Port A

I'm going to try and catch you up on what's been going on around here that's kept me away for so long! I mean moving is no great excuse to quit blogging, C'MON! So we'll start with Karis' recital.


Before her recital we had some great friends over who have no kids but love ours. . . they came extra early and played games with the kids.

Karis was so nervous at her recital because it was her first time on stage without a teacher in front of the doing the dance with her. You never would have known though because she did fantastic!

Her dance was one of the first and when it was over we had to scoot on out and get ready for vacation. We planned on leaving early the next morning for a long drive to the beach.

Once we finally arrived the kids jumped in the water and found lots of stuff. Caedis was not fond of the seaweed but we couldn't keep her out of the water either.

My nephew found a jellyfish. My son got stung by one. And no one peed on him, poor guy.

The girls chased the birds around. . .

And I have no words for this:

LOL - she is such a funny girl!

The kids were all actually willing and happy to take a picture together. . .

And here we are doing one of our favorite things on the beach. . . feeding the birds. We buy loaves and loaves of extra cheap bread just to feed them then hand each of the kids their own loaf and watch 'em go at it.

After we fed the birds we put some clothes on them and went to the museum. If you can call it a museum. It takes about five minutes to see the entire thing.

We call it the five minute museum! Ha! Genius, I know!

But every year we go back. Something about tradition, I think.

We found a new tradition this year and you'll be blown away by what it is. . . get ready. . .

GOING TO THE PARK! Whewee! Now who doesn't want to go with us on vacation?

The kids kinda had fun and it was just plain nice not to have sand stuck in everything you touch and see for a few minutes.

Plus it's not that often I can actually get Caedis in a picture where she's not telling me 'Purse, no want.'

Since you're not around her all the time I'll translate:
Put the camera back in the purse before I rip it out of your hands and BEAT YOU WITH IT!

This was our favorite part of the trip to the park. Ahead you can see the ferries and out in the water were dolphins. They came really close to us chasing some fish. I did get some good pictures of that too, but I'm apparently keeping those to myself today. Maybe I'll get around to posting those later.

We put the babies and grandparents down for naps and took the big kids to the USS Lexington. They hadn't been before and we knew my boy would eat this place up!

He didn't disappoint.

If we hadn't bribed him with ice cream to leave he would have lived on that boat. Except the fact that every time we had to climb those steep stairs I used that opportunity to tell him he doesn't want to be in the Navy and climb stairs all day, he wants to be in the Air Force so he can fly planes instead. bwahahaha!

Karis only liked the fact that she's getting paid to be there! She found a quarter and she didn't pay her ticket to get in. Perhaps we'll remedy that next time. . .

After the Lexington and naps we went back to the beach for a walk. Not to be confused with going for a swim. We will NEVER take the kids to the beach for a walk on the beach again without making sure they have swimsuits on first. Lesson learned. Boys just don't care if their clothes are wet and sandy. AT ALL!

Caedis destroyed every sand castle she saw. And all this time we thought it was because of nature that our sandcastles disappeared overnight!

After all the destroying she was ready for bed and found and nice place to rest.

Take a look at my niece's knees in the picture above and you get a small preview of what the boys looked like by the time we left.