Fun in the Sun

In July, we headed south to spend time in South Carolina (Myrtle Beach & Charleston) and Georgia (Atlanta & Athens). We visited with family, spent a perfect week at the beach, saw lots of fun sites, and ate lots of grits and wonderful Southern food.

Atlanta Cousins

Myrtle Beach

Fishing with Grandpa

Fishing in the Inlet

Our Favorite Little Sea Urchin

Fun in the Sun

Mini Golfing

Charleston Cemetary

Breakfast with the Bells

Lunch at the Grit

Great-Grandma

Flowers for Great Grandpa 

Aunt & Uncle's Beautiful Restored Car in Front of New House

Go Bulldogs!

The Grit

Rock-A-Bye Baby...

Looks like lots of babies and cradles came crashing down onto my floor, right?  For some reason, everyone (and everyTHING) in the house always wants to sleep in my room. Madeline and Justin have a little power struggle going on right now.  Last night she spent about two hours busily filling our bedroom floor with just about every pillow in the house.  (I happen to love pillows, so we have a lot.)  Then she carefully put every doll, creature, or animal to bed on the pillows. 

Justin came home from working late and immediately began grumpily hauling armloads of wide-eyed "sleeping" creatures back to Madeline's room.  She was devastated and promptly began to wail.  I suggested that we let them stay for the night since they were already so nicely situated on every inch of our floor.  But Justin insisted that he might trip on them in the night.  You can understand how awful it might be to trip and fall into a sea of pillows and stuffed animals.

Tonight Justin is working late again.  I came upstairs from my workout to find that we are once again hosting a slumber party of sorts in our bedroom.  Justin will be so thrilled that everyone has forgiven him enough that they all decided to sleep in his room again.

Recent Happenings

Alexander had fun celebrating his 8th birthday.  (Although some of my family wondered if it was actually his 80th birthday, since he requested quiche and tapioca (no birthday cake) for his birthday dinner).

He also did a good job performing at his 4th piano recital.  He wanted to learn one of our favorite church songs, "If the Savior Stood Beside Me", and he spent a few months working on it because it was a fairly challenging song for him to play.  As the date of the recital came closer, he definitely regretted letting me talk him into learning it, and there were a few tearful practice sessions.  But there's no problem some yelling from Mom can't solve, right?

We filmed Alexander playing his recital songs for those of you who couldn't be there.

And here's Madeline with baby Zoey.  No, Zoey's not a new addition to our family.  She's a new cousin.