THE BEACH!

Wow...finally we took all 4 kids on vacation! We went to South Padre Island! This is our 3rd year to go since Chloe was born. I spent my summers there growing up, so it is nice to see my kids enjoy it! A lot of our family heads down there around the same week. This year was terrific because we had over 20 members of our family there. What was extra special was that both my sisters(and family) and my mom were there. Between Emily and I we had 1: 6 year old, 2: 4.5 year olds, 3: 2(almost 2 year olds) and 2: baby boys!
It was nutty at times...but fun all the same! Chloe loved picking up sea shells. She is so helpful with all the kids in our family. What a gift she has. Anabelle was a fish. This was no surprise to us. She ran straight into the ocean, just like she crawled last year! Nothing changed for her throughout the week. She and her cousin Ally were tight little buddies most of the week. Laurel(who has been a mommie's girl for a while now) also ran straight out into the ocean. But, that first day the under toe was strong. It pulled Laurel pretty hard. She didn't fall, but it scared her! I think it took 5 more days to get her back in the water. Most of the time she was fine just running around on the beach with the other kids. Corbin was perfect as always. He just thinks everything is so funny. He sat in the sand and ate it by the handfuls. When he was done, he and his buddy Camdyn napped under an umbrella. Poor guy, he usually ended up with one of his sister's pink towels covering him up:) Fred and I enjoyed a moment or two of just us, mind you a moment or two. There were usually a few little voices headed our way on the beach...All in all it was great. The drive there was a breeze. Well for me. We left at 10:45 pm and drove all night. Fred drove that is. The kids woke around 7:30am. We stopped to eat and then got there around 10am. Finally Fred caught up on his sleep between afternoon nap and that night. The drive home wasn't too bad. We drove side by side with Emily. A couple of snags...Anabelle had a BLOW out at the McDonald's playland! It was horrible! And then there was a terrible wreck just when we thought we were an hour and 1/2 from home. Turned out to be 3.5 hours later.