The Beach: Part 3

Our first morning staying at the condo Ian woke up at 6 am, and since Adam and I were sharing the room with him so did we.  In order to try and let others sleep in a little later on their vacation, we decided to go for a sunrise walk on the beach.  (Even though the sun was covered with clouds that day)

This was Ian's first experience with the beach, I think the last time we had been was the summer he was born (I am a little embarrassed to admit this).  He wasn't sure what to think of it all at first.  The sand between his toes, the waves that came up and surprised him, even the little creatures out and about were all new to him.

It was fun watching him take it all in.

Of course it didn't take long before he wanted to charge full speed into the waves.

And that's it, I promise, no more pictures of the beach :)

Family Friday - Epcot

So today Clara had a teacher work day at school! Hooray, we can all go and play together!

We have Disney annual passes but haven't been for a while because,

well, here are a few hints . . .

Florida, Summer, HOT, crowds, WHY???? Get the picture?

But it's starting to cool down (that would be high 80's - - still cooler for us) and we thought it was time to go again and we picked Epcot because we haven't spent much time there so far.

We had a blast! It was rainy, which doesn't sound great on paper but let me tell you~ perfect! We just took our time, went at our own speed and had a wonderful family day.

I still can't talk myself into lugging my big camera to parks. Of course, once I am there and see all of the great photo opps . . . I miss it. Maybe I'll get braver one day.

All I can say is Thank Goodness for the iPhone! We still only got this one picture, at least it's a cute one:)

The Beach: Part 2 ~Family

The whole point of being at the beach was to be with family.

So here are some of those moments.

Clara and her Uncle Paul showing off their shells.

Ian's catching a ride with Auntie Ana back to the hotel.

Clara and Ian waiting for the next wave.

Clara touching a jellyfish.

Carson loves baseball!

Ian and his Mommy

Ian and Auntie Ana hanging out.

Cute Carson

Clara and Cameron: Beautiful Girls

*Now that I am to the point of posting these pictures I am really sad that I didn't get pictures of everyone that was there. Obviously I need to be more aware of things like that! So though all are not in the images here of our weekend, we had a great time together~ ONE AND ALL!!

Family Friday Night Date

We love Friday! Adam has the day off and I look forward to Fridays all week. The only thing that would make them better would be if Clara didn't have school and we could all play together all day (like we used to before Kindergarten . . . )

Adam and I wanted to make tonight fun with the kids, so we decided to grill and all make dinner together.

First we had to prepare everything. Here we have the kids putting shrimp on skewers.

Then it was out to the grill for Daddy's turn . . .

to grill away . . .

Of course the kids wanted to be set free~but dinner was almost ready, and we knew if we let them out dinner would be cold before we could corral them back to the dinner table.

This is how Clara felt about our decision.

Distraction . . . "Come and try this Ian!"

Dinner's Ready!! Yum!

Happy Kids,

Happy Parents,

Good Family Night!

*Yes, I know . . . I am not in any of these! I did think about asking Adam to take some pictures with me in them ( I was even wearing my cute apron to match the kids) but I could tell he was in his I'm focused on what I'm doing here, I'm not going to want to change gears mindsets. Next time, I promise. I am going to do better about that, there need to be some pictures of mom here!

The Beach: Part 1

I don't want to overwhelm everyone with pictures, so I am breaking down my "beach" post into a few segments.

My parents rented a condo at New Symrna Beach for about a week. School has started already so we didn't get to stay the whole time . . . but we took advantage of the weekends. It was a lot of fun to spend time with my whole family!

This first few pictures are just beach images. But I did have a lot of fun with silhouettes, the beach is a perfect place for those:)

My little (not so little anymore) brothers decided to go fishing on the beach at sunrise, I decided to tag along for a little while. . .

This is Ian and his Grammy, whom he adores . . . this is a sweet moment.

Here's my little Ian. Somehow I ended up with A LOT of pictures of Ian, which is kinda funny because he does not love my camera . . . when he see's me with it he looks away immediately.

More to follow . . .

Babies!

I was lucky enough to be able to take some pictures of these sweet little ones just a few weeks after they were born!

Practice, practice, practice

I am currently taking a photography class and this week one of the things we are working on is night-time photography. Very cool concept, but it does take practice and patience.

Behind the camera: I was sitting on a grassy hill in the near dark with my camera on a tripod (that I hadn't figured out how to use yet) while mosquitos were swarming around me. One of the tricks to this is time, letting the camera shutter stay open for a long time. Needless to say I got about 3 shots before the bugs chased me back inside :) Good times.

Good evening everyone!

Oh, what did we do in the summertime??

Now that school is back in session I guess I can find time to blog about what we did over the summer. Not a whole lot of exciting, as my poor kids can attest. But as I have mentioned before we did include water . . . in the form of swimming lessons (and swimming at home). Lessons were nice because they taught my kids to swim stronger and occurred 3 days a week. This kept us from going to stir crazy at home. Both Clara and Ian did very well.

There was some bribery involved.

And Clara started taking piano lessons this summer! She loves it, and has a GREAT teacher who makes learning to play the piano easy and fun!

Summertime

Kids love to be outside. In the summertime in Florida these outside jaunts come in short spurts, as the adults (and even the kids) can only last about 20 or 30 minutes, if that. So we grab outside time when we can, and try to make it involve water if possible.