One Last Hurrah-Beach Fun!!

Yesterday promised to be a gorgeous day on the beach so we got up and got our stuff done and headed out. We knew we were going to hit the beach at high tide so we opted to go into Seaside first and do our trinket and taffy shopping. I have to go to this one place to get taffy, they make the best. Elizabeth found a cute pair of ear rings for herself and a friend. The boys found a shop that deep fat fries EVERYTHING so naturally they had to get something. Jonathan had the deep fried snickers bar which wasn't too bad, and Nathaniel got the deep fried twinky that was wrapped in bacon. Oh heart attack! He loved it, I thought it was just ok. Tasted like a sweet corndog. We saw one of those guys that likes to dress up like a statue and dances or does tricks. Seth honestly thought he was a robot because the guy had something that would whir like a robot when he moved. We gave Seth a dollar to put in the bucket and the guy was nice enough to put Seth on the pedestal and let us get a picture of the two of them. Seth loved it! After all that we headed out to a spot on the beach and just hung out for a few hours. I hung back under the umbrella shade with the two older boys and the baby and Rob joined the other two in the water. Meredith loves the sand! She couldn't get enough of it :) The ocean...not so much. I walked her down to talk to Rob and she started whimpering then screaming the closer we got to the water. Poor thing. She did kinda get over it and spent some time down by the water with Rob but after a bit she ended back up in the sand with me and the boys. All in all a great day and was nice to get away one last time before school starts back up.

This is how my teenager enjoys the beach now, watching a movie on my iPod :)

Quality time in the sand with her big brother.

Rob could dig in the sand for hours and hours if you let him.

Still watching a movie.

Meredith goofing off while Nate continued to, yep you guessed it, watch his movie :)

She still walks with her arms up, make me laugh every time!

Pictures!

We had a photo shoot done of the kids at the end of August. We received the disk recently with all the photos so I thought I'd get some of my favorites up. Julia Shinkle took the photos. They turned out GREAT and we had such a fun time! I love how she is able to capture the eyes of her clients, that's what drew me to her.



One of the few where Meredith was smiling. Unbelievably we couldn"t get her to smile. Too much for her to look at.



Me? I'm not up to something!



LOVE the eyes!







Tree 2 Tree

My Dad bought Rob a gift certificate to Tree to Tree this year. It's a fun little place out by Hagg Lake that consists of an obstacle course up in the trees. We decided to go on Sept 2nd before school started. Rob LOVED it!! Zip lines, rock walls you have to climb up and across while 20 ft or so up in the air, crossing over on nothing more than a cable and not much else to hold onto at some points. What isn't there to love? Haha! No thanks, I'll keep my feet firmly planted on the ground :) But Rob loved it and that's all that mattered. He took Jonathan and Nathaniel up with him. Shane was able to join the fun up in the trees while my dad and I sat it out below with the younger kids and took pictures. I was pretty impressed all four were able to complete all four levels, each getting progressively harder and higher off the ground.
I gave Elizabeth a camera and let her follow the guys around since I had to run back and forth between them and Meredith. She did pretty good :) Because the two of us took a ton of photos I just put them all into an album. Sorry lots of pics of behinds but we couldn't seem to ever get in a better position to get the other side of them :)

Three Months Old!

Meredith is 3 months old (yesterday)! Can't believe it. We will be doing her 3 month pictures on Saturday, can't wait. I always get their pictures done at 3, 7, and 12 months.

If you look back at other photos of her in this chair you can see how she has grown by where her head is resting :)

 A few days ago Meredith found her hands, and she is FASCINATED with them! Makes me laugh. She'll get this look of total concentration on her face as she tries to bring them together and then just stares at them once they are clasped. We bought her one one of those little floor gym things and she spends a good amount of time trying to grab the little toys hanging down. Very fun to watch.

We went to the Garlic Festival in North Plains on Saturday. It was fun, a reason to get out of the house for a few hours. I've never seen elephant garlic before. One clove is just HUGE! We got a couple and are going to plant them and see what we get. We walked around the vendors and looked at all the fun things to buy. My dad bought me this cool little dish ( purple of course) that is all spiky in the middle.

You rub the garlic over it and it grates it up. Then you pour olive oil and other spices into it and can make some yummy dip for bread. We tried it last night with one of our giant cloves of garlic. It was delicious!


We discovered a rock climbing wall and all the kids had to try it out. Nathaniel was not with us as he was off on a bike ride with the scouts. Jonathan made it all the way to the top. Elizabeth made it about 1/2 way, I was honestly very surprised. Seth got about 8 feet up, he did pretty good too. On our way out we grabbed some fair food for lunch. Jonathan got some garlic ice cream so we could all try it. Not something I'll ever need to try again :) One lick was enough for me. He did eat the whole thing. It's worth going out at least once to check it out. Like I said a fun reason to get out of the house one weekend in August.

Summer Happenings

We finally managed to get away to the beach a few weeks ago. We met up with the Aunties, Celest and Karen, and just had a really good time! It was a beautiful day and we all went home thoroughly tired and burned :)

They found a LIVE crab this time!

Nathaniel was dead tired. He had done an overnighter with the scouts, stayed up too late, than a 25 mile bike ride that morning, then played on the beach all day. THEN we walked a good 20 mins into Seaside from Celest and Karen's hotel, had dinner, and then walked back. This is him falling asleep at the restaurant waiting for them to call us back :)

Just a cute photo of Meretith and Seth. He sure adores her!

12 YEARS OLD!! Yikes!

We went to a concert in the park this past week. They were doing Hawaiin music. We had a very fun time. The weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold.

Elizabeth invited her best friend Jill along. We finally managed to get them together for a sleepover, it's been ages! The girls had a very good time together.

Rob and Seth found a vendor selling that long rope licorice. Seth ate all 34 inches before we left the park!

I just laugh every time I see this photo. Rob was messing around and this time when he squeezed her cheeks her eyebrows shot up and I managed to get the photo. Too funny!