One for my babies and one more for the road.

Harrison had a great time at the beach.  He got to hang out with his older boy cousins on the Lee side (in the room Jeff dubbed "The Lord of the Flies Room") and learn from them.  Now he knows how to fish off a pier, write his name with sparklers, and do a flip into a pool.  (To be fair, one of his girl cousins taught him that last one.)  He had a lot of fun being the big kid at the Maxwell beach house.  I love that he gets to celebrate his birthday surrounded by family each year.  I can't believe he's already nine years old and going into fourth grade!  Do you remember what you learned in fourth grade?  Scary, right?  During our vacation, Harrison was introduced to the power of the Disney Channel and commercials.  I don't mean that he's never seen the Disney Channel or a commercial.  We have Disney shows on Netflix, and he's always fast forwarded through commercials on Tivo.  I mean that he spent every free moment watching mind-numbing fare like "Good Luck, Charlie" and "Austin and Ally" and something called "Ant Farm."  When we were together as a family, he kept asking questions like, "Is it 8:30/7:30 Central, yet?  There's a new episode of 'Phineas and Ferb' that's going to be the best episode, ever, and I have to watch it."  Yep.  He's an advertisers dream come true.  He went kayaking in the ocean and walking on the beach.  After a week and a half of it, he got a little bit tired of the beach.  I said, "Want to know how many beach houses I stayed in when I was your age?  Zero."  He answered, "You must have had a horrible childhood."  My other favorite quote was when my brother-in-law sat down next to Harrison and asked him what's up.  Harrison responded, "I don't do interviews."

Chloe is one lucky little girl.  She has not one, not two, not three, but FOUR girl cousins her age.  Chloe spends a lot of time doing what her brothers want to do.  She keeps score for Monster Jam rallies at bedtime and counts to 90 overandoverandover again for wrestling Royal Rumbles in the afternoon.  She doesn't enjoy it, but she's too nice to tell her brothers to take their boy games and shove it.  Getting to spend her days with Bridget, Anya, Emmi, and Aeli was pretty much the greatest.  She lost her front tooth during the first week, which just made her smile more adorable.  She learned to braid and spent the second week making friendship bracelets.  That is, when she wasn't out boogie boarding, collecting seashells, or digging a hole to China.

Toothless cuties Anya, Bridget, and Chloe.

Emmi and Chloe

Oh, Miles.  He was the wild card in this situation.  We had no idea how he would react to staying in a house full of unfamiliar faces.  He handled it very well.  Every time he passed someone in the hall, he would say, "Oh, HI!" (as if he'd been looking all over for them).  We let him fall asleep on the couch and stay up watching t.v. with the older kids.  He played trains with Henry, Wii with Noah and Banks, fussball with Gabriel, and board games with Nathan and Bradley.  He was given popsicles and ice cream whenever he said "please" and the fruit snacks supply never ran dry.  Hmm.  Now I can't remember why I was worried about him.  He did fall down the stairs and scrape his cheek the first day of week two, but he didn't cry for long.  He loved the pool at the first house, but wasn't a huge fan of the beach.  One morning I asked if he wanted to go swimming.  He said he did, so I spent three hours (or so) getting him suited and sunscreened up.  I walked him out to the beach where he took one look at the ocean and yelled, "NOT THE SAND!"  My favorite Miles moment of the trip was when we reached hour nine of our road trip out there and he started composing an original song.  It goes something like this:     Anybody . . . Anybody . . .Anybody . . .

 

I just want to take a moment to congratulate my husband on losing eleventyhundred pounds.  Jeff has been running and working out and cutting out junk food this past year for the sole purpose of not looking gross at the beach.  

Mission accomplished, my darling.

 

Okay, I think I'm done now.  The first week home from vacation was pretty rough.  Food had no flavor.  Colors were all muted.  Would we ever be happy again?  Soon we got back into the swing of summer and I have plenty of fun to share this week.  Did I mention this is our last week of summer?  The kids start school in a week and then they'll be gone all day and my house will always be clean and I'll have plenty of time to workout and also help the poor and needy.  It's going to be awesome.

Maybe one more picture.

Okay, last one.  I promise.