Beach Day 1

we left right after the kids first soccer games. after
lunch we did mad libs together...the kids laughed
hysterically (and worked on nouns, adj and verbs!)

tradition....getting right on the beach as soon as we arrive...even
before bathing suits are put on!

cailey and braden were much braver this year
and both spent a lot of time in the ocean

the kiddos really got soaked this year!

sweet ephram and kinsey LOVED the ocean! ephram crawled in over and over even
after getting knocked down he just smiled and kept going. kinsey liked it so much more this

year, too!

we were so thankful that ephram loved the water!

that night we went to johnny rockets at broadway to celebrate
our birthday girl! it was a day early but we had something super
special in store for the next day and knew we wouldn't be going
out to dinner then. the servers sang to her and gave her a pin.

we were blessed to have our sweet friends, Kelly and Brandon (and their kiddos and parents) at the beach with us this year and had a blast hanging out with them! the girls, the babies, and the big boys had a blast!

silly big boys

our sweet 8 year old birthday girl!

caroline and cailey, ephram hugging braden over and over again

after dinner we all walked around

they even ran into Super Man...the dad's hung
out with the babies while we found something
for the kids to do.

this was totally unplanned and a precious
moment to me.

cailey, braden and caden really wanted to go on this 'pirate ship' ride so kelly and i decided
to take them on it. unfortunately braden wasn't tall enough :( but we took the other kids and
it was much scarier than i expected but super fun!

brian took braden and kinsey on this ride that went in circles...fast...forward and backwards!
they (minus daddy) loved it! i'm so thankful there was something exciting for the smaller
kiddos to ride!

next up: carousel (notice the ostrich braden picked), and the swings

it was a long fun filled day and everyone

went to bed early!

We decided to stick with getting a two bedroom condo this year and it actually worked out perfectly. We weren't sure how the four kids would do sharing the same room (two in a full bed, one in a twin, and the baby in a playpen) but they were so exhausted everyday that they pretty much fell asleep right away. There was one night towards the end of the week that the three oldest conked out and ephram (who took a pm nap everyday) CRIED/SCREAMED because no one was awake to talk to him...but other than that things went awesome!