF left a very generous $5. She said, "Wow, $5, just what I was hoping for. Actually, I was hoping for $10, but I thought that might be too much..." darn right that's too much. :)

Crawling up a storm.

Well, maybe not a storm, but she has almost worked up a girlie figure from it. She went from scooting, which she's been doing for about a month, to up on all fours, to a little of both, to whatever gets here there fastest! I turn around and the little fatty has moved all the way across the room... who knows how, I am still in denial.

It's such a pain when they start to move. It involves a lot more scrupulous scanning of the floor. It involves not being able to take a shower whenever I want. But, I am happy that she is growing and developing and happy. The kids keep praying for her to grow and learn, I'm gonna tell them to hold off for awhile on that. :) She's so fun! Almost 7 months tomorrow. It's going by way too fast. She does have a strong personality. Mostly she's docile and pleasant, if things are going her way, but as soon as something gets taken away, she is loudly vocal!!! She's cutting her 2nd tooth pretty soon. She laughs more now, which gives us the greatest pleasure.

Den Meeting

It was a blast! Awards, relays, ice cream sundaes, perfect weather, what could be better? We are loving this new (new to me and Tyler, Jeff has been involved for awhile now...) world of scouts. Look at that handsome little guy in uniform!