the beach: my favorite field trip

the thought of september immediately conjures up images of backpacks, notebook paper, and pencils. (i would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if i knew your name and address...) we have begun our school year here at home as well, and i will most definitely be sharing more about that later. (later as in next week or as in next year... we'll see!) thanks to the lingering warm temperatures that are a trademark of living in the south, we still have the beach on our mind in september! we finished our school week last week with a great field trip to the surf and the sand. because it's been a few months since our last visit there, this was amelia's first time ever to walk on the beach! she was more perplexed by walking in the sand that i thought she'd be, and i enjoyed watching her take each deliberate step.


my favorite pictures from this day are these of all three of my babies. i think these are the first i have of all of them together at the beach. amelia is getting way too old too fast.


look at amelia in this next one. she has a lollipop for the first time (i think), and she knows she has arrived. i love how she is looking at ethan to say, "i got one too!"


she seriously giggled the whole time she gripped that lollipop stick...


ethan found a comfy spot to watch the storm brewing on the horizon.


after the kids finished their lollipops, they discovered that the sticks made great writing tools! i was tickled at ethan, who tried his best to get close to the sand without really getting close to the sand.


the beach spreads for miles and miles, and these cousins chose to draw on spaces less than 3 inches away from each other.


aaaaaand i'm not surprised....


in no time, the three cousins were happily frolicking in the water. we spent lots of time in the waves this day... the kids brought their boogie boards and had a ball!


when the thunder grew louder and the skies darker, we decided it was time to head home. we had no sooner gotten the van packed, the kids showered, and everybody loaded up when the rain came.


it has not rained a single day in september, and it would come down on the day we decide to go to the beach! but the looming clouds were a welcome relief from the sun, and we enjoyed our not-so-sweltering day. the temperatures are beginning to signal that it is sort-of-kind-of fall, but i'm hoping we can get back out there before we break out the pumpkins and candy corn!

future NRA members!

cinderella and sleeping beauty may put on a delicate front... but what most people don't know is...

they're packin'!


you'd better watch that little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead. when she is good, she is very very good... but... (well, you know the rest.)


ethan couldn't let the girls have all the fun!


bring on the wicked stepmother!

march!

i think i say this every single month, but i cannot believe march is almost over. someone today was talking about april, and in my head, i was thinking that's a few weeks away... then it hit me that april first is one week from today. yikes! i've got some actual catching up to do around the house, but i also want to catch up on here before easter! we have actually had a fun month around, though my blog has recently been nothing more than a disney-catch-up journal! here's a little peek at what we've been up to lately....

amelia is growing like a weed! she turned 14 months this week, and she is starting to take a couple of steps every now and then. i think it's been pretty accidental, but i figure she'll be walking before too much longer. she is eating anything we put in front of her! and whatever doesn't make it in her mouth winds up in her (fantastic, dishwasher safe) bib, which she'll check at some point to see what she missed. :) she's learning new words every week, and one of her favorite things to do right now is put her hand to her ear like she's on the phone and say, "hey, bye, dadadada!"


we went on our first family camping trip earlier this month! our small group camped out together for a couple of days, and it was so much fun. i can't wait to share more about it soon! as you can see, our kids kinda sorta liked camping...


the kids and i are wrapping up our first year with classical conversations. we have loved fellowshipping with this amazing group of encouraging families, and i can't wait to get ethan's kindergarten year rolling in the fall!


cousin karina stayed with us last weekend while her mommy and daddy stole away for a little anniversary weekend. the girls practically lived in their dress-up clothes, and they enjoyed working together on this mug for brian's grandmother.


since the girls were up by 6:30 on saturday morning (yikes!), i had plenty of time to whip up some mickey mouse pancakes! the kids were so surprised! :) hey, i can't let aunt kristie be the only fun aunt in our family. :)


we've enjoyed the warmer temperatures these days, so this little girl has been so happy to get some time in her beloved swing! and she almost has enough hair to put up in a barrette! her hair is so fine that it practically slips right out of any barrette. i am so ready to put some bows in amelia's hair!!!!


since it has been a little warmer lately, kristie and i thought it was time for our 2010 inaugural beach day last week! it was somewhat windy, so we thought the kids could just play in their clothes like last spring... surely the water would be too cold. we left all the bathing suits at home and headed to our favorite place in town! well.... we hadn't been there ten minutes before all three cousins were soaking wet up to their waists. oh well. :) kristie and i had some good chuckles watching them waddle all over the shore in their heavy-wet clothes!


this little booger is definitely not the sleeping infant that i brought to the beach last summer! :) do i even need to tell you that she loved the sand!? i think she ate sand for lunch.


be back soon with more camping and beach pictures!

cozy cousins!

i've been meaning to share this picture for over a month... this is one of my favorite shots of 2009! i snapped it one day with kristie's camera when we were all playing in her yard. i just couldn't resist the three girls in their cutesy hats!

ok, i have to include this one. this isn't even the full-sized picture, but it's too funny not to share. the girls were talking to amelia, and i knew i wanted to get a closeup of the three of them... but i didn't want the stroller in the picture. (this was before i took the above picture). we told them, "get close to amelia! touch your cheek to amelia's cheek!" and this is what the girls did.


caroline looks as if she's thinking, "ok, mom, but this looks really silly!" oh, yes it does!

all decked out for easter

we had a wonderful easter last sunday! the kids were so excited to sing "Christ the Lord is risen today", which we'd been practicing at home for the last couple of weeks. caroline sang every word with the biggest smile on her face! it was my favorite memory of the day. :) there is always such energy during worship on resurrection sunday as we proclaim, "He is risen! He is risen indeed! alleluia!" i love it! as ethan grows older each year, i can see him beginning to understand more and more of the importance of easter. while he still probably knows more facts than he can actually understand at this point, i pray that the details of the story of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection are taking root in his heart and will eventually grow into belief. during worship today, we read deuteronomy 6:4-9 as a congregation. as we said the words, "you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, i was reminded that our talk of Jesus' sacrifice for us should not stop now that "easter" is over. there are so many opportunities throughout each day to share the good news of the undeserved favor of our Lord Jesus with my children. so many of those opportunities are missed due to my impatience, selfishness, and laziness, but oh what glory it brings to our God when my two year old daughter can be overheard singing "a-a-a-a-leluia" to her baby dolls. :)

i had fun dressing the kids for easter this year, particularly ethan. a couple of weeks before easter, i remembered that i'd found a blue & white pin-striped seersucker suit on clearance last year at target. i pulled it out of the depths of the closet, and i could not wait for ethan to wear it! we had a bit of an ordeal finding shoes to match the suit. i agreed with nana that really, only white shoes would look good with this suit. i went against my usual practicality on that one, knowing that he would hardly ever wear white shoes with anything else. so it was the wednesday before easter, and ethan had no easter shoes. i found the perfect shoes online, so i thought i'd be able to find some in town. i called around to all the local stores, and no one had white oxfords. not even light brown ones. they only had black. (black!? for easter?!) so i went online again to see that if you paid for rush shipping & handling and ordered the shoes by 11:59 AM on wednesday, april 8, they would get there for easter. it was 11:49. i had 10 minutes to decide whether to pay 5 times the price of ethan's clearance suit for these silly white shoes. (still pretty reasonable for shoes, but i am cheap! and practical!) i immediately called brian's mom, who i knew would tell me to order them. but she didn't answer her phone. and brian was out of town and was probably in a meeting. i decided to just order them, knowing i had at least a few hours to cancel the rush order if i changed my mind. by the time i sat down to order them, it was 11:57! i had 2 minutes! and of course, the kids were screaming, i couldn't find my wallet, the shipping page wouldn't come up... i was frantic! i was laughing so hard at myself, trying to get this stupid order complete before the deadline. well, as you can see, we got the shoes. ethan looked absolutely adorable in his suit. nana was beside herself with joy over her little pat-boone-look-alike grandson. (if you're saying "who's pat boone?!", join the club. you also must be under 50! apparently, pat boone was a gospel singer who wore white oxfords back in the day.) when he tried the whole get up on the night before, brian really wasn't too crazy about it, but after ethan won the mr. easter contest at church the next morning, brian couldn't argue that our son was pretty darn cute. (just kidding about the mr. easter contest!!) and since we did pay for rush shipping and all, i made sure we got plenty of pictures of ethan that afternoon!! he was more than cooperative and had way too much fun posing in his suit.


don't worry- the girls were not forgotten. caroline and karina were given matching necklaces by their sweet nana. those girls TREASURE those precious necklaces! caroline's looked so sweet with her blue dress. i realized later that i only got action shots of caroline that day, but i'm sure she enjoyed the paparazzi reprieve! amelia wore caroline's first easter dress (thanks again, ashley!), and i forgot to get good pictures of her in it before the car seat wrinkled it. i hope to do that later this week, but we all know the odds of that really happening! here is my favorite picture from each easter-- the kids' easter clothes ready on saturday night.


after church, we headed over to brian's parents' house for a wonderful easter lunch with his parents, jeff, kristie, karina, and my mom. what a feast we had! (to quote nana, "i wonder what the rich folks were eating!") before lunch, nana and gram hid eggs in the front yard, complete with a big talking egg for each of the kids. it would whistle and say, "yoo hoo! over here! come find me!" hilarious. the kids got the biggest kick out of them, and i heard those things talking all day in our house last monday. :) i missed most of the egg hunt due to tending to amelia, but nana shared a funny story with me. she said the girls figured out that some eggs had money, some had candy, and some were empty. so nana caught caroline & karina shaking all the eggs before claiming them. if the eggs were empty, the girls left them in the yard! ha! here are the cousins having a ball outside on the beautiful day.








we tried to do some pictures with the grandparents after the kids came inside, but the kids had reached their smile quota for the afternoon! i love the girls in this one... it's as if they're conspiring against us. "if you don't look up, i won't look up." oh dear, what will they conjure up in the years to come?!





thanks for all the easter goodies, nana & pappy!




my mom and her three girls

we finished the easter celebration by making resurrection rolls. i will share all about that in my next post since this one is already rather long.

i think amelia enjoyed her first easter! i loved dressing her in caroline's first easter dress... so it looks like she has her next two easter dresses all lined up. :) here is amelia lynn with her mommy and aunt kristie.





and here's our family easter picture one more time! :)



Christ the Lord is risen today! alleluia!

back to the beach!

we celebrated the beginning of spring this week with our first trip back to the beach! and as you can see, the kids were more than excited. :) you might be saying, "what were you thinking, emily...going to the beach with three small children, one being a newborn?! are you crazy!?" yeah, there was a point when i was packing up all the beach supplies that i was thinking the same thing. :) but we were going with karina and aunt kristie, who has 10 arms. really, she is amazingly helpful, even with a two year old! plus i figured it'd be easier to hit the beach now while amelia is immobile and still sleeps most of the day. and this proved to be true. it was a wonderful, wonderful day.

i dug a little hole in the sand for amelia to lay in, and it was perfect! she was propped up just about like she is in her car seat, and she just slept away under the umbrella. she really made no fuss at all the whole time we were out there! in my head i fastforwarded to the end of the summer when she will most likely be crawling all over the place. so i tried to really enjoy my low maintenance baby at the beach! :) here's some shots of amelia enjoying her first snooze on the sand.


sound.
asleep.
ya think she likes the beach!?

well, i KNOW these kiddos do! they went right to work diggin' and a pourin'. they loved every minute of it. except the minute where ethan poured water all over karina. and the minute where karina turned right around and poured water all over caroline. (and a part of me wanted to tell caroline to go pour water all over ethan, just to go full circle...) but they enjoyed all the other minutes. :)





after lunch in the shade, the kids had a lollipop treat. (thank you, aunt kristie, for getting the little ones!!) ethan and karina patiently licked theirs to the very end while caroline....oh, caroline... she chomped through hers in no time. just like her momma does. :)


these huge helicopters kept flying overhead,
and caroline thought they were a little too loud!

"thanks for the lollipop, mommy!"

this is caroline's new face... it's kind of a bashful-ish
"i'm so proud of what i just did but also slightly embarrassed" look.

ethan kept himself pretty busy with his sand projects, so he wasn't really concerned with humoring mommy with the camera. but i did get this one shot of my growing boy who loves his momma! pasty sunscreen face and all, isn't he a cutie?!


but caroline was a sweetheart and let me just snap away... i love taking pictures of this girl. and i love being her mommy.


it's a little too bright out here...
ahhh...much better!


well, our first trip to the beach for 2009 was a great one! ethan and caroline are at such a great age for enjoying the sand and staying busy without needing too much help. i can't wait to go back! (and next time i will remember to put sunscreen on ME and not just the kids! OUCH!!) we've had a few invitations to visit family and friends at their beach condos over the next few weeks, so we are looking forward to getting our toes back in the sand before too long! there's probably no use in vacuuming the van...