It's a Girl!

Meet my niece, Evey (pronounced E-V) Magnolia! She is the tiniest, cutest little bundle. Alexa was totally taken with her and didn't want to stop holding her.

The cousins. (You try to get 5 kids to cooperate at this age when time is limited!) :)

The new family of four. So happy for them. Congratulations Peter and Kendal!

Last Vacay Post

First off, my sister-in-law is in labor so I am excitedly waiting for word on whether I have a new niece or nephew (I'm thinking it's a boy this time). I'll be back soon with the news!

To wrap up our vacation...We spent the first 4 days of our vacation at the shore home of friends of ours. They graciously let us stay there and we had a wonderful time. We were two blocks from the beach which was great with the kids. Our house was beautiful. We were very pleased.

Chase's first reaction to the beach was to run screaming from the tide as it chased him up the sand! He can scream. Like a girl. And he did. The first day at the beach did not go well! By our last day there, we were able to take the kids out into the water as long as we were holding them. They loved looking down through the tide for sea shells that were being washed up.

We built the big sandcastle in the picture and relaxed on the beach. Alexa is not a big sand person so I took Tanner and her back to the house and she spent a long time playing in the kiddie pool we had while Chase and Howard got to play on the beach for a while.

It was a really great time. We visited an awesome zoo, spent a day on the local boardwalk where the kids rode on some carnival rides and relaxed on the beach and at the house. We needed the R&R and are so grateful for the place and the memories we made.

A little bit more about our vacation...at last

     Well things don't go as planned too often anymore! I have such good intentions but life so often interrupts my plans these days!

      We've been fighting fall colds/viruses.

     Howard is working end of year crazy hours.

     I am a busy mommy trying to keep us all in some semblance of order. My time on the computer is most often what has to go to get things done so I am not anywhere near as up-to-date on here as I want to be. (sigh)

     It's all good. I love this very crazy stage of life for us right now so I am trying to roll with it all.

     Back to our vacation! We went to a "Please Touch" museum one of the days. The entire museum is dedicated to encouraging kids to learn through play. We spent over 4 hours with the kids here and they weren't ready to leave! There were just so many things for them to try and do! The very best part for them was the child size grocery store. There were aisles of foods they recognized, child size grocery carts, a seafood/meat counter, a bakery, etc. The kids were encouraged to role play by being the shopper, cashier, deli man, etc. At the checkout when they ran an item over the "scanner" it would beep like the real thing. Once you were done shopping all the items had to be put back on the shelves and you started over again. I think Alexa shopped her own cart and just about any other persons she could find. She was in heaven! It was such a great opportunity to let them be kids in a public place. We loved it and can't wait to go back again some time.