Hello, my old friend.

Hi, there, little blog.  We've been so busy, and there have been no early mornings for blogging.  There have, however, been early mornings like this:

And this:

And this:

I have a love/hate relationship with waking up at 5:30 on vacation.  Or any time really.  I love waking up before my kids and having an hour or two of quiet and solitude before the day begins.  I don't like being so tired at night after we put the kids to bed that I can barely have a coherent conversation with my husband.  Tis this season of mothering, I suppose.  In the blink of an eye my kids will want to sleep later, and they'll be able to make their own breakfasts!  

We had a really fun week seeing family and enjoying the delights of the seaside.  I found Mrs. Bennet's prediction to be true, "A little sea-bathing would set me up forever!"  We celebrated KJ's sister, Katie's, birthday and enjoyed an afternoon with Granny.

We spent a night with my brother and sister-in-law and had a one-year-old photoshoot with my nephew, Caleb.  I've got lots of pictures to go through!

I also took this picture for my mom since we already had the lovely backdrop.

We took the kids to Lambert's, where they were not nearly as excited about the "throwed" rolls as we were.  Tidbit:  The night KJ proposed at the beach, we stopped by Lambert's for a celebratory bag of rolls to go.

 Ella says she made this face because of the flash;

I was afraid she was turning up her nose at the rolls.

Eat up that sweet corn, boy.

In the end, we finally persuaded her to catch a roll for T.

 

There was lots of frolicking about on the beach.  I was glad James wasn't scared of the ocean this year.

There were pictures made in white and lots of sunscreen and sand.

Sweet James and his stoic face.  After his open-mouthed picture above, I told him to just smile, not open his mouth.  For the rest of the picture-taking night he just said, "I can't do it!" and looked straight-faced at the camera.  We have a few more options of a group picture, but I'll have to get to that later, as Ella BEGGED to start school today. 

 

That's right.  You heard me.  School.  On the 30th of July.  We're making it a tradition, I guess.  We came back to the beach, and our neighbor graciously brought over the box of curriculum that arrived while we were away, and Ella was just beyond excited.  You know how it is, new books, new notebooks, new crayons.  Something just comes over you, I guess.  I'm not looking at it as starting school exactly.  It is technically summer, after all, but we are going to do school today and see where it goes from here.  I didn't like to squelch Ella's enthusiasm, because let's be honest, it doesn't last all year long for any of us.