Port St. Joe part 1

Earlier this year we decided to take a vacation with Marc's family to the beach.    The last time we took a family beach trip was in 2008 when I was pregnant with Tucker.  :)   We had a wonderful time.   We went to a beautiful house on the coast between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola.  There was nothing to do but enjoy the beach, which is exactly what we did for seven days and seven nights!  :)

Tucker loved this blue shovel and had it with him at all times-


Writing his name-

We found many sea snails, hermit crabs and sand fleas-

Scallop shells-

Julia and Landin flying a kite-





Tucker helped too-

We played games at night like Bingo and Apples to Apples, Jr.-









SEVERAL times each night horseback riders would ride by- the children loved getting to greet the horses!

Monday afternoon Marc and I took our older children to see the Constitutional Convention State Museum- apparently Florida's constitutional convention was held in Pt. St. Joe.

We also took them to the old cemetery from the 1800s-


A yellow-fever epidemic in the mid 1800s all but wiped out the whole city-


We ate most of our meals at home, but we did swing into Apalachicola day for lunch, and then we went to a soda fountain for ice cream-





One day the girls helped me make two fruit Cool Whip pies-





And Grandpa loaded us up with night after night of yummy BBQ- pulled pork, sausages, brats, brisket- YUM!





They all loved "surfing" with their boogie boards-













And metal detecting was a hit too!









Charliebear's little baby steps-



He isn't in as many pictures because the sun wore him out and he took at least three to four hour naps every day!




The amazing, awesome, perfect house that we rented-(don't worry- it had an elevator!)

Home again....

We just got back from a week-long beach trip with Marc's family.  We had a wonderful visit and Charliebear got to finally relax.  :)

Annual Portraits

We went yesterday with BB to get our annual portraits.   Oh how I really, really don't like going to get those done- and afterwards I feel like I've been in a wrestling match.  Charlie was sort of a nightmare.  He was NOT going to sit and take a picture.  Thankfully they had wooden letter blocks and that was how we got him distracted enough to sit still.  And I held the other blocks over the photographer's head and would say "what letter is this?" over and over and over to get him to look up.  BB and I were exhausted, but they turned out well.  :)  (and these are pics of pics- the real pictures are not blurry)









Notice the blocks.....he was NOT putting them down.  :)