Sea World and College Friends

Every summer we get together with a group of our closest college friends and have a long weekend away from the kids, the computers, the phones (with the exception of a daily "kid check-in") and just enjoy getting to be together. It is such a refreshing time--these friends are truly an extension of family and a group that you can completely be yourself with--there are no pretenses, no eggshell walking, no worrying if you'll offend someone. God has given us a real gift in each other and we try to do whatever we can to continue to nurture these relationships. We realized this year that our kids know each family individually, but we have never all gotten together with our kids included and allowed our kids to be blessed by the mass chaos that often comes with this group. So, we decided that we would all go visit Kim & Kyle and Vic & Colleen since they both just had babies and weren't able to be with us at the boat this year. Our family was already planning on heading to visit my sister-in-law and her husband, so we decided to leave a few days early to meet up with everyone and enjoy a trip to Sea World-just the 19 of us (and we were missing the Hemphills and McClures.) My mother-in-law joined us because 1-she was going on vacation with our family and 2-she hasn't gotten to "enjoy" the craziness of this bunch in the past few years. She was a DOLL--such a trooper. Fourteen of us were camped out all over the Stringer's house and she managed to fit into the craziness, as she always does. All of the kids adopted her as their "Annie" and she sweetly, patiently read stories, held babies, slept in a room with 2 of the kids (not mine), treked around Sea World in the hot, hot sun while holding hands with at least one child nearly all day. If you know my mother-in-law you know that she's a gem, but she truly outdid herself with this one--I love that she is so willing to fit in and be flexible and never utter one word of complaint. Thank you Annie for being you--we love you! Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Blake Stringer and Elly (one for the wedding slideshow...)


The oldest boys-Logan, Braden and Seth with Annie

Blake, Mallory, Seth, Braden, and Logan with Annie

The only girls--boy are they going to have to be T-O-U-G-H with all of these boys around.

Sweet Rylan was wiped out!

Logan, Braden and Seth

Porter and Blake P.

Sweet Baby Cullen and Elly--this was a rare shot--Elly couldn't leave Cullen's feet alone. She would grab them and laugh and laugh. She did NOT get this love of any and all feet from her mama!

Is it hot out here??? (at Viva--our favorite show)

Look at this precious boy! Sweet Lincoln is so easy going and such a cuddle bug!

Catch Up

Well...its been a busy, crazy summer and I love it! We've had a 14 hour trip to my parents in TN, an 8 hour trip to my sisters in MS, and an extended trip to San Antonio and on to South Padre to visit Jarrod's sister. Throw in 2 Vacation Bible Schools, a week visit from my niece Whitney, 2 weeks of Swimming Lessons and you have about 3 days of uninterrupted "home" time. So, here is my attempt to catch up on blogging.

Logan Goes to the Dentist

Jarrod has gone to the same dentist his whole life--a precious, precious man that is a lifelong family friend. It also happens to be our sweet friend Amanda's dad. We took Logan for his first visit and he did surprisingly GREAT. His favorite part was the water suction and after we were done, he kept saying "When we go back to the dentist, I want to go here."

Mr. Joel (aka: Dr. Martin)

4th of July 2009

Mississippi Visit with Cousins

We had a fantastic time visiting my sister and her family in Mississippi for 4th of July weekend. It was a fast trip and we wished that we could have stayed a little longer, but I think that is always the case when family is too far away. The kids fished, rode 4-wheelers, and swam at my sister's in-laws' house and then we had a great 4th celebration (a later post.) Here are some of my favorite cousin pictures:

Elly's First Wagon Ride

Somehow we didn't get around to taking Elly in the wagon until the week before the 4th of July. Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

First Busted Lip

We had a playdate with one of our favorite friends and ended up leaving with a bit of a "present." Thankfully the lip only stayed swollen for about 24 hours!

10 Months

Wow...tonight I looked in my email and saw "Your 10 Month Old, Week 3" and my response was "How?" I can't believe how life with this little girl is flying by. I'll post updated pictures later, but I wanted to record a some things that I don't want to forget at 10 months.

Elly has finally started actually crawling most of the time (still not giving up the army crawl, but she's realized that she can pull herself up easier when she goes on all 4's).

Her favorite game is peek-a-boo, and she loves to cover the sides of her head or close to her eyes and just start laughing. She also loves dancing, clapping, giving high fives, this little piggy and trot a little horsie.

If I leave her in her room for a minute, she will crawl out if Logan's door is open make a BEE line for his room and its many wonders (her favorite of which are his cars and his farm animals.)

Words at 10 months: Dada, DA (now the name for Logan), Da, da, da while head bobbing(dance), Bye-Bye, Mama, A-ter (for water), Buh (for Baby) She's very into repeating everything if you just take the time to say it a few times for her. Interesting how different this was with Logan--Logan watched very intently, but then didn't say much until he could basically say the word perfectly...crazy.

She pulls up on EVERYTHING and has started clearing the end tables and coffee table very enthusiastically. She also let go this week, but just fell into the table with her stomach, so she's still not stable enough to be walking anytime soon.

She handles little or no sleep VERY well. She would prefer to have a catnap though and can be as happy as if she's slept for hours on a 20 minute nap.

She sat through a movie at the theater yesterday. She was perfectly happy and content as long as she had something in her hands--and yes, I am crazy for taking a 10 month old to a movie!

She can throw the world's largest temper tantrum and already holds a pretty mean grudge. Example: today she looked in her breakfast bowl and got mad because Logan was eating applesauce and she was still stuck on Oatmeal. So, after a little fit, I mixed some applesauce into her oatmeal. She looks into her bowl when there are two bites left and starts getting upset. I'm trying to not feed her when she's screaming or yelling because I don't want to reinforce that behavior, so I'm trying to wait patiently for any kind of silence and the best I could get was while she was catching her breath. She got the last two bites, but then proceeded to get extremely upset with me and threw a fit that lasted an hour and a half. An hour and a half--seriously? She would almost forget, then look at me and belt out all over again. I think I have my work cut out for me with this one.

Now before you think that I am starving my child let me say--this girl can E-A-T! There is no "off" on the food regulation and she screams when she is done with every meal. I'm serious, she has NO teeth, but yet eats everything and she packs the food AWAY. I know that she would eat herself sick and the only times she's not screaming about food is when you could literally roll her away from the dinner table. For some reason my children have no internal food monitoring system when they are infants. Funny that our dog doesn't either...maybe its just something about Jarrod and I.