Wednesday, July 29, 2009

3 sweet words

miss gracie lets mr. ben do most of the talking around here. last night going to bed, she finally told daddy i love you. of course i had to get the video camera out & record her!

just melts your heart.

Friday, July 24, 2009

surfin usa

a few final photos from vacation....
oh how i miss vacation...



family pictures by the sea


i think i'm about done with pictures from vacation.... here are the "fancy" ones we took together.
the crew heading down for pictures.
gracie girl in her pillowcase dress i made her. her & darby have matching dresses from their great great great aunt delia's pillowcase collection.


mr. ben. i can hardly get a picture of him anymore. he just won't let me.

our family picture

the kiddos playing around.








beano loves to be by darby's side. miss gracie would do anything we'd say for the camera. she's so good.

gracie's birthday party round 2

miss gracie was born on a friday the 13. i tried to not be to superstitious, but that day turned out pretty crappy (other than the miracle of her birth of course). there were complications & we were very stressed out about her health for weeks on end after she was born. now, you would never know it. this year, we got to celebrate her birthday on the beach. we had a "bee-buu" as she calls it (blue's clues) birthday party themed birthday for her. thank goodness i had everything left over from ben's 2nd birthday! worked out pretty well.
ben celebrated by trying his first sip of root beer (which he loved, thanks brad).

here's ever so cheerful ben. he was a bit moody on vacation. poor guy. he had a middle ear infection & testicular torsion and wanted to be big like his older cousin, so i guess those are all reasons to be a bit of a grump. he's now acting like his old self & i am much relieved. he does have a dr. appointment next week just to be looked over


miss gracie cuddling up to great great uncle paul, or "papy paul", to read a book. he & dee are our babysitters whenever we need one, but gracie really bonded with him over vacation.


we had a pinata, &

the kiddos had a blast trying to tear it apart. gracie enjoyed every bit of taffy from it. man, does she have a sweet tooth!

here's a video of her enjoying her cake. sorry i don't know how to edit out my laughing & other stuff.


daddio has been working hard on the big birthday present this week & it is complete! the kiddos love it!

they have decorated the inside of the fort with chalk all over the place. we started to stop them, but then realized we let them color on our house & this is their house so no bother.
i think they spent a good 4 hours playing on it yesterday. thank you daddio for the patience to put it together for us. we love you!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

my gracie girl

i took gracie down to the beach one day to take her picture. my oh my. it was probably my favorite part of the vacation with her. we had so much fun (& a few tantrums of course). this little girl is the funniest thing i have ever seen.
pretty little girl, hair blowing in the wind.


2 seconds later, she lost her grape cup & ....
when she was mad, she was horrid...


never fearo, momma let her knock me down in the sand & that brought out some laughter...


she's a mess sometimes
(in a good way)
she's definitely a free spirit

she can be quite serious...

but mostly she's just fun. i love you, little two year old!

beach bums

here's some of the crew when we first arrived at the beach. miss gracie was not too sure of what to think at first. ben, in the yellow, jumped right in.
she decided it was pretty cool.


gracie & her goggles. her goggles... she carried these around with her almost everywhere. on her birthday night, she had to sleep with them along with some taffy & a necklace. i woke up to a sticky mess. what did she do? bit it off, of course.

the kiddos getting ready to tackle some waves.

burying miss darbs in the sand.

the next day was spent playing in the big sand hole.
me & my sugar bear.
daddio caught this big fish out in the ocean. we named it ben.

there was a bit of algae that most of us didn't want to brave in the ocean a few days, so we just went to the pool.
beano the duck & his sister.

walking home after a long day of swimming.

i have a few more things from vacation i want to post, but with daddio still being home, i can't get anything done! :)